Imagine having plans to meet a friend who is visiting from out of town, but then your boss tells you that there’s going to be a celebratory lunch for employees at that exact time.

Would you go to the work lunch or skip it to meet up with your friend?

In this story, one man is in this exact situation, and he asked his boss if it was okay to skip the lunch meeting. He thought his boss said it was okay, but now he realizes he made a huge mistake.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for missing a lunch hosted by my boss?

Without saying too many details, my boss – let’s call him Bill – who owns a small company, occasionally hands out bonuses anywhere from $200-$500 when we have a large amount of sales.

We are are grateful for this, as he has absolutely no obligation to give the employees any of the money.

I have worked there for over four years. I have discovered that my boss, the owner, generally gets offended if employees miss these types of events.

Bill changed the plan for the day before Thanksgiving.

We closed early the day before Thanksgiving (as we always do).

Typically, he invites some of our best customers to have a few drinks and hang out after we close.

I usually go home during this time, as I do not drink and I am very introverted (they are all aware of this about me).

Bill revealed to us that instead of hanging out at the business, we would be going out to a bar/grille for lunch. Us being the employees, and a handful of customers.

But OP has a scheduling conflict.

Around the same time, my wife and I had been planning to see our good friend who would be flying in from out of state. We live in AZ, and he lives in TN.

For context, he was the best man at our wedding a little over a year ago. I would call him my best friend. He moved out to TN, and we rarely get to see him now.

He would only be here for a couple days. Of that, he only a handful of hours to hang out with myself and my wife.

His boss’s response wasn’t exactly clear.

A few days before the lunch was planned, I somewhat nervously asked Bill if I could forgo the planned lunch in favor of meeting my best friend.

His response was, “it’s your choice”.

I naively took this as approval. Looking back, I believe it was a passive-aggressive remark.

Here’s another similar situation that happened at work recently.

More context. Somewhat recently, at this workplace, I similarly mistook a comment.

I had been feeling under the weather and had missed some work. After going back for a few days, I still had not fully recovered. I was still coughing.

A coworker, Steve, believed I was pretending to be sick to avoid doing work. Steve and Bill are best friends. Bill hired Steve about a year ago. Steve and I have a complicated up-and-down relationship, for too many reasons to list here.

All this to say, Steve told me I should just go home. Bill agreed.

But that may not have been what they really meant.

I, again, naively, thought they were genuinely inviting me to take care of myself.

I realized (too late) that they were implying that if I was “faking being sick”, I might as well go home. (I am kind of an idiot, and have a hard time reading situations and people sometimes.)

The drama didn’t end when Thanksgiving was over.

Back to the Thanksgiving lunch.

All of us at work were aware that the sales target had gone through, and a bonus was likely.

A few days after the lunch, and we got back from the Thanksgiving break, and I asked a coworker that I am closer with if he had gotten a bonus.

At this point, I started to worry that I had offended Bill.

His instincts were right on.

Come to find out, I had.

I discovered that he had said “He isn’t here, so he misses out”.

This crushed me, not only because the money would be really nice, but I feel that I have been really trying hard at work.

AITA?

Bill is a jerk. OP needs to look for another job with a boss who isn’t out to get him and doesn’t want to punish him for being sick and wanting to spend time with friends instead of a work lunch. If a meeting is mandatory, Bill needs to say that and not leave it open to interpretation.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

He really has two options.

His boss clearly doesn’t care about employe morale.

He’ll know for next time.

The boss’s answer was very misleading.

It’s really not fair.

He needs to find a different job with a better boss.

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.