Boss slammed for 'unacceptable' message sent to junior colleague on holiday – The Mirror
A boss has been slammed for the message he sent to a junior colleague while he was away on holiday – as he tried to blame the employee for his own poor management skills
Let this be a lesson to us all – we need to start switching our phones off when we go on holiday.
If your boss messaged you while you were on annual leave, would you answer it? Some of us would be all too happy to help our colleagues out even on our time off, but we deserve time to ourselves and shouldn't be made to feel bad if we choose to switch our phones off and disconnect for a little while. After all, you've booked the time off, so why not enjoy it?
That's what one man has been encouraged to do by people online after his boss demanded he "jump on a call" with him, while he was travelling to Spain on his holiday. When he indicated this wouldn't be possible, his boss accused him of not telling him he was on holiday – despite being the one who approved his holiday request.
The WhatsApp conversation was shared in a TikTok video by Ben Askins (@ben.askins), who described the team leader as the "worst boss ever" as he read each message aloud. The exchange began with the boss asking: "Where are you? Haven't seen you at your desk today, need to run something by you."
The man replied to tell his boss he was in Spain on holiday this week but generously offered to "jump on a quick call" while travelling to the airport. However, this wasn't enough for his boss, who responded: "Would prefer to do this in person as I need to go through the slides with you. Any chance we can jump on a Zoom call when you get to your hotel?"
Putting his foot down, the man said a video call wouldn't be possible, to which his boss suddenly pivoted and tried blaming his employee for his own failings. He said: "Damn, wish you had told me that you were on annual leave," but the employee wrote back: "It is all in the system and you signed it off two months ago."
The exchange didn't end there, as the boss claimed it was "poor form" for the man "not to remind" him of his holiday. And perhaps it would have been – except the employee did remind him. "I sent an email round to the whole team as part of my handover?", the baffled staff member stated.
But the manager seemed to have an answer for that too, although not a very good one. He said: "You know I don't really read those. You should have messaged me specifically."
After reading out all the messages, Ben – who is a managing director and regularly shares horrible boss stories, recruitment tales, and interview tips – slammed the boss for his "abysmal management", and said that any employee facing a similar situation should "just ignore" their boss and switch their phone off.
Ben said: "Really poor, like abysmal management. Firstly, what are you doing being so unorganised? Because the problem is when an unorganised manager happens, exactly like this, it sort of hits down to the team below him. What the hell he's playing at, I have no idea.
"Fair play for the team member to try and get involved, but honestly, just ignore it. My genuine advice to all these stories is to just go, 'Sorry, didn't see it, wasn't checking my phone, needed a bit of a switch off'."
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