I had a couple of creative tries by my staff over the years to this sort of thing.
I reminded them that their job was a full time job, and if it wasn't, that was interesting news to me. i might explore that with them to find out how much excess time they seemed to have, because if they had excess time, I could always give them additional assignments. Or, if there was even a L
O?t of free time, perhaps we didnt need their position sfter all.
FMLA absences always hit us hard and it was a scramble t keep up.
Seasonal work wasnt really the thing where I worked. We had busy times and slow times, but they were not especially predictible.
This is a very interesting viewpoint, considering the forum we're on, which presumably attracts folks who work to live rather than live to work.
I'd love to understand why this attitude is so prevalent among employers and managers.
From where I stand, the inability of employees to determine their work/life/pay balance is a huge problem with the modern workplace.
In the tech industry (where I work), employers will shower their staff with money and perks; buy them meals and drinks and gifts; fly them to conferences and off-site events; allow them to work from home pretty much whenever they want; they even populate the office with toys that are explicitly there
to distract you from working, like foosball tables and game consoles and such.
But try to negotiate for additional time to do what you love - even at a lesser pay - and all that largesse evaporates immediately.
No dice, unless one has a "nuclear option" at their disposal.
I can absolutely empathize with managers here. Obviously, completing a project with 10 half-time employees is far less efficient and more costly than doing the same work with 5 full-time staff.
But so what? We're literally talking about people's lives here. In an alternate universe, employers who refuse to budge on this front would gain a reputation, and their competitors would be luring away their staff with promises of better work/life balance.
My own unpaid-leave history, by the way:
2005: A few months into my first full-time position after graduation. I wanted six months off for an extended honeymoon. The company would only offer three. I walked into my boss's office and told him
I'm quitting. I got the six-month leave, along with a comment about how they don't really like the idea.
2015: Was really stressed at my job, and my boss made a comment about the crazy hours I work. I used the opportunity to ask for another 5-10 days of time off per year (paid or unpaid).
He said no, "because the team needs stability".
That was when I started thinking seriously about escaping from the rat race. A few months later I happened on a newspaper article about an engineer who retired at age 30, and started reading his blog..