If you ask the average person to list, for example, the greatest inventions of all time, then most likely they will mention the wheel, the computer, printing, money, sails… actually, a lot of things, but hardly anyone will mention one truly great invention. Vacation. Yes, that’s right – vacation.

No, just imagine – after whole months of work, you finally plunge into the bliss of doing nothing, relax at the resort, forgetting about all work calls and texts, and even if your relatives turn out to be real petty jerks, no one will overshadow your vacation. You return to the office full of energy, new emotions and inspiration – and are literally ready to move mountains at work. You are glad to see the faces of your colleagues again – but how glad are they?

A few days ago, this instructive story appeared in the Reddit Antiwork community, the author of which enjoyed their vacation almost exactly as described above – however, the return to the office was not as rosy as expected. Now the original post has almost 7.6K upvotes and over 700 different comments – a great opportunity to get to know the tale better.

More info: Reddit

The author of the post once went on vacation so didn’t want to answer any work emails or calls

Image credits: Torsten Dettlaff (not the actual image)

So, the author of the post recently went on a two-week vacation and, of course, in order to take a break from work and gain new strength, they completely ignored all the calls, texts and emails that came from work – including the ones from the boss. In the end, it is the full right of an employee to have a good rest.

Image credits: u/Dogmom200

When the employee returned to the office, they were suddenly sent to HR and got demoted

And so, after these two weeks of joy flew by, the original poster returned to the office, and the first thing they knew was that they were going to have a meeting with HR. Full of bewilderment, they went to the meeting, and left it getting demoted, “a junior employee with no company phone”. What was the reason for such a sharp turn of events, you ask?

Image credits: u/Dogmom200

And here’s the thing. As HR told the author of the post, the boss felt ignored and was “worried about the OP” since they didn’t respond while on vacation. According to a colleague, the boss tried to get in touch with the OP as a third party once had a question for them on December 22, though there was nothing urgent, in fact. Nevertheless, the boss, imbued with the hustle culture, tried to immediately contact the employee, and when he could not, he lost his temper.

Image credits: Taryn Elliott (not the actual image)

The main reason was that the boss couldn’t get in touch with them on vacation so he took it personally

According to the boss, this isn’t the first time the original poster has shown “lack of subordination” and “disrespect” for the higher-ups, so for now the author has received a “verbal warning”. However, this, in their own words, no longer matters, because just at the time of writing the post they’re already applying to new places.

Image credits: u/Dogmom200

Expert believes that if all the processes in the company were built properly, then this kind of situation wouldn’t occur at all

“In general, the situation looks like the company just lost a completely loyal employee out of the blue,” says Kirill Soliar, founder and CEO of web studio Solar Digital, who was asked by Bored Panda to comment on this story. “On the one hand, one can understand the manager’s desire to resolve the issue with the third party as soon as possible. On the other hand, an employee’s vacation is literally sacred, and somehow punishing them for being inaccessible on vacation is really inappropriate.”

Image credits: Anastasia Shuraeva (not the actual image)

“If all the processes are properly built in the company, then the temporary unavailability of even the most important employee will not affect the total performance in any way, because their functions are simply delegated to another colleague.” Kirill Soliar believes.

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People in the comments told lots of similar tales and advised the author to demand written documentation from their boss

We must say that many commenters fully agree with our expert that building business processes in a company is vital to avoid such stories. For example, one of the people in the comments told how, literally six months before their own honeymoon, they warned all colleagues in advance that they would be inaccessible, pointed out all possible critical situations, gave everyone instructions on what to do in their absence – and still, after returning from a two-week journey, faced complete chaos, a pile of unanswered work emails and barely managed to survive it all. In other words, this is, alas, a rather common case.

Good advice was given to the original poster by another commenter – to ask the boss for a written confirmation of the demotion with a detailed indication of what exactly the employee did wrong. By the way, written orders from superiors are in fact incredibly important – because in some situations they can even save an employee from legal trouble.

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As we have already said, problems often occur in companies when a vacation and the unavailability of an important employee lead to complete confusion in business – as described, for example, in this post of ours. And, of course, we’re also looking forward to your comments on this tale. And if you’ve also had to face or witness something similar, then there’s no harm in telling a good story.

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