Question on Leave
MAPE employee-
How is it possible for an employee who had only been on the job for about 3.5 months and was still on probation to take a family vacation lasting 30 days, then come off probation shortly after returning? Because the employee was so new and had such a long break early in their training, it felt like they were essentially starting over as a new hire when they returned.
Then, about a year later, the same employee took another family vacation of approximately 30 calendar days, this time with relatively little notice. The employee was new to state service when the first leave occurred, so I do not understand how they could have accumulated enough vacation leave to cover such lengthy absences.
The operational impact was significant. We are a three-person team, so these two extended absences effectively reduced us to a two-person team for roughly 60 calendar days over two years. During the first absence, we were already dealing with a major system rollout, technical problems, and a substantial backlog. We worked overtime and needed assistance from other teams to keep up.
It was particularly difficult because the remaining staff still had appointments and other legitimate reasons to request time off during those periods. Given the employee’s limited tenure, probationary status during the first absence, position at the bottom of the seniority list, and the workload conditions at the time, I would like to understand what type of leave was used, how such lengthy vacations were approved, whether probation was affected or extended, and what criteria were used to balance those requests against staffing and operational needs**.**