Employee Refused to Give a New Coworker Her Requested Leave Because She Wanted the Same Time Off Herself

The problem started with a schedule nobody in management wanted to own.

The employee who shared the story was not a manager. She did not get paid extra to make the roster. She was not officially above her coworkers. But in her small facility, scheduling had always been handled internally by the employees themselves, and when the previous person in charge of the roster moved to another department, the job landed on her.

It made sense on paper. She had been there the longest. She knew how the place worked. She understood the rhythm of the shifts, the needs of the team, and the way time-off requests usually got handled.

But that also put her in an awkward position.

She had the responsibility of making the schedule without the authority, pay, or protection that should come with it. And eventually, that kind of arrangement was bound to create trouble.

In her Reddit post, “AITA for refusing to give my new coworker leave because I want to take that time off myself?”, she explained that the workplace had recently lost some staffing flexibility. Before, they could afford to have two people off at the same time. Then one employee became unwell and had to go on indefinite leave. The higher-ups decided that person would not be replaced.

That changed everything.

Her boss said that, from then on, only one person could be away on leave at a time.

The poster had already submitted her own leave request to her boss a few days earlier. He told her it was fine, though she admitted that getting only verbal approval was probably a mistake. Still, as far as she understood it, her time off had been approved.

Then a new coworker was assigned to the facility.

Because the poster was handling the roster, she messaged the new employee and asked for any dates she wanted to take leave. That was when the conflict appeared.

The new coworker wanted the same dates.

And she did not want to move them.

The new employee explained that she already had a holiday booked. Plane tickets, accommodation, all of it. Everything was non-refundable, which meant canceling would cost her a lot of money. From her point of view, this was not some casual preference. She had already paid for the trip.

The poster’s own plans were also serious.

She was not just taking time off to relax at home. She was going to a wedding. The groom was her childhood friend and her best male friend. She was also close with his fiancée — in fact, she had introduced the couple. She was not merely attending as a guest, either. She was part of the wedding party as a groomslady.

So now two employees had real commitments, booked travel, and reasons they felt they could not back down.

That is where the poster felt trapped.

If she refused the new coworker’s leave request, she worried it would look like an abuse of power. After all, she was the one making the roster. In past conflicts, she said the person doing the roster often sacrificed their own request to avoid being accused of using the schedule for personal gain.

But if she gave up her own leave, she would miss the wedding of one of the most important people in her life.

That was not a small sacrifice.

She also knew resentment was coming either way. If she denied the new coworker’s request, the new coworker might resent her from the start. If she gave in and missed the wedding, she knew she would resent the new coworker instead.

It was the kind of workplace mess that happens when leadership pushes a management problem down onto employees and then acts like everyone should just “work it out.”

The poster considered involving her boss, but she worried he might punt the issue right back to them. Maybe he would tell them to sort it out themselves. Maybe he would suggest flipping a coin. The whole structure seemed designed to avoid anyone higher up making the hard call.

There was another wrinkle too.

The new coworker had already had a conflict with another employee over different leave dates. In that case, the other person had backed down and switched dates to accommodate her, even though that person had submitted the request first. So now the poster felt like she would look especially harsh if she was the one who finally said no.

But that also raised a fair question.

How many people were supposed to rearrange their lives for the new employee’s pre-booked plans?

The new coworker was not necessarily wrong to want to keep her holiday. Losing money on non-refundable travel would be frustrating. But the poster had also followed the process as she understood it. She requested leave first, got approval from her boss, and had a once-in-a-lifetime wedding commitment.

The deeper problem was not really between the two coworkers.

It was the system.

A workplace had a staffing shortage. Management refused to replace the person on indefinite leave. The boss created a one-person-away rule. Then an ordinary employee, with no extra pay and no real authority, was left to decide whose plans mattered more.

That is a terrible place to put someone.

The poster did not want to be unfair. She did not want to punish the new coworker. She did not want to miss her friend’s wedding. She did not want to look like she was using the roster to protect herself.

But she also seemed to understand that if she surrendered every time there was a conflict simply because she made the schedule, then doing the roster would become a penalty. Whoever handled it would always lose.

And that was not fair either.

What commenters said

Commenters were split in tone, but many agreed on one thing: this should not have been left to the poster to solve.

Some said she was not wrong because she requested the time first and had already received approval from her boss. In their view, time off is usually handled first-come, first-served, and the new employee should not automatically override existing plans just because her trip was expensive.

Others said the boss needed to step in immediately. Several commenters pointed out that this was above the poster’s pay grade, especially because she was not a manager and did not get extra compensation for making the roster. If two employees both had significant commitments, management needed to find coverage or make the official decision.

A few commenters were more sympathetic to the new coworker, noting that if she had booked the trip before being assigned to the facility, the situation was more complicated than a normal leave request. But even then, many said that was an onboarding or management issue, not something one equal coworker should have to personally absorb.

The strongest advice was for the poster to stop treating the decision as hers alone. She needed to tell the boss that both employees had conflicting commitments and that management had to decide what to do. The scheduling problem was created by understaffing, not by one woman wanting to attend a wedding.