I Refused to Work During My Family Vacation, and HR Lost It
Everyone talks about work-life balance, but the truth is most companies don’t really mean it. You’re told to “take time off,” yet they never leave you alone. That’s exactly what happened to me.
I took a long-overdue family vacation after months of nonstop overtime, thinking I could finally relax. Instead, my boss wouldn’t stop calling, and within hours HR got involved.
Hi, good people reading this! I am quite frustrated, so this is going to be a rant. Please let me know if I was wrong here.
I had been completely burnt out. For weeks, I was juggling deadlines, client calls, and weekend emails. Working overtime, 10–12 hours for weeks.
I hadn’t had a proper break in years, so I finally planned a week-long family trip. I even wrapped up all my pending tasks, set up my out-of-office reply, and told my boss weeks in advance that I’d be offline and won’t be taking any work related tasks or calls.For the first two days, everything was perfect. I finally felt like myself again, I was at peace!
On the 3rd day, my boss kept calling me, “We need you URGENTLY! Just 15 mins.” I told him I’ll deal with it later, I’m with my family right now. He hung up on me rudely. I thought that was that, and a future me’s problem.
But no. Within an hour, I froze when I got an email from HR saying I’d “failed to cooperate during a critical situation.” They claimed my refusal was “unprofessional” and said my “lack of flexibility during urgent matters” would be documented.
I honestly thought it was a prank at first, but nope, it was real. My vacation was ruined instantly, and I spent the rest of my days being super anxious.
