Yahoo Finance Woolworths worker denied leave to scatter father’s ashes: ‘Unreasonable’
The Woolworths employee says their leave request was rejected despite giving months notice.
A Woolworths worker is claiming they were denied leave to scatter their father’s ashes, sparking outrage online.
In a now viral Reddit post, the worker said they asked for four days of annual leave and had given three months' advanced notice. According to the worker, they had more than 50 hours of leave accrued.
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“I just got an automated email telling me it’s been rejected by the manager,” they wrote.
“In the leave request I added a note “going away with family to scatter my father’s ashes”. This note is immediately visible to the “Approver”, I know this as I was previously a department manager.”
The worker shared that their father passed in 2017 and it had taken some time for their family to arrange the scattering.
The post has now been upvoted 27,900 times and received two thousand comments, with many labelling Woolworth’s alleged actions as “unreasonable”.
“That’s a real arsehole move if you are requesting leave 3 months in advanced [sic] and providing a reason like that. Seek employment elsewhere if that is their attitude,” one person commented.
“I would have gone to HR. It’s quite unreasonable,” another person said.
“HR person here: email the manager who rejected it and politely ask if this was in error, and if not what the reason for the rejection was. You want to start a paper trail for this sort of unreasonable BS,” someone else commented, suggesting the manager may not have seen the note.
Woolworths responds
A Woolworths spokesperson told Yahoo Finance their workers are entitled to take leave, including compassionate and bereavement leave.
“Team members are entitled to a variety of leave including bereavement and other forms of personal leave,” the Woolworths spokesperson said.
“In this case, because there's no information for us to follow up internally, the team member should raise any concern with their manager or our People Services team so it can be better understood and addressed.”
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