How to handle a boss dinging extra vacation days?

[seadog]

OK, so little background, I work a professional, field based oil field services engineering job on salary. Often time due to the field nature, you get calls at 3am to do something, or are stuck in the shop 20 hours straight to make something ready for the field.

I also did the same job for same company in Canada/US and the unspoken rule was that although you get paid and are on call 7 days a week, since none of management or operator staff are in, you can take it easy on the weekends (half day sat, off sun) as long as there's nothing going on, and you figured on average you worked 8 hrs/day for the week. Because honestly if nothing's going on, why waste your time pretending to work?

Now I'm working in Asia, labor laws don't really exist. It's funny to see the blatant discrimination in hiring etc. Anyways, was in the shop past 2am one Saturday night, 16 hour day to get something done, didn't come in Sunday since all we needed to get done was done, and it was almost 3 when I got home.

Found out I was dinged a vacation day for it. Another girl here had the same thing recently happen too. This is just new since we got a new manager a couple months ago.

Looking for input on how to handle the situation.

Obviously I could confront him. I see potential problem outcomes as:

He could go full cunt mode and discover this isn't the first ppl have done this, and out of spite go through all sorts of access records.cctv and ding many ppl many more days.

Say "too bad, you shoulda come to work" at which point I'd say "ok if we're going to play the hours game I'm out of here every day at 5pm", which isn't good for getting things done, morale, relationships or probably my career.

Or I could ignore it. Let sleeping dogs lay for the sake of a couple days. My worry is that this seems to be part of a bigger pattern with the new boss. Promises made for days off then later reneged on, bonuses promised for extra work but waiting still months later for the money etc.

[Mibz]

Get a new job. If your boss can't use common sense then this isn't going to be the only problem you have.

[kaput]

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[Str1der]

Seems unreasonable to me. I would address it sooner than later, and keep a record of the conversation.

[ercchry]

this seems pretty straight forward.

you were scheduled for work but didnt show up due to working till 3am. at 3am when you finished the work why would you not shoot out an email explaining the situation and requesting to not come in the following day?

if he has an issue with that then you escalate it to his boss :dunno:

[rage2]

Originally posted by seadog
Now I'm working in Asia, labor laws don't really exist.
I think most of you guys missed this part of his post. My cousins in Asia (HK to be exact) work 7 days a week, 6 if they're lucky. There's no such thing as overtime. So if you didn't come in, you missed a day period, regardless if you pulled a 24 hour shift. Those asians work hard over there, and it's normal. Totally not suited for our North American slack lifestyles, which shows in the OP creating this thread. That's just how things are over there. Want a solution? Move back. :)

I'm a lazy North American now, I would never go back to work in Asia.

[seadog]

The thing is you aren't really "scheduled". The documentation says we're expected to work 8-5, hr for lunch, yadi yadi yada.

As with most salaried jobs, the onus is more on 'get the work done', than specific hours worked. Even with our previous manager who was just as Asian. It isn't a production like where everyone needs to be in place till the whistle blows.

Him dinging me for a vacation day when there was zero work to do in my opinion is the same as me charging an extra day for the extra 8 hours I worked Saturday.

It's probably my slack NA lifestyle speaking, but I'd argue my overlooking the 5pm departure(by more than a day of hours no less) necessitates his overlooking of the 8am arrival.

Hence why if push came to shove I would argue that ok, I will work 8-5 every day. But that means a lot of work would be delayed up to a day, and at $10k/hr for a rig or whatever, this quickly translates to a lose/lose for everyone.

He's basically pushing me to a lose/lose over a win/win for the sake of pedantry.

[Kramerica]

Read the company's policy for vacation days, if its in there you've got grounds for an appeal if the boss doesn't agree with you, if not you've basically got nothing to fall back on because of the lack of labor regulations in the country.

Unless you've got a legitimate appeal you're going to just piss your boss off, and even if you do I'd wait and see if somebody else talks to him about it. I've worked a couple of jobs where a new manager has come in and decided they have to exert absolute authority, usually these guys get really pissed if you tell them they're doing something wrong even if its blatantly obvious.

[seadog]

+1 on the Asian work culture though. I was initially woken up a few times 90 minutes before we need to be at work asking if I want to ride in with some group of people. A couple questions(Are you the last car? Are you going in late?, Why are you calling me now instead of in 75 minutes?) implying that my aim was to sleep as much as possible and arrive within 1 minute of when I had to be there ended that though.

And just to get a bit racist here and go on parallel with the Chinese engineer in another thread that can't find a job, some of the people here, it's like they know all the right answers on how to be a good employee (come 1 hour early, stay 4 hours late, and always be busy, high output of work by quantity) but the actual work of these people is piss poor. They fill their time adding completely unrequested and unnecessary details to work, then fuck up the main part of it that we're actually paid for or details required by law.

It's criminally inefficient. It's not that I'm lazy. I do my job well and if there's a good reason to stay late and go the extra mile I will. Some people here it seems just will happily spend all night at the shop screwing around on the net just trying to show what a good employee they are though. Annoys the hell out of me.

[CanmoreOrLess]

The new manager could simply have made an error and ought to have the opportunity to make it right. Be polite and to the point, if he does not see things your way it is better to know now that the rules of the game have changed. Make your next move based on this new information. At least give the manager a chance to do right.

Having worked in Asia for nearly a decade, sometimes you need to shrug and suck it up. You can leave at any time, the locals are stuck there for life. You can use all the western logic you like, in the end you are to play by their rules or go home. Or perhaps you have been in Asia long enough and just need to get the fuck outta Dodge. In my final months, no money brought any satisfaction, I had to leave. Great place to visit, but "I ain't workin' there no more".

Oh and do not use the word "pedantry" when speaking with him.

[DRKM]

Originally posted by seadog
+1 on the Asian work culture though. I was initially woken up a few times 90 minutes before we need to be at work asking if I want to ride in with some group of people. A couple questions(Are you the last car? Are you going in late?, Why are you calling me now instead of in 75 minutes?) implying that my aim was to sleep as much as possible and arrive within 1 minute of when I had to be there ended that though.

And just to get a bit racist here and go on parallel with the Chinese engineer in another thread that can't find a job, some of the people here, it's like they know all the right answers on how to be a good employee (come 1 hour early, stay 4 hours late, and always be busy, high output of work by quantity) but the actual work of these people is piss poor. They fill their time adding completely unrequested and unnecessary details to work, then fuck up the main part of it that we're actually paid for or details required by law.

It's criminally inefficient. It's not that I'm lazy. I do my job well and if there's a good reason to stay late and go the extra mile I will. Some people here it seems just will happily spend all night at the shop screwing around on the net just trying to show what a good employee they are though. Annoys the hell out of me.

I have a different view on the staying late part.

I generally work a 10-12hr day and stay until 11-1am but I don't come in before 11am.

I don't understand when people kill themselves working 14hr days, then show up the next morning all red eyed.

For me performance + quality are the most important factors. Not what time you get into work at.

[seadog]

Yah I agree 100%. Quality of work, get everything done, be available for key hours when you're needed.

The thing is the higher ups here went through the same system. When they started the expectation for the new employees was be the first one to the shop, last one to leave. Then it becomes "well I survived it so why can't they? If they're not tough enough then screw em". As a senior I'm allowed a bit more leeway, but clearly from the above actions with vacation, not much.

Yah I get you got screwed when you got hired, the solution isn't to perpetuate the system. You're not helping the fact that we're constantly short staffed here. Forcing new employees to stay 14 hours not because theres stuff to do but rather because "that's how it's done and how new employees are treated".

[nonofyobiz]

I don't know why everyone is calling our lifestyle "slack" here. It seems to me that we are very hard working ppl/society, behind only asia. For example, anyone remember the article in the Sun a little while ago about vacation days? Canada and the US is right at the bottom of the list in that regard. Alberta especially is very much head down ass up.

I have no opinion on the actual subject of this thread :D

[Ven]

Originally posted by seadog
+1 on the Asian work culture though. I was initially woken up a few times 90 minutes before we need to be at work asking if I want to ride in with some group of people. A couple questions(Are you the last car? Are you going in late?, Why are you calling me now instead of in 75 minutes?) implying that my aim was to sleep as much as possible and arrive within 1 minute of when I had to be there ended that though.

And just to get a bit racist here and go on parallel with the Chinese engineer in another thread that can't find a job, some of the people here, it's like they know all the right answers on how to be a good employee (come 1 hour early, stay 4 hours late, and always be busy, high output of work by quantity) but the actual work of these people is piss poor. They fill their time adding completely unrequested and unnecessary details to work, then fuck up the main part of it that we're actually paid for or details required by law.

It's criminally inefficient. It's not that I'm lazy. I do my job well and if there's a good reason to stay late and go the extra mile I will. Some people here it seems just will happily spend all night at the shop screwing around on the net just trying to show what a good employee they are though. Annoys the hell out of me.


This. We get a group of transplants here to work and they exhibit the same thing exactly. They work astoundingly hard at looking like they're working astoundingly hard. Massive time wasted, totally inefficient, the actual work goals are substandard. In fact they sometimes work so hard at working hard they never did understand the concept of the work needed to get done and everything fucks up or is way behind schedule. Wickedly frustrating.

[CUG]

You're allowed to ask about your money. It's your money and vacation time. Would you allow someone to make withdrawals from your bank account without resistance?