Woman's New Boss Calls Her 'Unprofessional' After She Refuses To Go On A 'Team Vacation' Without Her Spouse
Forcing someone into team-bonding exercises isn't really the best way to bond.
New Africa / Shutterstock, Reddit via Canva A woman on Reddit recently started a new job where she has already fallen into a conflict with her new boss after she refused to go on vacation with her team at work.
Posting her story to the “r/antiwork” forum, she explained the work environment that she’s a part of and how her boss handled the situation — which was poorly, to say the least.
Her boss told her she was ‘irresponsible’ and ‘unprofessional’ for not coming on vacation.
“I started working in a new company a few months ago, and I really love my job. The team I'm in is very ‘tight-knit,’” she wrote. “They like to go out for drinks, they like to go on vacations together, and they organize team buildings very often.”
Hanging out with your coworkers outside of work can be fun! Work is more often than not a collaborative effort, so building chemistry outside of work can help with efficiency on the clock. But it’s not only about work efficiency — who doesn’t love to make friends?
Photo: Reddit
This woman doesn’t mind the friend-making part of it all, what she minds is the “being forced to” part, and also the “I want to spend time with my family” part, which her boss doesn’t seem to get.
“I was part of one team building 2 weeks ago, and now they are organizing a weekend (Friday-Sunday) trip away; however, they don't allow any families and spouses on these trips, which I understand,” she continued. “Let me be clear — this isn't a business trip — it's a vacation.”
She explained to her boss that, although she enjoys hanging out with them “(even though most of the [time] I'm being forced to participate),” she doesn’t feel comfortable going away for the weekend without her spouse to go party with her colleagues.
“I told her that [I] and my fiance work opposite schedules — he works night shifts and basically the weekend is the only time I get to spend with him,” she explained, “and told her that I'm not comfortable going on the weekend when I spend time with my colleagues 9 hours a day.”
Most people would deem this an understandable reason — her boss is not most people.
Her boss started acting differently towards her at work after she refused to go on the company vacation.
To put it plainly, her boss started being mean to her at the office, writing, “Basically she started acting rude, saying that I'm being irresponsible for my job and that [it] wasn't a family trip — because of people like me we can't be a good team. Also, she said that it's ‘unprofessional’ to not be able to ‘live without my spouse’ for a weekend.”
A lot of things that, quite honestly, don’t make sense here. Why would you be rude to someone for not wanting to go on vacation with you? How is that irresponsible in regard to her job if it wasn’t a business trip? If she’s going to every other team-building activity (against her best wishes), how is it affecting the boss and coworkers? And how is it “unprofessional” to want to spend time with her fiancé?
Photo: Reddit
We don’t have the answers, but it seems like our fellow employee here is looking for some, and Redditors supplied her with ways to deal with her new boss.
The most common theme here seems to be looking for a straight answer on whether or not the trips are mandatory. If not, then it shouldn’t be a problem, but if they are, she should be getting compensated for everything she would have to spend money on to go.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.