Should a manager be allowed to prioritize workplace needs over how you spend your personal time?

Employees have long joked about the guilt we can sometimes feel when we ask to take some time off from work. After all, it is our one brief and fleeting life we are talking about, so why should it be so stressful to ask for a couple of days to ourselves? Also, it isn’t like people only take PTO for the sake of enjoying a fun vacation. Our free time has to be used for many different things.

More often than not, a boss who gets weird about totally reasonable requests for time off is the sign of a bad employer. Almost any good employee needs some extra days to themselves from time to time, for a whole variety of reasons. If a manager can’t appreciate that, they either aren’t that good at managing, or they are working for a company that doesn’t know how to treat its workers with respect. 

In some workplaces, it can feel like trying to get vacation time is more trouble than it’s worth. However, there are some events in life when putting work on the back burner is something an employer has no choice but to understand.