Day Off / Time Off Policy
Why This Policy Exists
Courtney flagged that we’d talked about staff days off informally but never written it down. This closes that gap. The appointment book is built weeks in advance, so an undocumented day off doesn’t just affect one person’s paycheck - it can strand a full day of dogs. This policy exists so time off is predictable for staff and doesn’t blow up the schedule.
Two Pay Structures, Two Different Realities
Per ongoing-expenses, the team isn’t paid uniformly, so “time off” means something different depending on who’s asking:
| Role | Pay Structure | What a Day Off Costs Them |
|---|---|---|
| Kendra (Executive Chef) | Flat salary | Nothing directly - salary is paid regardless of days worked |
| Staff groomers (3) | 50% commission per dog | A day off is a day with no dogs groomed - no commission earned, unless it’s paid per this policy |
This is the standard structure across the grooming industry: commission-based groomers are typically paid only for dogs they groom, so unpaid time off is the norm rather than the exception at most salons (JustAnswer - Minimum Commission Rates for Employee Groomers). That said, small-business benchmarks show PTO is still a real driver of staff retention - about 69% of small-business employees receive some paid vacation and 81% get paid sick leave (OnPay - PTO 101 for Small Businesses), so paying for a small number of days per year (see Paid Time Off Allotment below) is a competitive move, not a given.
New Hampshire does not mandate paid vacation or paid sick leave for private employers - everything below is a business choice, not a legal requirement.
Salon Closure Days (Paid Holidays)
These are days the salon itself is closed - no appointments booked, no groomer scheduled. All staff (salaried and commission) are treated the same on these days: no groom volume is lost to a personal request, so these are the cheapest days to guarantee off.
Finalized 2026-07-08 (Jeremy’s call): the closure list below is locked in as final policy.
| Holiday | Treatment |
|---|---|
| New Year’s Day | Closed |
| Memorial Day | Closed |
| Independence Day (July 4th) | Closed |
| Labor Day | Closed |
| Thanksgiving Day | Closed |
| Christmas Eve | Half day / appointment-only |
| Christmas Day | Closed |
Still reconcile this against whatever days hours-of-operation-proposal ultimately sets for regular operating hours - the holiday list itself is settled.
Kendra is paid her normal salary on closure days. Staff groomers do not earn commission on closure days (no dogs are groomed), but see the Paid Time Off Allotment below for whether any closure days carry a flat holiday payment for staff.
Requesting Planned Time Off
Advance Notice
| Length of Request | Minimum Notice |
|---|---|
| 1 day | 1 week |
| 2-4 days | 2 weeks |
| 5+ days (vacation) | 4 weeks |
This mirrors common small-business practice - two weeks’ notice is the standard baseline for planned time off, with longer stretches needing more lead time so the book can be rebuilt around the absence (BambooHR - Managing Employee Time Off Requests; Actiplans - PTO Blackout Days).
Blackout Window - Peak Season
- No new discretionary (non-emergency) time off approved from the week before Thanksgiving through December 23rd
- This is the mirror image of a typical retail blackout: grooming demand peaks right before the holidays (everyone wants a clean dog for guests and photos), not during them, so this is the window to protect rather than a generic “holiday season” block.
- Per industry best practice, this blackout window should be communicated to staff well in advance (60-90 days) rather than sprung on them close to the date (LeavePlan - PTO Blackout Periods).
Coverage Rule
- Only one groomer (Kendra or staff) may be approved off on any given day, given the 4-person team.
- If a flagged dog is booked that day, the approved approver must still be present - see approval-workflows → Booking Check for Flagged Dogs.
- Requests are approved first-come, first-served, except during the blackout window above.
Approval Process
- Groomer submits request to Kendra (date, length, reason optional except during blackout window)
- Kendra checks the request against the schedule in scheduling-procedures → Groomer Schedule and Capacity
- Kendra approves, denies, or counter-offers alternate dates
- Approved time off is blocked in the scheduling system so no appointments are booked against that groomer that day
- Approval is logged in the groomer’s HR record (see Documentation below)
Sick Days / Unplanned Absence
Same-day illness can’t go through the advance-notice process above - it needs its own path:
- Groomer notifies Kendra as early as possible (ideally before the salon opens)
- Kendra follows the reschedule flow already defined in scheduling-procedures → Rescheduling → “For reschedules due to groomer absence”
- If Kendra herself is the one out sick, follow approval-workflows → When Kendra Is Absent for who covers approvals
- No fee is charged to affected clients - this is a salon-side reschedule, not a client cancellation
Sick days are unplanned by definition, so they are not subject to the advance-notice tiers above - only to whatever paid/unpaid treatment is decided in the allotment below.
Paid Time Off Allotment
Decision needed: this is the one open money decision left in this policy - everything else in this document is settled. Decide between Option A and Option B below with Kendra and Jeremy/Courtney together, since it’s a real line item against ongoing-expenses.
Option C (retention-focused / accrual PTO for staff) has been dropped per Jeremy - doesn’t make sense for the business.
Option A - Lean
- Kendra: 5 paid vacation days/year (one combined bucket - no separate sick allotment), plus her normal salary on all Salon Closure Days.
- Staff groomers: 0 paid personal/vacation days. Unpaid time off is otherwise uncapped in principle - governed entirely by the advance-notice, blackout-window, and one-groomer-out coverage rules already defined above, not by a separate annual day limit.
- Why this is defensible: many small grooming salons offer commission groomers no paid vacation at all today - Option A matches that baseline rather than getting ahead of it.
- Cost: ~$0 incremental payroll. Kendra’s 5 days are already covered by her flat salary; staff unpaid days cost the salon nothing directly (only lost booking capacity, which is already priced into the coverage rule).
Option B - Standard Small-Business Match
- Kendra: 10 paid vacation days/year + 5 paid sick days/year - matches the national small-business average for an employee with 1+ year of tenure.
- Staff groomers (after a 90-day probation period): 3 paid personal/sick days per year, paid at a flat rate equal to the groomer’s trailing-90-day average daily commission. Beyond those 3 days, additional time off is unpaid and follows the same notice/blackout/coverage rules - still uncapped in principle, but no longer paid.
- Why this is defensible: small-business benchmarks show roughly 10-11 paid vacation days and 7 paid sick days is the norm at the one-year mark; a 3-day paid floor for staff is a modest, boundable version of the same idea.
- Cost: 3 days x average daily commission x 3 groomers/year - a small, easily-modeled line item to add to ongoing-expenses and
financial-model.xlsx.
Shared guardrail (applies under either option): unpaid time off beyond the paid allotment is not meant to be truly unlimited in practice. Suggest capping consecutive unpaid days at 10 business days (2 work weeks) before it converts to a formal unpaid leave of absence requiring a separate conversation about the role and return date - this keeps a long unplanned absence from silently draining the 4-person team’s capacity indefinitely.
| Kendra Paid Days/Year | Staff Paid Days/Year | Staff Unpaid Beyond Paid Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Option A - Lean | 5 vacation | 0 | Uncapped (notice/blackout/coverage rules apply) |
| Option B - Standard | 10 vacation + 5 sick | 3 (after 90 days), paid at avg. daily commission | Uncapped (same rules apply) |
If a paid allotment for staff groomers is adopted, add it as a payroll line in ongoing-expenses and in financial-model.xlsx.
Documentation
Log every approved absence (planned or sick) in the groomer’s HR record:
[Date(s)] - [Planned/Sick] - [Approved by] - [Paid/Unpaid] - [Coverage arranged: Y/N]
This is the same record referenced in groomer-training-program’s certification sign-off table, so time-off history lives alongside training history for each groomer.
Cross-References
- Pay structure this policy has to work around: ongoing-expenses
- Groomer schedule and capacity: scheduling-procedures
- Who covers approvals when a groomer (or Kendra) is out: approval-workflows
- Open question this interacts with (holiday hours): hours-of-operation-proposal