Imagine being in a lot of pain due to a wisdom tooth coming in. Would you ignore the pain and continue with your life, or would you get the first appointment possible to get the tooth looked at and removed?

In this story, one employee was in this situation and went to the dentist. But the employee feels guilty about getting dental surgery since that also meant missing work for a couple days.

He knows his coworkers are annoyed that they have to work overtime since he missed work, but he also felt like he couldn’t put up with the pain anymore and desperately needed to see a dentist.

Was getting his tooth removed the right decision, or was he just being selfish?

Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for getting my wisdom tooth removed knowing my coworkers would have to work overtime to compensate?

Let me preface this by saying I am very insecure and sensitive so maybe I am over thinking it. It’s just bugging me.

11 days ago I started feeling pain in the back of my mouth and I knew it was likely to be my wisdom tooth coming out. I endured the pain because I had final exams and was working full time and I had no time to take an appointment.

My coworker knew I was in pain as I told them multiple times about my wisdom tooth problem.

I planned on taking an emergency appointment last saturday but my coworker asked me the day before if I could take her shift. She had very good reasons so I took it and thought I would take an appoinment for my next day off which was yesterday.

OP finally made it to the dentist.

Unfortunatley I found no appointments yesterday but got one this morning.

I made arrangements with one coworker so I could go because I was supposed to work this morning.

I went to my appointment and lo and behold, I needed surgery.

Technically I need all 4 removed, but I chose to just remove the problematic one because had I removed all 4 I wouldn’t have been able to return to work for a lot longer.

Here’s some context about where OP works.

Thing to know about my work : we are currently really understaffed. We are 3 people doing the job of 5.

We are exhausted and over worked and on the brink of a melt down. The two others more than me since they’ve been there the longest and I am still fairly new.

I knew getting surgery meant I would have at LEAST one day off and that would mean my coworkers would have to replace me and work even more.

But the only other appointment I could get would have been next week and I wasn’t willing to endure another week of pain.

The coworkers are clearly upset.

I ended up getting the surgery and my coworkers are mad at me and sent me messages on Facebook that I can’t help but feel like they are meant to make me feel guilty. Things along the lines of “it’s super hard at work right now. I won’t have a day off until next Friday. Jaz (fake name) is on the verge of a meltdown. We just wished it would have been another day, or at least planned and not last minute like this. Now we have to cancel some of our plans. But oh well…”

To me it feels unfair, I didn’t asked to be in pain all last week, I didn’t ask to pay 400$ to get my tooth cracked and removed piece by piece while getting a vasovagal shock mid operation.

I got two days off for the surgery but it certainly won’t be a vacation due to the pain… I feel like the condecending tone is unwarranted… But again, maybe I am wrong.

I knew it would cause trouble for them and still chose to have a surgery. Does that make me a jerk?

He was in pain. The tooth needed to come out. He couldn’t continue to ignore it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman whose HR department advised her to quit if she was that unhappy, so she did and found herself in a role reversal years later.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person knows health is more important than work.

Another person thinks this was a really good reason to miss work.

It really is the staffing issue that is the problem.

It can be hard to focus on work when you’re in pain.

This is why sick days exist. He was in pain. He needed dental surgery. It’s not like he’s slacking off or intentionally leaving his coworkers short-staffed.

The real problem is that there aren’t enough people to do all the work. The boss needs to hire at least one or two more people so that nobody has to work overtime.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a team that agreed to work overtime, but then not everyone showed up, leaving the rest holding the bag.