Emily Brown
When you're on vacation, you want to be totally disconnected from work.
The last thing you want is to get a message from your boss - especially if that message is demanding that you come back to work midway through your break.
Thankfully, I don't think this is a scenario that happens too often. At least, I certainly hope it's not.
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It's not completely unheard of, though, as TikToker Ben Askins (@ben.askins) proved when he read a conversation thread between an anonymous employee and their boss, who'd found themselves suddenly understaffed.
“Hey I am sorry to do this so late, but there has been a mistake with the annual leave and I am going to have to cancel the second half of your annual leave this week,” the boss said in the text to the employee.
They went on to explain that the employee would 'need to be in the office Thursday and Friday'. There was just one small problem.
Since the worker had previously had their vacation time approved, they'd already hopped on a plane to another country.
Attempting to remind their boss of this, they responded: “Huh? But I am already in Mexico?”
As it turned out, the boss knew they were in Mexico. They apparently just didn't care.
"Sorry, like I said, there is nothing I can do," they responded. "I am going to update the system now saying you will be in.”
Needless to say, this caused some confusion for the employee who was, as I mentioned, in an entirely different country.
“But I won’t be in?" they wrote. "I am literally in another country, there is no scenario where I can make it back in time.”
The brazen boss wasn't going to back down though, and even took the liberty of checking flights for their worker as they insisted they would 'have to move [their] flights around'.
"I have just checked and there is one on Wednesday evening that you can get," they continued.
It's a baffling demand, and one that left even the worker asking if they were 'serious', but the boss made clear it was 'definitely not a joke'.
"I am not asking, I am telling you the situation," they wrote.
“I appreciate it isn’t ideal but too many people are off Thursday and Friday so you are going to have to be back here by then. I have updated the system."
The employee decided to put their foot down at the end of the exchange, outright refusing to come back and adding: "If you push this I will be reporting this.”
You might be wondering if this is legal.
Well, according to Winston Solicitors, employers can cancel your annual leave at pretty short notice if they have a legitimate business reason for doing so, but they must give at least some warning - and not pipe up when you're already overseas.
The law firm wrote: "Before cancelling an employee's pre-booked leave, employers must give notice, preferably in writing and with as much notice as possible.
"The notice period should be at least the same length as the period of leave booked, meaning if an employee has booked a week's leave, the employer must give notice of cancellation at least a week before the first day of that leave."