In late 2003 I started working for a small screen-printing shop (making
t-shirts) as a systems administrator/programmer/web designer/web
support person. They "lovingly" referred to the position as the OMIT
(One Man IT) department.
When I was interviewing for the position, I negotiated for a
two-week vacation as part of my acceptance. I had a planned vacation
coming up with the days off already accrued at my then current
employer. My wife was pregnant and we wanted to take that time to
visit relatives and show off the baby after he was born. I was in my
early 20's at the time and definitely hadn't learned much about how
interviews and employers work, so I had not specifically specified paid
or unpaid vacation.
Things went fairly well at the beginning. The person I was
replacing had already left, but luckily he was willing to answer a few
emails. The people seemed all right, though the more I got to know the
owners the more eccentric they seemed. I just chalked it up to
everyone having their own quirks.
My wife went into labor a few months into the job. I called in to
let them know I was going to the hospital. I was in the labor room
when my cell phone rang. Some of my wife's family was visiting at the
time to help with the baby after he was born. I figured it must be one
of them checking to see how things were going. Much to my surprise, it
was work! The email server went down and they didn't know what to do.
I'm not sure what they expected me to do, but after hearing the
situation I said that they could try rebooting the server. I also made
sure to let them know that my wife was in labor and I wouldn't be
available for the rest of the day. I promptly called the family and
gave them the room number and turned off my cell phone. My son was
delivered shortly after 2:00 AM, and we didn't get much rest afterwards with all the paperwork and nurse interruptions.
The next day I got a call in the morning that the email server
still wasn't working right, so with maybe an hour's worth of sleep I
came into the office and got everything working again. I even stayed
for a full 8 hour shift. My paternity leave was a total of one day, and that's not counting the call at the hospital.
A month or so later came the vacation. It was a whirlwind car trip from the
southern border of the US to the northern border and back. We enjoyed
seeing everyone and their excitement about the baby, but half way
through the trip I noticed that I hadn't received a paycheck. I'm a
pretty logical person, so after a bit of worrying I realized my mistake
of not clarifying if the vacation was paid or unpaid, but I figured it
couldn't hurt to check when I got back.
When I got back, I waited a day or two to make sure that everything
was going fine. The email server was working fine now, and I got
caught up on all the work that I had missed while I was gone. I went
to talk to the owner and said, "I noticed that I missed a paycheck
while I was on vacation. I realize that I hadn't specified what type,
but was I wanted to check if the vacation supposed to be a paid or
unpaid?" I thought that was a pretty fair question to ask. The worst
he could say was "unpaid", right? Imagine my surprise when he yelled back,
"You come in here asking for more money! I let you have time off when
you had your baby. I could have made you come in anyway!" I couldn't
believe he was going to hold that over my head. Even worse was that
I only took one day off.
Within a week I had gotten another job lined up. I had left on good
terms with my previous employer. I found out they were in need of a
systems administrator, and they were happy to have me back. There was
no way I was going to continue working for someone who would hold it
against me for taking one day off when my son was born. I couldn't
imagine what other atrocities might come up. I originally gave them a
notice, but I left right away after more yelling about how I'm just a
"money grubbing kid".
A few weeks later I got an email in a local tech worker's email
discussion list. It was from the same company, and they were looking
for my replacement. They specifically mentioned, "The previous guy
took lots of time off and left without notice." I wonder if anyone
replied to it.
M
mrmunkey
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Paternity Leave?