So this time last year, I lost 2 immediate family members within a month of each other. I was only allowed bereavement leave (unpaid) for one of them. Although at least I got to go to the other’s funeral on my lunch hour and return to work, a day off would have been nice, but since I’d already taken 3 days during the busy season, that wasn’t an option.
This year, an equally close family friend who practically raised me passed away, and when I ask to attend his memorial service, you say “It’s too busy to let you have a half day off. And anyway, didn’t a bunch of people already die last year? You probably don’t have anybody left.”
People die, sometimes lots of people we’re acquainted with. I don’t schedule their untimely demises, and if I did, the busiest time of the year at work when I pick up everyone else’s slack wouldn’t be the time I chose either.
And actually, fucktard, I don’t have anyone left, so thanks for being an insensitive prick. And now, I don’t even get to pay my respects to the last person I had left whom I considered “family”. —Can’t Wait ‘Til My Degree Qualifies Me For a Better Job
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2011.
Some things are more important than a job.
You have the right, to make decisions that maintain your sanity. Go to the funeral.
Man, if someone snarked like that at me, in that situation, I’d be smuggling out the Bitch from remand in Burnside. This is not a prideful boast, I just know I’d snap. I’m impressed that you kept your cool.
For something like this though, don’t ever let the dictates of some pissant job keep you from a necessary personal event. If you lose the job over it, so be it. You only lose any given close personal friend once, and there are lots of crappy jobs.
And you can tell a future candidate employer, if the matter comes up, that the previous employer refused to let you attend the funeral of a person who basically raised you. Believe it or not that usually carries some weight.
step 1. purchase thick soup that morning. consume gleefully.
step 2. find said fucktard…
step 3. stick finger down throat and proceed to hurl all over their shoes.
step 4. say “I’m sick” and walk out.
When I requested time off for a funeral not too long ago, I was told I would need proof, PHOTOGRAPHIC proof.
Yes I’m going to stand there during the funeral and burial and take pictures of myself and the remains in the church and the graveyard.
Needless to say I no longer work for that insurance company.
That does suck, I’m glad I work where we get so much bereavement time, sadly had use too much the last few years
That’s fucking awful Salesman!!! I can’t believe they would have the balls and/or ovaries to ask for that!!
If a boss said that to me, they’d be rethinking the tact at which they approached the situation, while coughing up my resignation letter crammed down their throat.
I quit a job for this reason. Same thing, two family members, one expected, one not.
You are legally entitled to unpaid bereavement leave, busy season or not.
“You probably don’t have anybody left”
I’d make that guy feel smaller than one of the keys on this keyboard before I stormed out of there for the last time, ranting about being a “fucking human being” or something to that effect.
But before you do, get it in writing that they refused you your legally guaranteed leave.
OB, call in sick if you have to, man. You’ll regret it forever if you don’t.
OB, what kind of job are you working? Where I work, there is no limit of how many times you can take time off for bereavement (5-days each time) due to the death of an immediate family member. Heck, we even get that time off with pay. Then again, it pays to be a salary employee and not one of those paid-by-the-hour morons.
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Where I work, there is no limit how many time…
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Blow Job Tech on Citadel Hill does that?
Wow. Good for you!
wpaul
p.s. The Hamfisted Tromboner offer is still on the table, Little One.
i hear being sick, is a good excuse, and a docs paper is easy to get.