Plenty of people have probably had the experience of being denied time off.

But in this story, one employee found a clever workaround.

Let’s see what happens.

Couldn’t have a day off, fate had my back.

In my 20’s I spent a little over 5 years working for an oil and gas well service company. It was a 15 on, 6 off rotation.

The first 4 years was at a small shop roughly 7 hours from home at which point I transferred to a much busier shop that was only a few hours from home.

New jobs come with new challenges, sometimes…

Five years seems like peanuts in the working world, but in this particular line of work it was a long time.

Decent job security as far as oilfield work goes, but the pay was marginal at best so turnover was high.

At 5 years I was the most experienced hand in our shop.

Experience doesn’t always equal respect. How will this play out?

The new shop was definitely busier, the money was way better and I managed to have my days off matched up with a supervisor whose way of doing things meshed perfectly with me.

Everything else about the place? Awful.

My breaking point was being denied a day off with 2 days notice to attend a funeral for a good friend who was lost to some health complications after a car accident.

Yeah, not cool. I wouldn’t take that well. Will OP?

I was generally pretty understanding that in our line of work it could be difficult to always balance manpower.

But the day I requested off passed with 4 other hands sitting around at the shop doing make work projects to pass the day.

Management couldn’t be bothered to take a few minutes to see if they could make things work, it was easier to just say no.

To that point in my employment there I had been extremely flexible with helping out during manpower shortages.

Something tells me OP is about to get *less* flexible.

I had probably worked in excess of 100 days off and had only ever used one sick day. I thought a little reciprocity would have been nice.

But I made up my mind, I’d fulfill my obligation to work 1 year at that shop as to not have to pay back the $4k transfer bonus I’d received and then it would be time to move on.

I was only a few months off of that 1 year mark, so I started job shopping immediately and quickly set my sights on a mine that we regularly did work for that was close enough to home that I could commute on a daily basis.

Lucky find. But I bet he is gonna leave this job with a bang.

I made some inquiries with people I knew that were working there and it seemed right up my alley.

Not long after that I updated my resume and sent it in.

A few weeks later I’m driving back from a job and get a voicemail from HR at the company I applied to.

I called back as soon as I had a spare minute and they were looking to have me come in for an interview 2 days later.

My heart sank knowing that was going to be a struggle.

Can’t get time off for a funeral, what about a new job interview…

I talked with the HR lady seeing if they had any other dates available but it was explained to me that they only arrange one interview day once they have enough holes to fill in their crews to justify doing orientation with a group of new hires.

She said she could put me as first call for the next round, but didn’t know when that would be and she said it would also be fairly short notice.

In the end, I agreed to the interview appointment, not knowing how I was going to make it work.

I immediately went to the assistant manager to ask for time off as he was looking after dispatching duties that week.

I told him something important came up at home that I really need to get dealt with.

Reasonable request, you’d think. What will the manager say?

Without hesitation he said, “No, we have a full board this week and need you here. Whatever it is will have to wait for your days off.”

My first thought was that I was just going to call in sick and go to the job interview.

The last thing I wanted to do was worry about being fired from a job I no longer want.

Then I realized maybe there was another path forward and went to the job board.

And there it was, exactly what I needed!

A miracle! What is it?

A potentially week long job for the company I was set to interview with and the job was scheduled to start the next day.

And none of the jobs had been assigned to crews yet.

Ha! Perfect fit.

I filled my supervisor in with the circumstances and my plan and he was on board with it. We went to the assistant manager and offered to take that job.

He was delighted to have us volunteer as not many crews cared to be away from home for a week, mainly being confined to a rig shack.

Day one went smoothly and we were done by early afternoon.

This is a great idea but will he pull it off?

I used the supervisor’s truck and went home to get some interview appropriate clothes.

Day 2 we were running a bit behind, but we just barely got the job set up and our tools deployed into the well with enough time for me to grab a quick shower and change of clothes before again taking the supervisor’s truck over to the administration building for my interview.

Got a call the next week with an offer of a start date 2 weeks out.

Starting wage was definitely lower than I was making, but they offered clearly defined progression that would have me easily equalling my current income in year 2 and well exceeding it by year 4.

Not bad.

Benefits were better and the schedule would give me twice as much time off.

Went to give my manager 2 weeks notice and he asked where I was going and what I’d be making.

He was appalled I’d leave for such a low starting wage.

He asked what it would take to keep me.

I told him “When a person takes a pay cut to leave, obviously that ship sailed long ago.”

Ouch, that’s gotta sting.

What do the comments have to say?

This person says, don’t ask, just tell.

Someone else says, just tell the truth.

Another person went through a similar situation and said, “You couldn’t pay me enough!”

Another person echoes the, “unless you’ve invented time travel…” sentiment.

This poster just offers apologies.

Sometimes, you just run outta gas in the job tank.

The money isn’t always worth it.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.