Taking fractions of annual holiday allowance at a time

Nine_Lives

Without giving a background story (i can if really necessary)...

I'm wanting to know if you book a half days holiday, and assuming your shift is say 12 hours long, and every time you & others have booked half days holiday for the past however many years you've always left work after 6 hours (because funnily enough 6 being half of 12 and you're booking a HALF day holiday) ........ 1) can you be made to work beyond this & 2) can you be made to work beyond this with zero notice (zero notice being on the day, or at the moment you're about to leave)?

There's a very good reason i ask but i wanted to be armed with knowledge in case it did happen.

paddedjohn

If you have leave booked and agreed then it can only be cancelled by giving you notice of at least the same as that requested so in theory you could turn up for work and be told you cant have the second half of the day off.

[Deleted User]

This is a tough one. I agree with you that you should work half your shift only, but in my old job if was never formalised so some people would leave after 5 hours because that was when they took lunch (their definition of half day), some would take an hour for lunch come back for half hour then leave and some would work through. Personally, if I was asked to finish something before leaving I would do so to take the burden off colleagues and write off up to half hour. But, if I was being snippy or had an appointment I would get up and leave dead on time. It's up to you, and how flexible you want to be (and your employers). They might let you come in an hour later the next day in lieu? Obviously if they try to force you to cancel it just say you have an important meeting with the bank manager or something and you can't budge.

Nine_Lives

Jenangelic wrote: »

or had an appointment.

This is the thing here.

Basically my day is a 12 hour day, 11 hours paid (an hour for dinner). It has always since i've ever known (many years) been a half day = 6 hours after the start of shift. You simply don't take your dinner.


The situation here is i have a medical appointment. Now you're 99.999% (if you see 1 of 2 bosses) allowed to take this as unpaid leave. I always book mine at the very end or very start of the day to cause least disruption. However if you see this 3rd boss, they may make you take it as paid holiday. I told my line manager who saw this very boss .... lo & behold i've got to use my allowance.

Now, another person in the same department as me saw this boss themselves (didn't go through line manager like i did). They saw this boss a good few weeks after i did (therefore less notice).
This person has requested a leave of the same time as me, but the day before me.

They don't have to take it as part of their holiday allowance - they can take it unpaid.

Not illegal, but not very fair either.


I said to my line manager that this company would rather me take a half day holiday (which means i cannot cover dinner breaks) when i don't actually need to leave until a couple hours after this (& COULD cover dinner breaks), but obviously i'd need to take unpaid leave for that to happen.

Line manager said they could make me cover dinners (& work beyond half a day) if line manager wanted to, because they have to do it when they take a half day.

As line manager is a bit of a jobsworth, i suspect that they don't "have" to & instead they choose to as everyone else finishes bang on a half day when they book it.

[Deleted User]

If you book at end of day eg 4 or 5pm, couldn't you make an informal request to just leave early and make up time tomorrow? Afraid it sounds like you have a jobs worth for a boss!

Nine_Lives

Unfortunately there is no possibility of making up work the following day. This isn't an office environment - every day is taken on its own. I have no hard evidence but I think this boss (the owner of the company, not my line manager) has a fair disliking of me. I suspect this is why I have to use my annual leave but my co-worker doesn't.