My job is allowing everyone else to take extended vacations except for me.

I have a family vacation I take every year, my job knows I take this vacation every year. I requested my time off 3 months in advance, and my boss told me that he was explicitly told I cannot go. No explanation as to why.

This trip is extremely important to me because my mother recently had a medical emergency that required brain surgery. She is okay now but she will never be the same physically or mentally. For all I know this could be my last trip with her, especially since she is older. My employers did not even try to make this trip happen. It took me jumping through hoops and bargaining for them to even let me go for less than half of the time I requested.

On the days they needed me so desperately for, there is other staff there to cover.

Because of how important this is to me, I fought for the ability to go longer (I am part time). There are multiple other full time employees there all of the days I need off. They do the same job as me. I even asked them if they would be willing to cover my shifts and they agreed.

After I asked them to cover it, my boss told me that I was “bringing down morale” by asking coworkers to cover the shift so I can go. They also said I had “guilt tripped” them. I have not mentioned anything personal that could be considered guilt tripping or bringing down morale. Everytime I try to bring up my vacation it’s treated as extremely taboo even though I will be gone for 9 days, and every other employee has been allowed to take their vacations which have been much longer. On top of that, I covered for those employees while they were gone for weeks at a time. They do not want to let me go during these “busy” times despite everyone else taking weeks vacation around this time. Nobody else will be on vacation during my planned dates.

I then overheard a supervisor talking shit about me for a mistake they made. I do my tasks to the best of my ability every single day. I give 110% to this job and I have loved what I do, but this whole vacation thing really seems personal and the work environment has slowly become toxic because of the people in power. I really want to quit so I can just go on the vacation and find another job. But it’s extremely conflicting and I feel so defeated.

For extra context-
I only ever call out if I’m sick. Even then, I let them know what I have and see if they want me to come in or not. This is the only vacation I take time off for. I always come in on my days off when someone has called out. I am never late, always at least 10 minutes early. I always take on extra duties and tasks to help out when I can. Coworkers even ask me to house sit when they go on vacation, and I always say yes just to help them out.