In some industries it’s necessary to have employees working around the clock.

It’s important for bosses to realize that the night shift employees and day shift employees might have different issues they deal with at work.

It’s also important for them to realize that these employees also have to sleep at different times.

In today’s story, the manager of a hotel does not seem to understand what it really means to require a night shift employee to attend a meeting in the middle of the day.

He’s about to find out!

Let’s read the whole story.

‘Mandatory’, you say?

Meetings. Arguably a waste of everyone’s time, a worthless imposition upon our finite existence.

But doubly so when one works nights.

Tonight gentle readers, I have a small tale of mismanagement and begrudging compliance with absurd requirements.

The fallout isn’t much, but I consider it a personal win.

This meeting was not only mandatory but also very important.

So it came to pass many many years ago, when I was still less than a year working nights at this hotel, that the manager called a great and mighty meeting.

All hands on deck!

A mandatory meeting of great importance!

New policies and practices! Lunch to be provided! All quite urgent, and very very mandatory.

He didn’t think the meeting sounded very important.

I read the notice, and informed the manager that none of the topics to be discussed were anything I had to deal with during the night shift.

Maintenance. Housekeeping.

A Night Auditor cares not for these things.

Could I in fact just skip the whole thing?

Nope.

The manager insisted that OP had to be there.

Pleas that this would cut into my sleep schedule fell on deaf ears.

Even if the meeting was functionally useless to me, it would be seen as unfair if everyone else had to show up, and I didn’t.

Be there tomorrow at noon or be written up.

Fine then.

He did a little shopping before attending the meeting.

This was before store inventories were easily searched online, so it took a while to make a few calls, but I finally found what I needed, twenty miles away.

A quick shopping trip, then after work I went home for a short nap before the meeting.

My manager bounced into the meeting, ready to dazzle us with whatever speech he had prepared, only to notice all his employees stealing glances at the back corner.

He dressed the part.

There I was.

Plaid pajamas. Dark blue bathrobe. Bed-rumpled hair.

Dark bags under my eyes (I might have touched them up a little with makeup…)

And upon my feet were a set of brand-new fuzzy bunny slippers that I had dashed to get for this very occasion.

He had a good response to the boss’s reaction.

The boss sputtered protest, but I pointed out that for me, this was effectively three in the morning, so his presentation had better be worth it.

Spoilers; it was not worth it.

Not one item of the meeting had anything whatsoever to do with what I did during the night shift.

None of it.

He couldn’t even enjoy the free lunch.

Furthermore, the lunch he’d provided – an admittedly lovely sort of fried rice chicken casserole thing – hit almost all the items on my (admittedly rather long) digestive naughty list.

Onions, heavy cheese, jalapeños and bell peppers, with enough fats that my comparatively recent gall bladder removal would have noped out after one bite.

So not even the free lunch.

As the event wound down, with everyone else eating, I went to my manager, looked him dead in the eyes (more or less, I was tired), and told him exactly what a colossal waste of my time this whole thing had been.

That I would not be attending any further ‘mandatory’ meetings.

If there was something I needed to know, a memo would suffice, thank you.

He never had to attend a meeting again.

And that was how Skwrl got out of attending meetings forever.

There have been other meetings.

I have not been invited to attend them.

I did attend the manager’s going away party though.

That was nice.

That was pretty bold to show up in obnoxious pjs and bunny slippers!

Well played!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Seriously, doesn’t someone need to be at the front desk?

For this person, a meeting like this would be illegal.

Another person would’ve played it differently.

This person also had gallbladder surgery.

This really would’ve been perfection!

Bunny slippers saved the day!

At least he was comfy.

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.