
Employee Quits Because Company Denies Their Vacation, Boss Begs Them To Come Back When Business Starts Losing Money
You work hard, so you earn to play hard, too. Except when your days off request gets denied.
In a now-deleted post, an anonymous Reddit user described in great detail the lousy Christmas gift they received from their company—a change of plans which forced them to cancel the vacation they had already planned with their family.
However, after having sacrificed their time with their loved ones for long enough, the employee took a stance for what’s important in their life and simply handed in their resignation instead.
The company quickly learned just how valuable this person had been to them.
With deadlines approaching and having nothing to show their clients, their angry manager started bombarding their phone with calls and messages, trying to manipulate the employee to return “for the team.”
The relationship this person had with the company they worked at seem fine for years
Image credits: Jonas Leupe (not the actual photo)
But everything changed when their manager denied their pre-approved vacation request
Career and business coach Ben Fitzgerald told Bored Panda that, generally speaking, acting on impulse isn’t a very good idea.
“While I’d love to say someone should quit their job if they’re simply not happy in it—anyone with a dependent, partner, or ferret to consider should ensure some kind of revenue stream is lined up to avoid becoming a dependent themselves,” Fitzgerald explained. “As the late, great Norm MacDonald once joked, the homeless dog can do that on their own.”
Fitzgerald specializes in career transitions and says working through your decisions with a trained listener who isn’t emotionally affected by your choices or biased from knowing you can be a good idea in these situations.
“However, if you choose a friend, make it clear at the start that you’d like them to simply listen. Not to offer advice or try to solve your problems. If you want their advice after getting everything off your chest, by all means, ask,” he added.
According to the career coach, some helpful questions to hear yourself talk through might be:
- What specific aspect(s) of my job are causing concerns or distress?
- Once the above is listed out, what are all the other ways I could address each of these concerns without quitting?
- If I do quit, what choices will I make to avoid feeling like I feel, somewhere else, in 6 months time?
After the employee quit, the manager started attacking their cell
But if you carefully work things through over, say, a few days’ time, and you’re still convinced that your job is the central reason why you’re feeling unhealthy, unfulfilled, and/or unhappy, then Fitzgerald suggests putting together a plan.
“As exciting as it may be to quit a job, you don’t want to do it on the spot,” he said. “It’s best to have a plan in place for what comes next. What that plan looks like is far too personal to outline because it has to do with the marketability of your skills, your risk appetite, financial situation, the list goes on.”
The whole ordeal then took an unexpected turn
Sadly, there probably are many people who can—more or less—relate to this story. The American workplace can be grueling and stressful. A 2017 in-depth study of 3,066 U.S. workers by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School, and the University of California, Los Angeles, found that nearly 1 in 5 workers—a share the study calls “disturbingly high”—say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work, which can include sexual harassment and bullying. Not surprisingly, workers who have to face customers endure a disproportionate share of abuse.
I do not understand how the company is taking thousands of dollars per hour in losses but refuses to pay him to make it stop?
Greed. It's always greed.
In this case it's stupidity because paying him to fix it would cost them less. They're just too shortsighted to see it.
Nope. One thing worse than greed. This is a bonafide power struggle.
I think the cardinal sin in this situation is not greed, it is pride.
All about saving face. Not about the money at this point as they paid more in fines than the guy's offering. The boss did not want anyone to see how much control he lost and how much be effed up, to continue to the end that it was the dude's fault.
Pride. His manager said it all: "I don't even get paid that much". He could not tolerate the idea of paying this guy more than he gets paid himself. He'd rather sink the company than do that.
Partly managerial ego. Underlings are supposed to do as they're told.
As one of the wise replies from above, how does a company not have a team that equally knows most of the workings so when or if a person is 'gone' it does NOT cripple the WHOLE set-up of an important dept. As mentioned, like his/her death. How do you not see the flaw in not having solid plan B or C should Mr. X no longer be around.
First off, that client sucks. You can't ignore weeks of requests for a critical input and still expect the company to deliver the work on time. That is a bad client relationship. That said, the company sucks worse. A good project manager and client manager would've fought for its team, NOT the client, by warning the client repeatedly that missing the data would result in delays to the timeline. Get that in writing, and escalate it when the client complains about the delay. And if you KNOW the client will be adamant about their deadline, anticipate the solution on your end by training up someone to fill in for the OP in advance. This absolutely could have been avoided if the company was paying attention.
There are far too many inept project managers than there are proper functional ones. These "project managers" do nothing besides watching the timeline without ever mitigating risks or managing expectations. I've worked with too many of these dickwads to recognize them right when a project starts. If there is one thing they are good at, is lying through their teeth to cover their own asses and throwing people under the bus.
I feel like there were quite a few holes in this story, including why on earth a company would be in a position where ONE person is pivotal for their vsurvival, with no backup at all; and regarding the breach of contract, they haven't got a leg to stand on if the client repeatedly refused to provide them with what they needed to complete the task on time. I really can't see them actually being forced to pay out when late receipt of the material was to blame. I'm not defending the horrible behaviour of the company, but this just doesn't sound plausible.
It's a depressingly common occurrence with clients. We've had so many projects delayed because of clients dragging their heels or needing to wait on multiple levels of sign-off, despite repeated communications saying 'if you want this to go live that date then we need this information by this date at the absolute latest' (I think the longest delay we had was a year or two after the project was originally meant to go-live)
Now that was a ride to take. I know I would have probably bent, but OP didn't. Good for them, and maybe, just MAYBE, their manager learned a lesson that day.
I'm thinking that that manager probably got fired or demoted after the dust settled.
Or promoted. I've worked at companies like that. I once worked at a company that our manager was gradually turning into an extension of his cult. Guess which workers got treated really, really well.
I do not understand how the company is taking thousands of dollars per hour in losses but refuses to pay him to make it stop?
Greed. It's always greed.
In this case it's stupidity because paying him to fix it would cost them less. They're just too shortsighted to see it.
Nope. One thing worse than greed. This is a bonafide power struggle.
I think the cardinal sin in this situation is not greed, it is pride.
All about saving face. Not about the money at this point as they paid more in fines than the guy's offering. The boss did not want anyone to see how much control he lost and how much be effed up, to continue to the end that it was the dude's fault.
Pride. His manager said it all: "I don't even get paid that much". He could not tolerate the idea of paying this guy more than he gets paid himself. He'd rather sink the company than do that.
Partly managerial ego. Underlings are supposed to do as they're told.
As one of the wise replies from above, how does a company not have a team that equally knows most of the workings so when or if a person is 'gone' it does NOT cripple the WHOLE set-up of an important dept. As mentioned, like his/her death. How do you not see the flaw in not having solid plan B or C should Mr. X no longer be around.
First off, that client sucks. You can't ignore weeks of requests for a critical input and still expect the company to deliver the work on time. That is a bad client relationship. That said, the company sucks worse. A good project manager and client manager would've fought for its team, NOT the client, by warning the client repeatedly that missing the data would result in delays to the timeline. Get that in writing, and escalate it when the client complains about the delay. And if you KNOW the client will be adamant about their deadline, anticipate the solution on your end by training up someone to fill in for the OP in advance. This absolutely could have been avoided if the company was paying attention.
There are far too many inept project managers than there are proper functional ones. These "project managers" do nothing besides watching the timeline without ever mitigating risks or managing expectations. I've worked with too many of these dickwads to recognize them right when a project starts. If there is one thing they are good at, is lying through their teeth to cover their own asses and throwing people under the bus.
I feel like there were quite a few holes in this story, including why on earth a company would be in a position where ONE person is pivotal for their vsurvival, with no backup at all; and regarding the breach of contract, they haven't got a leg to stand on if the client repeatedly refused to provide them with what they needed to complete the task on time. I really can't see them actually being forced to pay out when late receipt of the material was to blame. I'm not defending the horrible behaviour of the company, but this just doesn't sound plausible.
It's a depressingly common occurrence with clients. We've had so many projects delayed because of clients dragging their heels or needing to wait on multiple levels of sign-off, despite repeated communications saying 'if you want this to go live that date then we need this information by this date at the absolute latest' (I think the longest delay we had was a year or two after the project was originally meant to go-live)
Now that was a ride to take. I know I would have probably bent, but OP didn't. Good for them, and maybe, just MAYBE, their manager learned a lesson that day.
I'm thinking that that manager probably got fired or demoted after the dust settled.
Or promoted. I've worked at companies like that. I once worked at a company that our manager was gradually turning into an extension of his cult. Guess which workers got treated really, really well.