To think manager is taking the p*ss?

[Mooey89]

Work in a very small team within a large organisation - manager, me, one person below me. This means when one of us is off, the other (usually me) picks up the work to cover.
Within the organisation you can apply to purchase additional leave and if it meets business need, you can purchase 5 days extra (maximum).

manager has decided that in addition to this, he will work additional Mondays (he works condensed hours Tues-Fri) to enable him to take ‘in advance toil’. These Mondays are admin days at home.

once every 4-6 weeks, he announces that he has holiday booked. He is so impressed with how clever he is being to be able to do this.
he doesn’t pay any regard to his work diary and during this leave and so it falls to me to pick it up. It’s often booked last minute. He’s essentially ‘banking’ an additional day every week meaning 40ish additional days leave on top of A/L entitlements and the purchased leave.

I am heavily pregnant and it is really causing additional strain having to cover but they feel they are doing nothing wrong. Big boss is very hands off and their stance is they don’t care as long as the work is being done - which it is, by me.

AIBU?!

Drop the rope.

Can’t you play him at his own game

YANBU. In a similar situation. There are no easy solutions here. Just see it out until maternity leave and when the time comes to think again about employment see what else is out there. Or pray he thinks he’s so clever that he leaves and you get the promotion and can do the same!

Work your hours and nothing more. If stuff doesn’t get done, it doesn’t get done, and you can explain to the big boss why that is.

Stop covering for him - “you’ve taken so much leave it’s impossible for me to cover your work as well as doing my own tasks”.

It's an interesting one. I would love to do what he's doing. I'm not particularly bothered about shorter working weeks but I would love to have c10 weeks holiday. He's working the right number of hours across a year, he's just found a loophole which works for him. I suppose it depends on whether it affects the business and his staff. Why does it make life harder for you to pick up his work in blocks than it would if you had to do it one day pet week every week?

But he hasn't taken any additional time off. He's taken the right amount of time off, just in big blocks rather than small weekly times off.

Don’t do the work

He is taking the piss. One day a week probably means you don't have to 'cover' as such as he will pick up the work the next day? But when he is off for a week then obviously you will need to cover. I would explain the impact to him and tell him your boundaries going forwards

@HoskinsChoice because his Mondays are ‘admin days’ where it’s not entirely clear what he’s actually doing.
the work he’s asking me to cover is delivery of presentations, visiting sites to meet with clients, pick up last minute reports and in person representations.

there is a reason why the organisation does not provide 70days of annual leave per year.

Yes, you need to stop picking up the work. Explain you're fully at capacity and cannot cover. Ensure he makes arrangements to work his leave around his commitments. Keep discussing. Keep not doing his work. Let him and other manager deal with the fall out. Keep doing this until it causes enough of a problem for bigger manager to deal with.

I'd ask your HR department what their policy is on accruing overtime to be used as additional leave.....

Say he needs to arrange those matters on the days he's not on leave. Stick to the word no, you can't beause you have other work commitments.

What will happen when you go on maternity?

This.

Stop doing it.

When he's off. don't cover it.

When it gets flagged - as above...

I cannot cover your work as well as my own, I do not have the capacity. If you want to de-prioritise some of my work then let's get that documented on email and I'll cover what you prioritise but I'm not doing your job and mine.

Oh BTW, I've been working extra hours too, so this TOIL, I'm presuming it's available to us all, not just you? Let's clarify that too.

You really need to tell him no when he asks you to pick up his work. If you've too much of your own then you can't do his as well. His leave is his manager's concern, not yours, but don't agree to the extra work.

Well surely you’re off on maternity leave soon and it’ll soon appear that they’re fucked without you and it’ll get sorted in your absence.

When do you start maternity leave?

Surely they can see he’s taking the piss. ‘Admin work’ hmm, is there proof of this via teams etc?

@CharlotteBakewell no proof, and he often doesn’t reply to emails for hours when ‘wfh’.
it is part of a bigger picture of claiming credit for my work, having to be chased for things constantly.
it’s just so dull.
On Mat leave from June, with someone covering my post so I am just sucking it up now until I leave.

The key here is most place only allow such personal adjustments if it meets business needs well obviously given how small the team is, it patently doesn’t. However, if you’re picking up the excess then this fact is being disguised. So please just do only your only direct work and once deadlines are not being met then it will need to be addressed and his ridiculous working pattern/preferences will naturally come into question without you having to directly dog him in as it were.

Personally I’d do it before maternity leave as the cover is only short term and maybe they’ll be able to just cover him because after all it’s only temporary. This may make it worse for you as if you try to address it then they may say that you never said anything before your newborn and even the cover had no issues so they may twist it to the fact that it’s you and the only thing this changed is you now have a newborn and it’s he fact that you’re now working less effectively!

What's the policy on accruing toil. You need to direct work you can't cover to his senior and hopefully they will address this.

Did this get mentioned when your pregnancy risk assessment was done? It's the sort of thing that I would flag through that process - i was essentially told to stop work at 36w with DD2 following a routine appointment when my BP was very high (and later turned into preeclampsia). Working so much extra is bound to put extra stress on you and isn't sustainable as you start to hand over to your cover. Could you raise it in the context of needing your risk assessment to be reviewed as you are starting it find it all difficult? How many weeks will you be when you finish?

We are not allowed bank leave like that. You can't just do additional hours because you want to, they have to be approved in advance by your line manager. Our HR would have stopped him long ago. YOu need to say it to him and then you need to go to HR if it's causing you problems. But be prepared for him to be unhappy.