Can my boss deny me a day off request because it's for a potential hangover? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Our Xmas party was just announced and it's going to be on a Thursday, in over 2 months' time (Dec 14th). I asked for the next day off. As far as I am aware, there is sufficient cover and I asked for the day off before most knew the party was Thursday. I have sufficient amount of time to take etc.

Our boss sent a note to the team about 30 minutes later saying:

Morning @here Please hold off on time off requests for Friday Dec. 15 (post-xmas party). More details to come! (you can, of course request it off as per the norm…just not as a ‘hangover day’).

Is this OK? It seems to me that this isn't any of her business. I didn't specify that it was for a 'hangover day', though obviously it is.

Any advice on how to handle this?

manpreet 2 years ago

Morning @here Please hold off on time off requests for Friday Dec. 15 (post-xmas party). More details to come! (you can, of course request it off as per the norm…just not as a ‘hangover day’).

Worst case scenario, it sounds like the company is trying to mitigate the (potentially large) number of employees who might try to book this day off as a "hangover day."

Better case scenario, the "more details to come" bit suggests that they have something special planned for that Friday and they don't want too many people to miss it by booking the day off.

In either case, they've explicitly given permission to book the day off "per the norm" and (based on my own experience as a Canadian) "the norm" for booking days off does not require you to give a reason why you're booking it off. And you've already booked it off anyway, so you shouldn't need to answer any questions about it. Just don't mention that you did, in fact, book it off for a hangover day and everything should be kosher.