Employee told to keep phone on and attend work meetings despite being on holiday

An employee was surprised to find they were expected to keep their phone on and attend work meetings despite being on holiday.

Posting on Reddit, the employee explained that they had annual leave booked before they moved to another team and while their new boss wasn't pleased about it they agreed it wouldn't be rescheduled.

They said: "I recently moved to another team with the company I’ve worked with for the last two and a half years. Before I got promoted I had this last week booked off to visit my sister and first niece which was a big deal to me.

"The new team was informed as well but I could tell my new supervisor was annoyed by it. He even asked if I could reschedule but I said I could not."

So, they went on their holibobs but when they turned on their phone they discovered that they had been inundated with messages from their manager who wasn't best pleased.

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"Today we are having a lazy day and I decided to flip my work phone on to see if I had any emails to start prepping for next week. I had 20 voicemails and hundreds of messages and emails with over half of them being from my manager demanding why I hadn’t zoomed in for meetings and why I wasn’t reachable.

"I checked my phone voicemail and the unknown number was him saying he 'hoped there was a damn good excuse for why I was off the grid' if I wanted to keep my job. He even started out the voicemail with 'I’m so sorry you’re in the hospital because that’s the only reason I should be needing to hunt you down like this.' In slack I had a few dms from coworkers I feel I get along with saying I need to reply ASAP because my absence was impacting them with how mad our boss was."

Unsurprisingly, the employee was pretty freaked out by the messages.

"This is my first time not being in an entry level position and I’m freaking out," they wrote.

"Is the standard that vacations are still worked on? Did I mess up by turning off my work phone? Tomorrow is a holiday for the whole office so I might not be able to fix things until Tuesday, am I going to get fired? When I was in the other department days off meant days off so I’m just scared I’m missing something and a huge asshole to my boss and team."

But reacting to the story, people assured the poster that they were not in the wrong.

"Keep the messages and go to HR. You were on an approved vacation. He has no right to your time when you're off the clock," one commented.

"It is your vacation time," another said. "You earned it as a time-off benefit to your company, and they need to respect that. It is on them if there are things that are left unanswered that they haven't sorted out after you leave on vacation."

And a third said: "This is bizarre. You're on vacation - your time should be your own. You're not getting paid, why should you be working? The line about the hospital really gets me - does this guy expect you to be zooming in if you're just at home sick?"

Oof.

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