Work is important, but any good manager knows that you need a good balance between your work life and your home life.

What would you do if you asked your manager if you could work from home for a week leading up to your maternity leave, but she denied your request and told you to go to HR?

That is what happened to the expectant mother in this story, so she went straight to HR and they said she could start her leave early, leaving her boss in a terrible predicament.

Check it out.

I should talk to HR about leave if I’m legitimately having trouble at work 1 week before my due date? Sure thing boss.

This happened last year.

I (F31) was 1 week away from my due date and was working full time in a school administration position.

At this time I had the capability to work from home if needed (ex. too sick to come in to work, catchup on extra work, unable to secure daycare for my child, etc).

When I accepted the position (prior to my pregnancy) I was told by my boss (let’s call her Ronnie) that it was very flexible as long as I got my hours in.

I very rarely worked from home and typically only did so for an hour or two in the morning if it was needed later on in order to work before obgyn appointments as it was a long commute between work and home/dr. office.

This seems like a reasonable setup.

However, I was told by Ronnie after accepting the position to try and limit WFH to 2 days a month, which fine, at this point I was well under since I was only working an hour or two maybe twice a month, and only once a month before that.

Being so close to my due date, I was experiencing physical hardships that made working on site more and more difficult such as dizzy spells, a pulled tendon in my foot, and severe back pain.

I was also scared of potentially going into labor while at work with it being so far away from the hospital my obgyn delivers at.

To top it all off, my coworkers started asking more invasive questions about my pregnancy that made me uncomfortable.

All in all, it was not a fun time.

I explained all of this in an email to Ronnie and asked for her permission to almost exclusively work from home up until I go into labor.

I said I thought it would be a reasonable accommodation and I work really well from home.

That is just mean.

Ronnie responded a couple days later denying my request to work from home at all and said I needed to be there since we would be starting some of our busiest work in a couple months.

(which I would be gone for on maternity leave anyways, so I’m not sure why she brought it up…)

She said I could talk to HR about leave options if I am truly having trouble working.

(BTW, it is illegal in my state to require an employee to take leave if there is a reasonable accommodation that can be made instead).

Cue malicious compliance.

I immediately went to HR and did just that.

This is working out perfectly.

We talked about options and found out I could start my leave the very next day and still be paid state mandatory leave pay for the extra time.

I informed Ronnie that I would be out starting the next day as I needed to take care of myself.

She said, “I understand you need to do what’s best for you, but you need to understand that I need to do what’s best for the team”.

So, ya, everything I normally managed basically went downhill in my absence as the other people on the team weren’t qualified to do the work and kept taking time off leading up to my due date instead of learning the basics while I was still there to teach them.

Good, hopefully Ronnie will learn to be more flexible.

I left detailed procedure notes and workflow lists, but I later found out Ronnie had to pick up all the extra work and a lot of it never got done since she didn’t have time.

But it was best for the team right boss?

Some managers mistakenly think being strict is best for the business when it rarely is.

Read on to see what the people in the comments think of this story.

This person doesn’t think much of school administration.

Here is a commenter with very helpful information.

Now that is just funny.

This seems like a much better system.

This person says management can be stupid.

Ronnie should have been more flexible.

It’s not like babies are known for being cooperative.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.