An unpaid day costs your hours times your rate, out of one paycheck: at $19.00 an hour, an 8-hour day is $152.00 off that check's gross. The DOL's furlough fact sheet states that the Act does not preclude an employer from lowering an employee's hourly rate, provided the rate paid is at least the minimum wage, or from reducing the number of hours the employee is scheduled to work. The condition that changes the arithmetic entirely is how you are paid. On a salary, that same fact sheet says there is no requirement that the predetermined salary be paid if the employee performs no work for an entire workweek, while salary deductions are generally not permissible if the employee works less than a full day, so a single unpaid day is a different question for an exempt employee than for an hourly one.
Take the day out of one paycheck, not out of the month
The loss lands on one check, and it lands in one week. Spreading $152.00 across a month makes it look like $38.00 a week and hides the day the rent clears. Work from the reduced stub instead: when the check arrives at $1,242.00 rather than $1,362.00, the planning figure is $120.00, and it is the only figure that accounts for what payroll actually withheld.
Do not estimate the net effect with a tax percentage. Ask payroll for the figure or wait for the stub, and plan the gross difference in the meantime.
Check which pay period the day falls into before you pick the date. A day taken on the last workday of a period lands on the next check; the same day taken two days later lands on the check after that, and those two checks may have very different bills against them. If your employer lets you take the day as paid leave in one period and unpaid in another, the choice of date is worth more than the choice of day.
Find the week that goes negative
The CFPB's cash flow budget tool runs five weekly columns, carries each ending balance into the next week's beginning balance, and treats a negative ending balance as falling short for that week. Two weeks is usually enough to see it.
Take a biweekly net of $1,362.00 reduced to $1,242.00. Week A starts at $310.00, receives $1,242.00, and pays rent of $980.00 and $165.00 of groceries and fuel: $310.00 + $1,242.00 = $1,552.00, minus $1,145.00, ends at $407.00. Week B receives nothing and pays the $285.00 car loan and $165.00 of groceries: $407.00 - $450.00 = -$43.00. The full check would have ended week B at $77.00. The unpaid day did not cost $152.00 of comfort; it cost $43.00 of coverage in one specific week.
Move a due date rather than borrowing $43.00
Moving the car payment from week B to the next pay week removes the shortfall without changing what you owe. The CFPB's bill calendar tool has you mark the payment date 7 days before the due date for mail and 3 days before for online, then compare weekly bill totals to weekly income totals, which is where a movable date shows up.
Small borrowing is expensive at this size. The CFPB states that a typical two-week payday loan with a $15 per $100 fee equates to an annual percentage rate of almost 400 percent, and that state caps generally range from $10 to $30 for every $100 borrowed. On $43.00 that is $6.45 at the $15 rate, which is small money for a very high rate, and it is due on the same day the next check lands.
The request, with its date and its amount
Ask for the day with the figure in it and the coverage attached: "I would like Thursday 8 October unpaid. That is 8 hours, and I have asked Priya to cover the 2 pm handover. My car payment moves to the 22nd that month, so there is no gap on my side." Then put the reduced check and the moved due date on the same calendar as the bills, send it with a request that closes its own loose ends, and if you are weighing the day against an offered shift instead, price that shift by the costs it creates.