Sometimes, managers forget that respect goes both ways, especially when it comes to working hours.

What would you do if your boss demanded a meeting at midnight despite your fully packed schedule?

Would you sacrifice your own time to make him happy?

Or would you turn the situation around and show them what it feels like?

In the following story, an IT employee working in India deals with this very situation and opts for the latter.

Here’s what happened.

Schedule a meeting at 12 AM?

I’ve been working as a lead in an IT firm from India that supports a US client.

I have a manager here in India who approves my PTO, handles performance reviews, and meets with us a few times a month.

He and the management believe that the work we do is for the client, but we should also contribute to the organization.

So, we’re encouraged to take on additional tasks like recruiting or preparing business reviews.

Essentially, we need to be available during the day.

While they don’t have set hours, they are expected to be available at certain times.

I also have another manager in the USA, who is Indian as well.

He coordinates with the customer and handles any escalations related to our work.

His main concern is ensuring there are zero escalations from the client.

The clients assign us projects, and we interact with them directly.

We have meetings every day, usually lasting at least two hours.

Since we’re paid a monthly salary, there’s no extra money for additional hours worked, and both managers take advantage of this.

There are no strict working hours, but we must be available from 7 PM to 10 PM IST, which corresponds to 9 AM to 12 PM US time.

On this day, he had a lot of work already lined up.

Typically, we start working at 10 AM, continue until 5 PM, and then resume from 7 PM to 10 PM.

Sometimes, meetings with clients extend an extra 30 minutes to an hour.

Our US manager connects with us after the meetings with the client.

One day, I had a lot of work to finish, so I decided to work from home instead of commuting.

I had a three-hour client meeting followed by a knowledge transition session, so I was fully occupied.

The on-site manager asked me to schedule a meeting with him. I told him my day was packed until midnight.

He refused and said he needed 30 minutes of my time. I asked if he could join a little earlier, before my meetings, but he said no.

Here’s where he turned it all around.

Then I asked if 12 AM was fine for him. He said yes and scheduled the meeting at 12 AM. All this happened over Teams Chat.

I decided to take his own words against him, so I scheduled the meeting for 12 AM his time, which was 10 AM the next day for me, thinking, “If you expect me to be available at midnight, why not you?”

That was the last time he expected me to be available past midnight.

Bravo! Some people would’ve just done what the manager wanted.

Let’s see how the fine folks over at Reddit feel about what he did.

Managers like this get the most respect.

This person would turn it around on people, too.

Here’s an interesting point.

This woman’s husband prefers late meetings.

He learned pretty quickly!

It’s always crazy to see people who think this is okay.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.