Woman has bad maternity leave because she 'failed' to set boundaries.
When this mom is annoyed with her boss, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for not answering any contact from work while on maternity leave?'
I work for my cousin. We're in the same field, but he owns a business. I started working for him 5 years ago and worked my way up to second or third in command at his fairly small company.
I took 9 months of maternity leave, starting 2 weeks before my due date. My child is now 6 months old, meaning I am currently in my 7th month of leave, and go back to work in about 10 weeks.
During the last 7 months, there's been a few crises at work. They called me and I fixed it. They should not have been doing this, due to my maternity leave, but I didn't mention it because these were legitimate crises, and most of the time it was my cousin asking.
However, because I'm entering the end of my leave, I want some time completely free of work, to recharge before I have to dive back in. So, starting 2 weeks ago, I stopped answering my phone.
At some point it died so I put it in a drawer, and haven't plugged it in since. I have a landline for emergencies, a laptop to keep in touch with people, and a TV for entertainment, so I'm enjoying the break from the phone without issue.
However, my cousin tried to call me about a week ago to get help with a client I handle. I had passed this client on to someone else, but something went wrong, my cousin called me to help, and because I didn't answer, we lost the client.
I knew their contract was up for renewal, but I didn't think there would be any issues, so I saw no reason to check my phone.
My cousin has told our family what happened. He's furious with me for not having my phone turned on when I knew that client would be up for renewal.
He also says that as I had been answering my phone this whole time, I should have warned someone that I would be uncontactable. I have called the client and tried to fix it, but they've already signed on with someone else.
My cousin, wanting to stop this from happening again as several more clients are up for renewal in the next couple months, has said I have to be available for the next couple months, so he can call me if there is another issue.
I've said that I am on maternity leave, and therefore I should be left alone, so I will be leaving my phone off, and it's shitty of him to ask otherwise.
My cousin said that I was being selfish and accused me of trying to fuck him over, and my mother and aunt agree with him, saying if I don't answer my phone, there may not be a company to come back to, and accused me of taking advantage of him because he's my cousin, as anyone else would have fired me over this.
I've responded that if my cousin can't run his own business without me, then he's incompetent and shouldn't be in charge of an omelette, let alone a company.
They said that was uncalled for, and told me to switch my mobile on now so he can call me if he needs, but I'm still refusing. AITA?
Let's find out.
buttercreamganache writes:
You're NTA here. They all are, for calling you selfish when you appear to singlehandedly be holding the company up, and he can't even give you the time to relax and recharge a bit after you gave birth amd have leave.
Leave means leave me the hell alone. Leave means unreachable.
You were kind enough tp help in a crisis, but christ, he needs to handle his own crap.
If he loses a client and may lose more just because you're not there to renegotiate contracts, that is HIS problem, being the one in command, no? He needs to get better at his job then.
Not call you on your time off to do it for him. Honestly, if you can, go somewhere you are appreciated for all that you do and not bullied and gaslighted when you're not around to do everyone elses job for them.
He does not sound like the type that would hesitate if roles were reversed and he got a better offer.
elburcho writes:
YTA - Disclaimer: no workplace should expect an employee of any kind to be contactable during any form of leave be it annual leave, sick leave or maternity/paternity leave.
Where I think YTA here though is that by not saying from the start that you were uncontactable, you created the expectation that you would be available to some degree.
You should have nipped it in the bud at the beginning. It is also perfectly reasonable of you to get to a point down the line where you say 'enough is enough' and tell them that for the remainder of your leave you will not be contactable, but to just go no contact without alerting anyone was not professional.
mothership1238 writes:
ESH. He shouldn't have called you on maternity leave, but you had been answering the phone all through the previous 7 months.
I don't think anyone can blame him for expecting you to still be taking work calls at the end as well. You should've just made it clear at the beginning that you weren't going to take any work calls at all.