When your child is headed into surgery, pride feels like a pretty small thing to worry about.

So, what would you do if your five-year-old daughter was scheduled for surgery at the last minute and you weren’t able to get a hold of your ex, but really needed to? Would you keep trying to message his phone? Or would you get desperate and call his job to make sure he knows what’s going on?

In the following story, one mother finds herself facing this exact decision and decides to call his job. Here’s what happened.

AITA for calling my ex’s job because our daughter was scheduled for surgery?

I (33f) have 2 children with Ex(34m). Our daughter (5f) has been hospitalized for 6 days so far.

Of those 6 days, I’ve been here with her for 5 of them. I’ve called in for work every time. Ex and I were both here on day 1, but then he had to go back to work. I’ve kept him updated every chance I got.

I work a 3rd shift, so I normally watch both kids if they don’t have school. We live in a state that was hit with a pretty big snowstorm, and the hospital is an hour drive on a normal day, so “rotating” who stays with her wasn’t really an option.

Her ex is hard to get ahold of.

I needed to get back to work, as my daughter has health insurance through me. My mom offered to call in so that I could go to work last night. School was canceled, so I had our son (6m) with me while Ex worked.

At 11:30 am, the doctor called me saying she was scheduled for surgery at 5 pm, and I had to come back to the hospital to sign consent forms.

Ex’s job takes him all over the state, so I never know what city he is in, and the only way I can get a hold of him is if he has access to wifi as our form of communication is FB messenger.

Frustrated, she set up plan B.

Since this is already traumatic for my daughter, I didn’t want to bring my son in.

So I set up “a plan B” for my dad to take him in case Ex was too far away. Dad lives 45 minutes away.

I had texted Ex updates earlier in the day, and he never opened them, but when I got the surgery update and the time limit on when I needed to be there, I tried calling him.

After she called, her ex got really mad.

I only tried once because there’s a certain tone that means one of us doesn’t have an internet connection (I knew it was him). So I called his job to try to relay the message to him.

My exact words were “our daughter is in the hospital and I’m having a hard time getting a hold of him, can you please get into contact with him and have him call me.”

Fast forward a few hours, and he basically said I embarrassed him and jeopardized his career, and that I should never call his place of work ever again for any reason.

AITA?

Wow! You’d think a father would be more worried about his daughter than that.

Let’s check out how the folks over at Reddit feel about it.

This person thinks she made the right call.

According to this comment, her ex is toxic.

For this reader, he embarrassed himself.

This person is not shocked.

He needs to check his priorities, because for most parents, that’s a good reason to call you at work.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.