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There are plenty of professions out there where certain times of year are busier than others. While education and sports are obvious examples, retail and distribution are extra busy around the holidays – as are the entertainment, hospitality, and restaurant industries. As a result, it’s not uncommon for those sectors to hire additional staff to work seasonally through these times – and that kind of work is often the stuff that suits teenagers and college students too. That’s why it’s so common for your Christmas mail man and your rollercoaster operator to be young – because they’re likely to be picking up seasonal work around their studies.

So it follows that gifting businesses are likely to have an annual boom around the holidays. And you’d think that, as a result, they’d hire additional staff to pick up the slack around that time, to save their regular salaried workers from burnout in the holiday season. But unfortunately, as the woman in this story reveals, there are too many businesses that are simply taking advantage of their staff and expecting them to do extra work on a psuedo-voluntary basis.

Read on to find out what’s going on here.

AITA for leaving work on time when everyone else is still working?

This bothers me every year and every time when this happens, it makes me wonder a little if I (female, early thirties, single) am the in the wrong.

You see, festival season is here – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Lunar New year etc and as a gifting company we are busier than usual during this period.

The routine would be for our department to stay back after work to help the packing department to pack gifts, because we have mountains of gifts to pack, all labeled differently with different level of care and things can get very confusing and unorganized.

This isn’t compulsory nor paid, we “voluntarily” show up, that’s how it is.

Let’s see how this woman reacts to this extra work.

I would usually do maybe one or two times and then leave on time, not willing to spend more doing free work.

My colleagues from my own department and the packing department would also give me dirty looks whenever I do that, because it means one less helper and that they would go home later, and I am the only one who constantly do that.

I don’t usually care much because I stand firm on the point that I work for how much I am paid for, even if they hate me for it it isn’t my fault.

But yesterday it happened again, only this time one of my department lady asked me to stay because she couldn’t, she needed to bring her children somewhere.

Read on to find out how she responded.

I told her that since it’s voluntary work, she could leave as soon as we are off duty. She then told me that if she did, everyone else would have to stay back later and that would be her fault.

I told her again she was free to leave, just like me, and I left anyway.

I came to work today with the same dirty looks from my colleagues, and one of them came up to me and told me that because of my selfishness, everyone, including the lady who wanted to leave, had to stay back until 8pm.

The lady broke her promise to bring her children to see the glass Christmas tree display somewhere as it was very late. If I had stayed they could probably have finished it much earlier, and I wouldn’t do it because I wanted to go home and enjoy my evening alone with my dogs.

But this woman is sure she isn’t the one in the wrong.

I did tell the lady that she was free to go if she really wanted to, nobody was forcing her to stay.

If she had anyone to blame then blame the management for not hiring more part-timers during busy periods, or herself for putting work over children.

Packing gifts for another department is not my job nor am I paid for the evening hours doing it, so why should I stay? I have avoided doing this for the past few years and I am still hired, so this isn’t against any company rules.

AITA?

Let’s be clear: this woman doesn’t even work in the packing department, meaning that this is literally not her job.

The fact that she’s being expected to volunteer to work late isn’t just wrong, it could be illegal too.

It’s not her fault the other woman chose to work late, she was free to leave whenever she wanted to – the emotional blackmail is completely out of line here.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person agreed that it was the other woman’s decision to stay.

While others thought that there was no issue in her leaving whatsoever.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who was passed over for a promotion, so got a job with the competition and quit immediately.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that the company expectations might not be legal.

If there is nothing in their contracts stating that these extra hours would be required during the holiday season, then there is no obligation for these workers to stay late. After all, they should be being paid for the work that they’re doing, not working on a voluntary basis. So this woman is right to leave if she doesn’t want to stay. One or two extra evenings a year at an employee’s discretion are fine if they want to volunteer this, but the expectation that they’ll stay late, unpaid, during the holiday season? Totally unacceptable.

This woman’s colleagues might be treating her like a traitor for leaving, even guilt tripping her for the other woman’s kids being disappointed, but what they don’t seem to have figured out is that they’re being completely exploited. Because of their annual voluntary late nights, the company isn’t hiring extra seasonal staff, because they don’t need to. Their employees seem more than happy to do the work for free. They’re being taken advantage of, and by not taking a stand they’re allowing it to happen.