Middle managers tend to always take the cake as the most out-of-touch people alive.

How would you handle being punished for completely reasonable work burnout? One woman recently shared exactly how she went about this on Reddit. Here are the details.

Stop reporting about office burn out? Okay, done

My field of work has a high turnover and high burnout rate.

As a result, my company promotes transparent conversations with staff members to ensure we are all implementing self care, taking PTO as needed, and asking for managerial support when overwhelmed with tasks.

That’s a rarity in pretty much any field.

Last year, my work began to suffer.

I was struggling losing two close family members suddenly, and was transparent in hopes they would understand why I was withdrawn and had lower productivity.

My manager wrote me up as a result of my burn out, citing that I was using our 1:1’s inappropriately, causing stress among the team with my grief, and talking about being burnt out too much.

The write up included every single 1:1 documentation of when I asked for help with burn out.

A short sighted and nasty solution.

Management instructed me to stop talking about burn out.

No problem.

I stopped bringing up burn out, being transparent, and asking for support.

About 2 months later, I request a 7 week leave of absence; citing extreme burn out and mental health issues.

Management was shocked, and angry that I did not tell them I was struggling or burning out.

I handed them a copy of my write up and said “The action plan I received stated I could not talk about burn out anymore.”

Always get everything in writing!

Management was scolded for inadvertently creating a hostile work environment where staff couldn’t ask for support.

I got 7 weeks off and partial pay, and they had to cover my job for that entire time I was out.

Sometimes, giving support means getting inconvenienced. Let’s see how Reddit weighed in.

Nearly everyone provided unanimous support.

One manager chimed in to give their perspective.

Another person got conspiratorial.

Some people encouraged seeking employment elsewhere.

Statistics were even thrown in at the end.

Working your life away is never the answer.

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.