If you’ve worked at a place for a while, there’s nothing quite as infuriating as getting time off approved…and then having a manager act like it was never approved.

Well, what do you do then?

Especially if you’ve already made travel plans and spent money on your vacation.

Well, the guy who is the star of this story wasn’t playing around when this happened to him.

Check out how he handled this situation.

Annual Leave Stand-Off.

“A friend of mine works as an IT Infrastructure Engineer in Melbourne, Australia, and I’m curious what others think about this situation.

His workplace annual leave policy is pretty straightforward:

1 month’s notice for up to 1 week of leave.

6 months’ notice for 2+ weeks of leave.

This all sounds on the level…

He booked an overseas holiday for the last week of January for 4 weeks, gave the required 6 months’ notice, had enough annual leave accrued, and followed the company’s process.

When he raised it with management, they unexpectedly refused the leave, saying he couldn’t take any leave until March. They also told him that if he went on the holiday anyway, he’d be terminated.

This came as a complete surprise because there had never been any communication about a leave freeze or blackout period, and several staff had already returned to work after taking leave.

He was over it!

A few days later, after thinking it over, he decided he’d had enough and handed in his resignation, effective January 2027, instead of cancelling his holiday.

The strange part is that as soon as he resigned, management suddenly changed their position and said he could have the leave after all. He declined because his decision to resign had already been made.

They kinda blew it, didn’t they?

Now management is apparently very upset with him for resigning, even though he followed the leave policy, gave the required notice, and only resigned after they refused his leave and threatened termination.

I’m trying to understand the logic here. If they were able to approve the leave after he resigned, why wasn’t it approved in the first place?

Is this just poor management, or is there another reason a company would suddenly reverse its decision once someone resigns?

Has anyone experienced something similar, either as an employee or manager?

I’d be interested to hear different perspectives.”

Check out how readers reacted on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This reader spoke up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who makes his boss regret firing him for failing to take the blame for someone else’s error.

And this person shared their thoughts.

This guy wasn’t playing around!

And today’s lesson is…

Don’t ever mess with someone’s time off!

Because it never ends well.

The folks at this company need to get their act straight…