When working in retail, or any minimum wage paying job, it’s important to not over-indulge your time and energy. It’s simply not worth it, especially with the current labor shortage. In the world of $8/hour, what the schedule says always goes. There’s nothing quite as obnoxious as a text from your boss asking you to come in when you’ve already made plans for the day that don’t include going to your job. Granted, there are situations where it’s just good will and karma, or an opportunity to follow the “Golden” rule, in which we pick up a coworker’s shift on our off day. Who knows when we could use a return of the favor?
For Reddit user u/MayITakeYourGoat, it was not one of those days. In a recent post on the subreddit “Am I The A-hole,” he asked for opinions on the sticky situation he created between his manager and his coworker. When OP woke up to a text asking him to come in to work because his coworker Brenda conveniently forgot to take off on her son’s first birthday, he bluntly told his manager “No,” and that’s when the name calling began.
“My manager said they needed me to come in because Brenda (my coworker) couldn’t come in.”
So I work retail, this morning I got a text while I was asleep (I didn’t hear my phone go off). So it was a good 2 hours before I even saw the text.
My manager said they needed me to come in because Brenda(my coworker) couldn’t come in.
Her shift started at 2pm, the text was sent at 10am, it was now noon.
I had plans for later that night so I texted him I couldn’t come in.
He told me “well if you don’t come in, Brenda will have to come in”
I told him “I guess she’ll have to come in”
Absolutely savage of our OP to just say “no” without hesitation. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing, but I may have been a little more cordial about it. Reading further, we find Mr. Manager getting a little heated.
He then replied “ok, well I guess she’s just going to have to miss her son’s first birthday then”
I told him “I’m sorry but I have plans”
He then went off on me about how I was horrible and heartless
I just responded “why didn’t she request the day off in advance? Did she forget when her child was born?”
The manager said that they would talk to me the next time I came in.
AITA?
It’s safe to say our OP does not mess around when it comes to his days off. He made a very valid point in asking why Brenda didn’t plan ahead, because honestly, why didn’t she? If this was my situation, I would have told them to just figure it out too, simply because your child’s first birthday isn’t something you forget to take off for, and in my world my “BS” radar would have been going off.
Redditors in the AITA community hopped onto the post with opinions to spare. Mostly everyone stood in solitude with our OP, saying his boss and Brenda were the true A-holes, but a few language and professionalism critics spontaneously appeared to remind OP that he could have worded his responses with a little more class.
Here’s a look at some top comments from the OP:
Our commentators made some good points: don’t stress yourself out over a retail job and don’t let your manager gaslight you into coming in on your day off. Just when we thought the manager was the only one with some harsh words to say, Brenda got ahold of u/MayITakeYourGoat’s phone number, and decided to unleash one year’s worth of anger onto our poor OP.
An update to the OP left us baffled:
so Brenda got my number somehow, texted me about how awful I was, how I could never understand because I’m a “childless man child” and I told her “look, You could have just requested it off” she said “I’m a busy mother, You expect me to remember everything?” I then saw there was really no point in having this argument. I blocked her number. She then texted me on I guess her husband’s number, about how “it’s people like you that ruin childhoods” I also blocked that number. I’ve applied to several other places and am jumping ship the second I get another job.
Find context to the original post here.