Company wants me to pay back holiday days.

[Mooshamoo]

I started in a job in November 2022. We have an online annual leave system .
At the start of January 2023, 21 days on our online system became available to me for me to take.

I asked my manager could I take two weeks off at the start of the year. I took the last week of January and the first week of February off. This was approved by my manager. I took them. I was then moved to a new manager. Which was the way the company worked. New starters were with one manager. After two months you were changed to another manager

The company was pretty abusive and at the end of February I decided to leave.

I left. I then got an email from my second manager saying I had taken more annual leave days in the time I worked there, then I had accrued. And that I have to pay this annual leave money back. It is 550 euro. I'm in Ireland. This is a lot of money to me as i am now in between jobs.

Can they do this. My first manager who approved the annual leave days, never told me that I did not have enough annual leave days to take. She approved them. She never told me at any stage that if I left the company that I would have to pay these annual leave days back. If I had known that I wouldn't have taken them .

Can they do this to me now?

Take another 2 mins to do your post call work or see how many agents are available before you go available yourself

This thread is making horrible reading.
Give the op a break.
She knows she's cocked up. What use is it continually berating her?
Made yourselves a feel better?
OP. Let's hope they will allow a payment plan
Ignore the keyboard bullies.

Totally agree.

No-one knows the OP in real life and what her mental health is like.

Honestly I think OP has got the message

She has said herself she was wrong and is in tears about it

Constantly asking her about exactly what goes on while she's on the phones isn't helpful at all-she's quit now so won't be going back

OP I hope you got out for a walk to clear your head. Look at your finances for the next couple of months and start working on your cv and getting it out there. Onwards and upwards

I'm curious about the quitting without notice - what should your notice period have been and what's the consequence of not working it? Were you outside of your probationary period?

OP, as lots of PP have said, they can make you pay this back. I don't know if ACAS covers Ireland, but do you have a similar body there that you could contact for advice?

I don't think they can insist that you pay it all back in go though, so you could negotiate a payment plan with them.

If you had given and worked notice, they would have deducted it from your final pay.

Okay you have had a nasty shock and a horrible work experience - that is what it is and while there is sorting to be done - it is over and you will move on to better things.

Firstly, document what has happened - your experience, the feedback, the pressure, set out your mis understanding regarding the holidays and propose a payment plan - set out a reasonable amount you can pay even if you have to claim social welfare payments. Send this to HR, try keep it neutral and unemotional - this will take a couple of drafts.

Next, dust yourself off, this doesn't define you nor does it take from you - we all have a bump or two on the work road and yours is now in your rear mirror.

Now CV out and at the ready and off you go ready for the next challenge with a bit more learning under your belt - plenty of jobs ? where are you situated? what is your particular interests? How are you doing outside of this work ? do yo u need a bit of support - if so there are options out there.

You have this, you will get there - reach out to any and all supports around you - get out of the Whatspp group and move on. You made a mistake its done - it isn't the end of the world - it just needs a little space and a bit of luck in a welcoming new job to put this in prespective.

Best of luck in your job hunting.

I'm going to point out to my manager all the times I stayed late and worked a half hour unpaid.

Totally irrelevant and an entirely separate issue you should have raised at the time.

Regardless, you still need to pay back your AL and anything from not working your notice.

Sounds like a shit workplace OP, but unfortunately they are right about the annual leave. Most places I've worked don't let you take any leave in the first 3 - 6 months, I suspect partly to avoid a situation where someone might quit before they've accrued enough leave. But it is standard and fairly obvious.

If you're not in a union, is there anyone else you can contact for advice? Although the issues of the AL and them being shitty seem separate, I wonder if you can leverage one against the other. You left in a hurry because they were godawful, you messed up about the AL. They could have warned you that you owed them days if you'd given notice, but they couldn't because you didn't. But I wonder if you can contact your MP or someone like that as it seems like there is a story here about poor working conditions and you might be able to use that as leverage to get them to drop the issue of the leave, or at least give you a reasonable timeframe to pay it back.

Don't go back to work for them. Your MH is worth more than that.

Totally irrelevant and an entirely separate issue you should have raised at the time.

i think if OP can front it out, and the company already know this is an issue, they may say "ok then they cancel each other out" and even if it really ought to be OP getting money because of all the extra hours, that would be a good outcome.
Worst case? they say "haha, lols, nope" and she arranges a payment plan for the holidays and presumably any days she's been paid for in February she didn't work.

Very little probably. She’s a call centre operative, hardly likely that the business will suffer many consequences as a result of her not being there.

Yes, this is standard. You accrue annual leave. You’ve taken more than your entitlement for the time you’ve worked there during that period.

One little glimmer of hope for you OP. My understanding is that if the terms and conditions of employment does not stipulate that pay for overpaid leave can be recovered you can keep it. Please check your contract , which is likely to comprise of the document itself plus any provisions in your staff handbook. If you can’t find anything I suggest you call ACAS for advice. I used to manage a large workforce in a sector where there was a high staff turnover, we could always get a good idea who might leave as they never got ahead of themselves with leave.

OP don't go back to work for them.

Even if they do allow you to go back to "work it off" you'll be working for free for ~3 weeks to pay back your holiday and the last days of Feb they've paid you for. That's time you could be spending looking for a new job and not feeing shit.

Far better to arrange a repayment plan with HR and get a new job in the meantime. Citizens Advice will help you, give them a call.

You'll have forgotten about this in a year. I hope your mum is OK now.

I didn't think working in a customer service job would mean taking back to back calls. As I know other people who do customer service jobs from home and they don't take back to back calls.

I have one friend who works in a customer service job from home. In his job, he takes calls for two hours in the morning, he then is taken off calls. He then answers emails for two hours. In the afternoon he take calls for two hours. He answers emails for one hour. He has administration time for one hour.

My other friend who does a customer service job from home. She answers calls for most of the day. She gets five minutes time between each call to do system work. She also gets half an hour for admin time in the morning and half an hour for admin time in the evening.

I get 20 seconds between calls, and no administration time at all.

You said I though the best place to keep my work contract was on my work computer. Not true. They have it set up , so it is only possible to keep my work contract on the work computer. They didn't send my work contract to my work email. It is on a system that you have to log in to. It is not possible to copy the work contract and it is not possible to email it to my own personal email address. When I tried to before it said that I don't have administration rights.

It's perfectly legal for them to deduct your for annual leave days taken in advance of accrual. It is assumed that as an adult you are aware of the terms and conditions of your employment contact.

If you feel the working conditions forced you into having to resign then look in to suing them for constructive dismissal.

You do sound immature sorry, unless you're just out of school then this level of naivety is very odd.

I think she means what is the consequence for me, not for the company

Yes I said I've understood about the annual leave days okay. Ive said that many times now. No one needs to tell me again. We have moved on. People have been asking me about the conditions in the job and I've been telling them.

OP, I know it’s easy for me to say but it’s not worth making yourself ill for any job, least of all a shitty one like this.

where have your colleagues who have left gone to? Can they try and get you in where they are?

what about stuff like cleaning/domestic work to tide you over?

You need to speak to HR asap.

You only really have 2 viable options:

• retract your resignation. If loads of people have quit they are more likely to have you back. I appreciate you hated your job but if you can't get another job soon it might be the easiest option and you can carry on job hunting and leave once you've paid back your debt. You will have to work out how long you need to carry on working there so you don't quit again still owing them money.

• agree a payment plan to pay the money back. If they don't agree then as previous poster said, you should save the money yourself in case the company take you to court.

Do you have any family or friends that could lend you the money?

You could of course ignore completely but if the company are as shitty as you say they are they may have no qualms with taking you to court. You don't want to end up with a criminal record as that would make job hunting even harder so please think seriously about the best solution to this, even if it's not a solution you like.

If you have quit with immediate effect you haven’t gave your manager chance to calculate what leave you owe them back. In my role it’s all worked out and discussed with the employee at the point of receiving their resignation and notice period.

I’m a bit 🙄 at your colleague WFH who’s faint from not having a break, you’re sat down at home answering the phone with access to food and drinks not working in the trenches.

Ah ok again, probably very little. Usually not worth pursuing unless they can prove they have suffered a loss, I can’t imagine that they’d be bothered pursuing that if it happens so frequently

"You said I though the best place to keep my work contract was on my work computer. Not true. They have it set up , so it is only possible to keep my work contract on the work computer. They didn't send my work contract to my work email. It is on a system that you have to log in to. It is not possible to copy the work contract and it is not possible to email it to my own personal email address. When I tried to before it said that I don't have administration rights."

If this is true (and I'm skeptical that it is) then that's another reason to get legal advice as your employer is legally bound to furnish you with a contract and cannot restrict your access to that contract. I have never come across a situation where an employee cannot access their contract.

OP I don’t mean to add to your worry but if you were paid on the 24th for February and left on the 24th, won’t oh have been paid up until the end of February? So twine extra days?

This cannot be real.

Would you expect to not get paid for any holidays you'd accrued but not taken? No? Then how can the other way round be ok to you?