Annual leave is a terrible excuse!

[ANightingaleSang]

How many times can you get away with using annual leave as a excuse for failing to respond in a timely manner/delays?

For context I have been in discussions with a third party for over a year! I was anticipating we would have the issue resolved within 4 months, ideally sooner.

At every stage the person I am in communication with is saying things such
'I'll take a look when I get back from annual leave at the end of next week'
Sorry for the delay, I've been on leave and only returned 2 days ago. Ive been in back to back meetings since. I'm off again until 2nd October, I will take a look then.

This has not been once or twice but at least 15 times over the past year

So far I've gritted my teeth and remained polite but it's getting ridiculous. Does he ever work? If he's away so often surely he should delegate tasks to someone else? I'm being left in limbo waiting.

The cherry on the cake that pushed me over the edge was that he gave me a 2 week deadline to respond to a a report. I had to do a mountain of work and got back to him ahead of the deadline l. He then replied he'd look at it on 2nd of October (see above). I just find that rude!

I have always replied within 2-3working days. All the delays are on their side

Am I being unreasonable to think that annual leave can be used as an excuse once or twice but after that it's just ridiculous?

Does anyone have any comebacks? I need to remain professional but if he keeps stringing me along i am going to explode!

Thank you!

If only it were just annual leave that people use as an excuse for inefficiency.

I sacked a solicitor a few years ago because she apparently didn't work Friday afternoons despite telling me she worked full-time and regular office hours when I hired her.

Give them 14 days to pay or you’ll commence legal action

and then do it

Ask about his leave
You can't do that
Yes you can
...

So much discussion of an irrelevance. If an organisation owes you money and one individual in that organisation is blocking this, you go around them. You don't piss about asking about his leave plans and trying to work around him.

The only relevant questions right now are:

• has the amount been agreed?
• is there a written agreement to pay it? (invoice, etc.)

Those answers determines whether you go straight to issuing a final payment demand, or whether you go straight to a formal complaint.

Letter before action , then court. If its below £10k the MCOL process is cheap and easy (although you have to wait ages for a hearing) Money Claim Online (MCOL) user guide for claimants - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

I work as a contractor in the nhs and everyone I work with are very senior with long service entitlements and on employment contracts with 6 and sometimes 7 weeks (30-35 days) annual leave.

its actually impossible to get any big projects done in a reasonable time frame as all the senior decision makers are on leave sequentially. So Sue signs off on her piece but then we have to wait two weeks plus the “just clearing my in box after annual leave”) for Bob to get round to his sign off. Then another 2 + weeks for Mo to get back. And so on. It’s incredibly frustrating and really impacts on productivity.

(I’m from a country where when I started work as a grad 3 weeks (15 days) annual leave was the norm. It’s now 2o days but nearly the whole country takes 10-15 days off over Christmas/ new year so you don’t get the disruption during the year.

If it's a settlement that they accept they have to pay, you really have nothing to fear in starting legal proceedings. They can't defend so the case will be done and dusted quite quickly, and will have to pay your costs - admittedly it may not be all your costs, but the difference won't be that much and may well be compensated by interest added to the debt for the past year's delay.

Escalate - Situation, Behaviour, Impact model

I would certainly mention that you are running out of patience having been very understanding of delays for the last year. This indicates you are considering legal action without threatening it (yet)

Of course they can. If the leave is anything other than Annual Leave and the respondent is saying that it's annual leave (as that is a generally understood term for a type of leave) and they have obfuscated for 15 individual times due to this leave, of course the OP can use the response requesting that their issue be resolved in a timely manner and requesting dates when more leave is planned so that the issue can move through whatever process it's going through.

People in my company use lots of different types of leave but when they are on leave they are supposed to use their Out of Office function for their mailbox and nominate a colleague who can handle things in their absence.

@ANightingaleSang - have you been given an escalation contact if things haven't progressed in a timely manner? Can you bring it to an ombudsman's office if it hasn't been sorted by X date (so not quite legal path but definitely to someone who has more clout to get the issue sorted)?

Best of luck getting this sorted for yourself.

And people wonder why the NHS and public sector get charged so much by consultants and contractors. We have to factor in delays at every stage of even the most basic project.

Do it. You can send a shirty letter via a solicitor stating unless this is settled within 30 days legal proceedings will ensue. It's usually very effective unless the person you are trying to get something from is entirely dependent on a non responsive 3rd party

Thanks for all the great advice. Pretty sure it's not compassionate leave and definitely not parental leave (the man in question has a tendency to over share so I know he doesn't have kids and recently went to Canada for 2 weeks for his parents wedding anniversary...). Regardless of the reason for the leave, it seems so wrong that things can only be progressed by one person.

@Crushed23 I didn't mention this in the original post but he also doesn't work Mondays, Tuesdays is 'dealing with the backlog'/back to back meetings and Friday is a half day. (He usually waits until just before packing up on Friday to reply to my emails).

The frustrating thing is that we are nearing completion (at the appeal stage). So I don't think they can protract the process much longer. I think I will take legal action at the end of November (when inevitably they will be getting ready for the Christmas holidays).

I mentioned the academic thing in jest,, as all academics are very quick to penalise students who miss a deadline by 1 second, yet fail to respect deadlines themselves!

At this point I feel like I'm being taken for a ride. Somehow I need them to realise I'm not a pushover!.

Start being really annoying, phone and email every day, speak to all his colleagues and literally bore them all to death about how long it's taken!! Maybe that will light the fires!

You are right that I am less important to him than he is to me. Unfortunately, this is my absolute priority and I am stuck in limbo until the settlement is paid (we are talking 6 figures).

We are currently negotiating an amount to be paid. (for unpaid labour etc.) Apart from what they owe me I have also included interest and a few other elements etc. They upheld everything and then tried it on with a completely ludicrous offer that they expected me to appeal. I have appealed but they won't be reading the appeal letter until October. My request is significantly lower than they would be forced to pay by OIA or if it were to go to court because I want to get this resolved quickly. They continue to drag their feet at every stage and I don't understand why. As some posters suggested, are they trying to delay past a certain date? I can't see why they would do this as It is in their interest to settle before I take them to court.

This.

@ANightingaleSang Basically this man is a lazy fucker and will do whatever is easiest, so you need to become such a thorn in his side that it is easier to just do it than to keep making excuses for not doing it.

Once he gets that sinking feeling every time he sees your name pop up again in his inbox he'll eventually decide it's easier just to pull his finger out of his arse.

He sounds a lazy, useless work shy twat.

I'd take them to court tbh. Send his superior an email saying that unless he sorts it by X deadline you'll pursue them in court.

If they're public sector, then the only significant date for dragging it out to is 1st April and the next budget year.

Public Sector are the worst for paying small businesses/sole traders - they either want to pay you all up-front (use it or lose it budget) or the drag things out forever after the work's been done (budget's been spent). I once had an apology from a PS sector client saying that they were very sorry but payment of my invoice when I put it in would be delayed. They'd forgotten they'd paid the whole lot up-front the previous March (this was now October).

I'd kick-off the legal action. Get a solicitor to draw up a Letter Before Action (I know you don't need a solicitor, but it adds credibility and you can add the cost to the claim).

Don't give a deadline and then take legal action, suggesting it will sound like a hollow threat. Go ahead with it.

No one dares use annual leave as an excuse to not do anything with me, nor Christmas, or anything similar. My response on the annual leave was to mention it was introduced in the 1930s, and as for Christmas, when St Augustine converted England to Christianity. So about 90 years notice or in the latter case over a millennium is enough warning to plan for things.

As Dog says, send the letter before action now (I think when I did this, I didn't even use a solicitor for it, although it's probably wise to do so)

Then you'll be in the right position to proceed come November.

Good luck with your next steps. It sounds like it would be worthwhile getting a solicitor involved - not so much with the letter but also to negotiate to payout. It could be money well spent.

As an aside, academics have no control over deadlines. We give a submission date to the student office and they do the rest. Extensions are dealt with by them and most of the time we don’t even know if a student has one or why. We don’t have the discretion to award them ourselves.

If you work for a local authority approximately 364 days if the year. And if it's not AL it will be sick leave.

You have no right to ask about someone’s annual leave plans, you must know that, his contract is with his employer not with you.

You do have the ability to ask that this is escalated, why don’t you raise it with the Director of the Service provision plus Chief Executive and cc your MP, rather than posting on here?

Thanks, but that wouldn't be appropriate in this case. If it were that simple, trust me, I would have done it. I think it is a perfectly reasonable question to post here. I appreciate your input 😊