Leave by the hour?

"I need to leave a bit earlier today because ..."

In place of the ellipsis, we have heard and said various reasons of domestic and/or logistical nature. Here are 2 scenarios depending on the management style of your leader:

1. The boss is a open-minded. She notices that some people regularly come in late or leave early from work, but the most important thing is that tasks are completed and the company is moving forward. And if the request doesn't come too often, she is not making an issue out of it.
2. The boss knows that even the smallest compromise with work discipline sets a precedent. Next time the employee might ask for something even bolder. Perhaps a raise? Therefore, she says "No, it's not possible" and thus effectively eliminates the current and quite a few future inquiries. Moreover, the "cut-off" employee won't miss telling his colleagues what kind of person the boss is. Thus, colleagues indirectly receive "instructions" on what is not acceptable.

It should be mentioned that from the point of view of the contract signed by the employee and the employer, the second boss is completely within his rights. Generally, we have an 8-hour workday, 5 days a week, and at the end of the month, we expect to receive our full salary. Nobody says, "I'll leave early today - deduct these 2 hours from my salary." And even if someone were to say it, it's pain to administer that too.

In any case, we can have a completely real and valid reason to be absent for 1, 2, or more hours from work. A prime example is when we need (not that we want) to do some work with the public administration. All institutions have their working hours, which (surprisingly) coincide with ours.

What are our options at the moment?

1. Take 1 day off - actually, usually legally this is the only option. In most labor regulations (depending on what country you operate in) everything related to leave is counted in days. But no one wants this option because no one wants to "waste" a whole day of their paid annual leave (PTO) for a single trip to the municipality.
2. Take 1 day off, use half of it, and the rest - some other time when you need it - this is probably the most applied method. When will the other half be used? How many times has it been used? Or even more complicated - if it's not a half, but a third or a quarter? These are all questions that are usually worked out on the fly and without any documentation or written records.

And how much better would it be just to be able to take a 2-hour leave? That way, the organization will know that I am not there at the appointed time. Everything will be documented. I won't have "harmed" the company because the time will be deducted from my paid annual leave. Clean, simple, and most importantly - fair.

If the whole process is paper based, it's clear that by the time you get your approval, your may no longer need it. This is perhaps the only argument against allowing hourly absences - the time for manual processing of the process is usually longer than the time for which the leave is requested. But if you have a system like TIMEOFF.GURU, with which you can quickly and easily submit your request online and it immediately reaches your direct manager - then the situation would be quite different.

There are probably other arguments against hourly leave. Or there are other options for working out hourly absences. Share your opinion!