Imagine scheduling a vacation, putting in for your time off request, and finding a coworker who agrees to cover your shift for you while you’re on vacation. Sounds like everything is taken care of and you can enjoy your vacation worry free, right?

Not necessarily!

What would you do if your boss lost your time off request paperwork and assumed you were coming into work after all? Would you explain the situation, cancel your vacation, or want to retaliate against the coworker who was going to cover your shifts?

In this story, one employee is in that exact situation, and they want to retaliate against the coworker. While that might seem like the oddest option to pick, they have their reasons.

Keep reading to see if you think these reasons are reasonable or if they’re blaming the wrong person.

WIBTA if cover OT for a coworker?

I recently went on vacation out of state and was required to find someone to cover my two shifts at work one on a Tuesday and one on a Thursday.

I managed to do this in plenty of time and didn’t think anything of it. I even promised to pay her back by covering shifts for her later.

The boss sounds disorganized.

Well 2 hours in to my 12 hour drive for vacation I got a call from my boss stating that she lost my time off paperwork and wanted to just double check what days I needed off.

About 4 hours in I got a text from the girl covering my shift asking if I still needed her because our boss told her there was no paperwork so she took that to mean I canceled my vacation.

I told her I definitely still needed her to come in because I was not in town.

She agreed and that was that.

Why does OP even keep answering the phone when she’s on vacation?

The next day (Wednesday) I got a call from the girl covering my shift saying she really needed to have her day off on Thursday.

I told her that she needed to talk to the boss because technically that wasn’t my shift anymore because she agreed to cover it.

She then proceeded to tell me that I was on the schedule (which my boss does not update for peoples vacation times).

I told her to talk to my boss because there was no way I was making it for the shift.

The drama continues.

My supervisor and boss called me to ask if the girl had talked to me about not covering my shift and I told them that I said she needed to talk to the boss about it and that was all.

They told me that I was good and obviously didn’t have to be back for the shift that night.

Would I be a jerk for not agreeing to take any Overtime shifts for her seeing as she tried to screw me over twice by trying to get out of covering my shifts?

I wouldn’t blame the girl covering the shifts for this mess. It sounds like the boss is disorganized, so he told her she didn’t need to cover the shifts. The drama started there.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who figured out how to stop his manager from constantly stealing his phone charger.

Let’s see if Reddit agrees.

This person thinks the coworker was confused.

Another person thinks she should still cover the shifts.

It does seem fishy about the paperwork.

Everyone seems to agree that she should cover her coworker’s shifts like she said she would.

I don’t think the coworker is to blame at all. I don’t think it sounds like the coworker was flakey or unreliable. I think it sounds like the boss was flakey and confused the coworker by saying that OP didn’t actually go on vacation when she actually did.

The boss is clearly the problem here. It sounds like the  coworker covering the shifts actually did end up covering the shifts, so there’s no reason to retaliate on her.

I’d be annoyed with the boss if anyone especially for dealing with so many annoying and stressful phone calls when you’re trying to enjoy your vacation.