Workplace “support” gets real conditional the second it becomes inconvenient for the boss.

So when one expectant employee asked to work from home due to pain, dizziness, and fear of going into labor at work, her boss refused and pushed HR leave options.

So when the employee maliciously complied, the boss quickly learned just how much her absence would cause chaos.

Keep reading for the full story.

I should talk to HR about leave if I’m legitimately having trouble at work 1 week before my due date? Sure thing boss.

I (F31) was 1 week away from my due date and was working full time in a school administration position.

At this time, I had the capability to work from home if needed (ex. too sick to come in to work, catchup on extra work, unable to secure daycare for my child, etc).

This employee thought this was a flexible workplace.

When I accepted the position (prior to my pregnancy), I was told by my boss (let’s call her Ronnie) that it was very flexible as long as I got my hours in.

I very rarely worked from home and typically only did so for an hour or two in the morning if it was needed later on in order to work before OBGYN appointments as it was a long commute between work and home/Dr. office.

But soon, the cracks started to show.

However, I was told by Ronnie after accepting the position to try and limit WFH to 2 days a month, which fine.

At this point I was well under since I was only working an hour or two maybe twice a month, and only once a month before that.

As her pregnancy progressed, she found it harder and harder to go into work.

Being so close to my due date, I was experiencing physical hardships that made working on-site more and more difficult such as dizzy spells, a pulled tendon in my foot, and severe back pain.

I was also scared of potentially going into labor while at work with it being so far away from the hospital my OBGYN delivers at.

To top it all off, my coworkers started asking more invasive questions about my pregnancy that made me uncomfortable.

All in all, it was not a fun time.

So she tried to get reasonable accommodations from Ronnie.

I explained all of this in an email to Ronnie and asked for her permission to almost exclusively work from home up until I go into labor.

I said I thought it would be a reasonable accommodation and I work really well from home.

But Ronnie was being anything but reasonable.

Ronnie responded a couple days later denying my request to work from home at all and said I needed to be there since we would be starting some of our busiest work in a couple months (which I would be gone for on maternity leave anyways, so I’m not sure why she brought it up…), but I could talk to HR about leave options if I am truly having trouble working.

Cue malicious compliance.

So the employee followed Ronnie’s orders, and it didn’t go as Ronnie planned.

I immediately went to HR and did just that.

We talked about options and found out I could start my leave the very next day and still be paid state mandatory leave pay for the extra time.

I informed Ronnie that I would be out starting the next day as I needed to take care of myself.

She said, “I understand you need to do what’s best for you, but you need to understand that I need to do what’s best for the team”.

The school definitely suffered because of it.

So, ya, everything I normally managed basically went to crap in my absence as the other people on the team weren’t qualified to do the work and kept taking time off leading up to my due date instead of learning the basics while I was still there to teach them.

I left detailed procedure notes and workflow lists, but I later found out Ronnie had to pick up all the extra work and a lot of it never got done since she didn’t have time.

But it was best for the team right boss?

Bet Ronnie wishes she had been more reasonable now.

What did Reddit make of all this?

Being forced to work this close to your due date seems pretty inhumane.

Apparently this was a much bigger violation than this mom-to-be realized.

Seems like this commenter is well aware of people like Ronnie.

Good managers treat their people much differently.

The workplace got exactly what it asked for, and none of what it needed.

Leave it to the boss to choose what’s worse for everyone!

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.