Never mess with a person’s time off!

Listen, if vacation time is agreed upon by boss and employee, then just leave the employee alone while they’re on their break…it’s as simple as that!

But some bosses just can’t help themselves…

Check out what happened in this story from Reddit. We think you’ll be impressed with how it all works out.

Boss is going to keep asking me to work shifts when I take time off? How about I take a permanent vacation…

“This is the story of my former employer.

I work in the northeast US and my employer at the time was a very small company (Boss and 5 employees) in a very specific industry where 90% of our work was on construction sites and finding a well-qualified person in this very specific industry is a very very hard thing to do.

This sounds rough…

My boss was the kind of boss that every employee dislikes.

Corners were cut every possible way in order to keep overhead costs down. On top of that he would constantly overbook on jobs (like signing contracts for 6 projects during the same week knowing full well that he only has 5 employees) which would result in the employees often working 14 hour days or more….which really sucks when you’re on salary (no overtime).

His worst attribute by far was approving time off and then during your time off calling or texting you asking if you would be willing to work a day or cut your vacation short.

Sometimes he’d even ask you to move your time off to the next week or next month “when the workload lightens up” (hint: it never lightened up due to his constant overbooking).

He laid it all out there…

After working at this company for 6 years I got used to all the aforementioned annoyances.

But then things changed, my son was born.

In the months leading up to his birth I made it very clear that I would be taking a 5-week unpaid leave of absence once he arrives.

The state we’re in allows new parents to take up to 8 weeks of unpaid leave.

I told my boss that I know 8 weeks would be a huge strain on such a small company so I was willing to take 5 weeks but those 5 weeks would be completely “off the grid” meaning don’t call me, don’t text me, if you’re going to ask me to do anything work-related the answer will be no so don’t bother. I’m going to be spending time with my family.

He 100% agreed.

Uh oh…

Fast-forward to my son’s birth.

He was born on a Friday and after a short stay in the NICU (don’t worry, he’s fine) was released on Monday and we took him home.

Tuesday morning (yeah…the next day) I wake up to a missed call, an email, and 3 texts all from my boss asking me to call him back ASAP.

For reasons still unknown to me to this day I call him back and he tells me there’s a slight emergency (code speak for he screwed up the scheduling and has a job with no employee at it) and asks if I could maybe come into work that day and maybe work a couple more days that week until he finds someone to cover it.

Hell no!

I lost it.

I literally felt something in my neck snap and unleashed a verbal assault on him that I still feel bad about now, a year later.

I ended my rant with an apology…as much of a jerk move it was for him to be calling me in that situation it was still completely unprofessional of me to say what I said to him.

Obviously he wasn’t a big fan of what I said and after a small rant of his own ended with the sentences that made this whole story possible.

He said, “You’ve got a pretty good gig at this company that most people your age would be thankful for. I’d be impressed if you could find a better job in this field because I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I know how small this industry is and trust me, good jobs like yours don’t come along very often. Think about that.”

He asked for it!

So we ended the call and I did what he said. I thought about it.

After thinking about it for about 30 seconds I got out of bed, sat down in front of my computer and started looking at job postings.

5 weeks later my time off came to an end and my first day back I came in to work, walked into my boss’s office and handed him a piece of paper.

Boss: “What’s this?”

Me: “I thought about what you said about how you be really impressed if I could find a better job than the one I have here. …so I did.”

My boss reads over what I handed him…a job offer from a competitor for the exact same job I was performing but at a 25% higher salary, an extra week of paid vacation compared to what I had AND a stipulation that company policy was that work hours are capped at 8 per day meaning that once I hit 8 hours on a job I pack up and leave it until tomorrow. No exceptions.

I don’t think so!

Boss: “Well then…ummm…can I have the day to crunch some numbers to come up with a counter-offer?

Me: “No, don’t bother. I just wanted you to see it because I know you wouldn’t have believed me otherwise.”

Gave my two week notice and left for whatever job site I was on that day.

That was a year ago and I could not be happier with my new job. I get to spend lots of time with my boy and that’s the best job perk there is.

For all you bosses and managers out there. Don’t mess with your employees…especially the good ones. Treat them how you’d want to be treated.

Most employees don’t quit their jobs….they quit their bosses!”

Good for him for finding another job that has a much better work life balance.

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person chimed in.

Another reader has been there.

This Reddit user made some good points.

Another Reddit user spoke up.

And this reader had a lot to say.

On to greener pastures for this guy!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.