Unless your position at work requires you to be on call, when your work day has ended, you shouldn’t be required or expected to check your messages or have conversations about work.

In today’s story, one boss likes to send one of his employees messages at all hours.

This really bothers her.

She doesn’t want to check work related messages when she’s not at work.

She came up with a funny way to get back at him, but some of her coworkers think it wasn’t actually funny.

Let’s read all the details.

AITA for sending a “404 Error: Not Available” auto-reply to my boss after work hours?

So, my boss has this habit of messaging me way after work hours—like 11 PM on a Tuesday or 7 AM on a Sunday.

And it’s never an emergency, just random stuff that could 100% wait.

I’ve tried to drop hints that I don’t check messages outside of work, but clearly, he didn’t get the memo.

So, I decided to have a little fun and set up an auto-reply on my email and Slack that says:

“404 Error: Employee Not Found. Please try again during business hours. If this is an emergency, please reconsider your definition of ‘emergency’.”

Her boss didn’t like the error message.

Didn’t think much of it until he messaged me at 10:30 PM on a Friday, and the auto-reply kicked in.

Next morning, I wake up to an annoyed email from him, saying my response was “unprofessional” and that I should be more “dedicated” to my job.

I replied (politely) saying I believe in maintaining work-life balance and that if something is truly urgent, he can call me directly.

Spoiler: he’s never actually called because—shocker—it’s never really urgent.

Her coworkers have mixed opinions.

Some of my coworkers thought it was hilarious, but a couple said I might’ve gone too far and made things awkward with the boss.

So, AITA for setting up the auto-reply instead of just ignoring his messages?

Or is my boss the one who needs to chill?

I like the 404 error message idea. That’s clever.

I can see why the boss is annoyed, but hopefully he learns to leave her alone during non-business hours.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s the perspective of someone who used to send after hours emails.

She should just ignore the messages until she gets to work.

She is probably on her boss’s bad side now.

It really was unprofessional.

While funny, the consequences may not be worth it.

Just ignore the messages!

Her response seems a little risky.

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.