Boss taking all annual leave over school holidays

[Sickofthissheeet]

Between me and my boss one of us has to be in to provide cover. We both have school aged children but mine are reception and pre school and hers are secondary.

she has emailed me to say that management have approved for her to take her holiday across august and Xmas and Easter and I can’t take those times off as need to cover. Explained that we would need to compromise as also need time off then and she’s said if I don’t cover it mean she won’t get to spend time with her children or see her extended family(?!)

AIBU to think this is really unfair? We both want the same times off but surely we have to divvy them up? She can’t just take them all?

Up to you if you didn't think of Xmas til June time. Most people book it as soon as the annual leave allocation opens.

It’s fairly late to be requesting time off for the summer holidays. So your boss is off for 2 of the 6 weeks so you can still take any times from 4 of the remaining 6 weeks?

Look for another job

But I'm afraid if you are not an organised person then it won't work well for you so I'd be job hunting.

TBH where we live, you have to book kids holiday clubs SO far in advance that it all works out ok anyway.

This.

Your first post was over dramatic and factually incorrect and then you backtracked. Don't know how you expect any useful replies based on that.

Basically what you are saying is "you can't take those weeks, I want them" Well, life's tough! Suck it up or change your job.

Don't all parents of school aged children take all their annual leave in the school holidays?

So she's taking 5 weeks of the 13 weeks of school holidays meaning the other 8 weeks are available for you? Yeah you're being unreasonable. The only one you could possibly be aggrieved at is the full Easter , all of the rest she's only taken part of the holidays.

I've always booked annual leave on Jan 1st loads of people would come into work to make sure they got what they wanted. Seems very disorganized to be leaving it this late. Be more on the ball next year.b

It’s definitely not first come first serve, and I hadn’t thought of Xmas in June tbh 😂

But with young children you have to think well in advance.
When mine was primary age I put my holidays in for the next 12 months on the 1st Jan when the calendar opened.
Your colleague has done nothing wrong. Might have been nice to agree to a week each at Easter. Also as you'll eventually realise teenagers need their parents around too, in fact it is unwise to leave teens to their own devices for too much of the holidays. You actually have way more choices re childcare/holiday clubs etc when they're younger. I'm finding the teenage years the hardest to juggle. Never suffered from mum guilt when they were young as they were either having fun with other kids or safe with family, now mine is home alone when I'm at work and I feel much more pressure to be present during the school holidays.

Well now you've learnt that next year you need to get in there first and book your dates first, if she complains then point to her getting in there first this year.

No.

Without getting into the "should they or shouldn't they" debate, many of my teams parents with younger children want to work school holidays and have time off elsewhere (with the exception of Christmas, although that's not a problem as we are a diverse team and there are enough people who don't celebrate Christmas to cover that). The reason being that it is easier (and MUCH CHEAPER) to book family holidays during school terms (obviously having other childcare in place for school holidays) because even if they get fined (and most don't) it's cheaper to suck up the fine than go on holiday when the kids are off school. For older secondary age children it is much harder to do that because what they miss out on is often more critical.

Wow that’s rude. Hardly! My issue isn’t her wanting that time off but how she has gone about it and not opening up a convo and saying let’s talk this through. I had also just returned from sick leave so didn’t have a chance beforehand.

Is this the first year you have worked there? Or is it the first time you have this boss with a family and there will be conflicts with wanting school holiday time off? What happened in previous years?

The summer thing is fair enough, first come first served over the 6 weeks available and I would let that lie.

For Easter/Christmas I would talk to her rather than emails back and forth and say you have family you want to see too, especially over Christmas, so the best way would be to work out together what is a fair way to work. Have a think if you are willing to work Christmas week this year on the written agreement you get the whole time off next year.

Is the August holiday this summer? Have you booked any holiday at all for this summer - it's only about 3 weeks away now!!

I imagine your boss looked at the holiday calendar, saw that you appear to have not booked any time off at all and gone ahead and booked hers.

‘Boss taking all annual leave over school holidays’
Which is not true. So your actual issue is she didn’t seek out your permission when booking 2 weeks off in August, and you’ve got the other 2 weeks off. Just enjoy your time off and be more prepared next year.

As I said august not so much the issue - she has said she wants it every year so that feels unfair. The whole of Xmas and the whole of Easter is in my view unfair. I hadn’t had chance to book that as I have been on sick leave.

Not rude at all.

So now the drip feed includes the fact that you were off sick and so you were not even in work for her to speak to. And conversations are still two way things - you could have started that conversation too. Especially since you weren't even in work but still knew holiday periods were coming up and you had done nothing about booking leave.

I am beginning to feel sorry for the manager now. She is being slammed by you for not communicating with you (but you didn't communicate with her), booking her annual leave at her convenience (when you didn't book any), and covering for you whilst you were off sick (presumably because if you each cover for each other on annual leave it is probably also true of sick leave) and then being wrong for booking her leave whilst you were off sick.

You are being very unreasonable.

But she's your boss - she doesn't need you to authorise her holiday, that's for HER boss to do. My boss doesn't ask me for permission to book his holidays either.

Do you have to specifically agree to cover or is it that your objection now would make it unauthorised in some way?

tbh I would lay my boundaries now so she’s less likely to try and pull a shitty move like this again in the future. Christmas/new year should be split and rotated annually, Easter should just be split unless there’s a specific agreement beforehand.

This ‘I won’t get to see my family’ bollocks is just that, bollocks. for it to work you’d have to not be bothered about seeing your family during the same periods. The kids are also a red herring, her family life doesn’t trump anyone else’s.

That is very unfair. I would be asking her boss how my leave can be facilitated.

I doubt you have read the full thread. It's getting less unfair each post from the OP.

Yep, I'd be finding a much better job. I couldn't work anywhere where my counterpart refused to discuss such important stuff. I'd be off - and I'd let management know why too!

Round here it’s v difficult to get childcare for the last two weeks of the school holidays due to kids clubs not running - most hire out secondary schools who won’t rent out halls over gcse / a level results weeks. many parents have set a tradition of only going away at the end of summer.

anyway, you know you can get time off this summer. You have half a year to find a new job in a market where there’s labour shortages so should be easier than normal to find something else, cite being told you have to work all of Christmas and Easter as a deciding factor in moving jobs.

@Quveas are you my boss? 😂😂😂