The Pandemic Soul

I am, admittedly, one bull-headed sonofabitch. I get it from my father, who rarely ever changed his mind about anything when I was a child. (He has mellowed with age, fortunately.) On top of this stubbornness, I also have a massive entitlement complex. I don’t know whether this was caused by being spoiled as a child, or being a child of the 80’s “You’re special” era, but put this together with the aforementioned trait, and you’ve got yourself a difficult package — I’m the first to admit it.

So you can imagine how I often have difficulty dealing with the common authority figures in my life, like employers. Today, I had another run-in (one of dozens I’ve had over the course of my jobs) with a supervisor. The situation arose when I sent my supervisor a short e-mail advising that I would need to take off an hour and a half early next week. I did not give a reason, but did say that I had already found someone to cover my phone calls.

I realized ahead of time that I was not “asking” to take time off. I have had to do just two other times since being employed here, but both times I was very polite, and worded the e-mail in such a way as to make it appear that I could make changes to my plans, if need be. However, just last week a friend of mine requested a day off, on a day which no one else was taking time off, and was denied at first request for no apparent reason other than “short notice.” After a short battle with the supervisor, she won out, but it was a tense and uncomfortable situation in consideration of the fact that she may not have had the chance to spend the day with her parents, who were going to be in town for a “surprise” visit.

This situation also stems back to the fact that the procedures for taking time off are vague on our team. A few weeks ago we were informed that we could not request time off more than a month out, or less than two weeks out. While some of us had asked about how holidays work, or how one could purchase tickets in advance, the responses were not clear and were generally something like “we’ll figure it out.”

In my specific situation, however, I have scheduled a medical test that is necessary to determine the source of a chronic infection in my throat. The test can only be done at certain facilities, and is only done during “peak” hours of the day, as opposed to weekends, because the test is not often done and specialists are needed.

I do not feel the need to explain my reasons for needing to take time off, however. In my not-so-humble opinion, it’s not any business of my supervisors why I need to leave. My business is my business. Moreover, while I may have such consideration if I were taking two or three days off, or more, I can’t see the need to justify leaving just 1.5 hours before the end of my shift when no one else is taking time off that day, and someone else has already agreed to cover my phone.

I received an e-mail back from my supervisor stating that I needed to “come and see [me].” So, I did. In sitting down at the supervisor’s desk, I was advised that this is “not the way we do things around here.” That I had “told, instead of asking” for time off. And then asked why I needed to leave. I simply stated that it was a medical issue and that the appointment had just been scheduled and needed to be done soon. The supervisor continued to hassle me for another five minutes or so, telling me that I would have to come in early (I already come in at 6:30am) to “offset the time.” Near the end of the conversation, I was beginning to get annoyed, and stated that it wouldn’t have happened this way if it wasn’t an important appointment, to which the supervisor responded “Well, I’m not telling you not to do it…”

The absurdity of this statement hit me like a bat to the face. “You’re not telling me not to do it?” I thought. “Of fucking course you’re not — you have no right to.” Where the fuck does someone get off saying something like this? The mere assumption that this person could tell me not to do it is so insulting to me that I am having difficulty even typing this as I sit here. The fact that this person sits in a position of power over me makes the insinuation all-the-more angering.

I walked out of the supervisor’s office angry, but as the day has worn on, I’ve felt even more impetuous to the idea. It seems clear that the only offense here was simply that I didn’t beg for my own, work-earned time off. Why, I wonder, should I feel it necessary to “ask” for time off? Perhaps in a situation where I am inconveniencing others, it is a consideration. But I am neither a critical part of our team yet, nor asking for less than two hours of time off.

Bah — it’s a rant, I know that. But I feel like these encounters are common in the corporate world, as a strict divide between the “workers” and the “managers” become more about the need to necessitate a sense of authority in the latter than it is about fostering any kind of productive work environment for the former. I have long thought that I would work best as an entrepreneur, but ironically lack the follow-through to be one, as I tend to fall more in the “idea man” category.

Moral of the story? I’m stubborn and childish. I knew that there would probably be a reaction to my e-mail, but I wanted to provoke it nonetheless. Perhaps I’m just as bad as my manager?