Work colleague block booking desired holiday dates

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

I’ve been thinking about this thread & whilst it may be a case of you snooze you lose (& yes the OP may have to suck it up) it shows a distinct lack of curtesy & manners to book every BH weekend.

I think it is very subjective...

Take me, for example. Would I be bothered if someone block booked every BH weekend? Not a chance in hell! I would welcome it, because I don't have children and I find that doing anything on them (going out etc) is always met with higher prices + more people.

So I don't see it as discourteous and lacking manners!*

*Though, the act of NOT sitting down and negotiating the holidays may well be. Or Christmas, I'd be on board with you RE: those days being block booked!

So, I could be that co-worker. As soon as the spread sheet for leave opens I'm in there as we have the stat minimum leave (though joy of joy they have announced a leave purchase scheme)


This being said there is only two of us and the other person books the flip side of the same holiday - that we both maximise the same leave days. (we both don't work W/ends or Bhols)




WE/ WE/ Me off / Me off /Me off/ Me off / BH/ WE / WE / BH / Other off/ Other off /Other off /Other off /WE /WE


Its called co-operating - not that hard between two people - If you get along.


This being said - If one has to cover the other across those days and its first come first served - then sucks to be you if you are not first.

inglorius wrote: »

SandC wrote: »

I understand where OP is coming from, as I presume he also gets the same holiday entitlement of 28 days with 8 of those having to be the official bank holidays. If someone takes a week off for Easter, May Day, Spring Bank Holiday and August bank holiday then they will have used only 16 leave days and will be out of the office for 4 whole weeks (and another day for Good Friday). As the company rule is no 2 managers can take leave at the same time then he has no choice but to use up 20 days for 4 weeks leave. The colleague has 4 days available to use as flexi or whatever.

It makes no difference whether someone is planning go away or not, it's still valuable time. /QUOTE]



Exactly my point, thank you for taking the time of reading and understanding my post

I think most of us get your point and a number have sympathised with you/felt the other person was more than a bit heavy handed.

Where there is disagreement, though, is in the way you handled it.

And we still don’t know what your employer’s leave policy is.

inglorius wrote: »

I worked on my own before they started. I spoke to one of my colleagues in another department whom has the same holiday rules, they said that if their colleague had reserved all of the best holiday dates for themselves at the quickest opportunity without consulting them then they would be livid.

'Best' holiday dates are subjective and are different for everyone. I wouldn't consider bank holiday weekends prime at all, they're usually a nightmare because all and sundry are on the move, it's more expensive and everywhere is super-busy. I'd avoid them like the plague and let the colleague get on with it.

I could understand being miffed if your colleague had booked all school holidays off if you both had school-age children, but that doesn't seem the case.

Sounds like it's first come, first served, in which case there's an element of "hard cheese".

However you can fight fire with fire and block book all of 2019's bank holidays now and see how she likes them apples. She'll soon realise it's ludicrous and that talking to one another first rather than going tit for tat on the first come first served lark.

I was a manager of a small team and holidays were what caused the most arguments, even though there was a very clear holiday policy. Turns out one of the team had told the newer members that the person who had been there the longest got "first dibs" and the newest member of the team was holding off on booking Christmas/New Year holidays until the more longstanding member of staff had decided what they were doing (it was mid November by this point). I told them this was utter nonsense and it's first-come-first-served, but we would work out a compromise if everyone wanted the same days. The longstanding member of staff moaned that this was unfair but it laid a marker down that they couldn't expect everyone to hold off arranging their own lives while she sorted out hers.