Employee contacts his manager because of an important incident, boss forbids everyone from contacting her in her free time, but also requests things from employees in their free time: ‘She will have to come in on her days off if she wants to talk to me’ – FAIL Blog

Free time for some, unpaid extra hours for others.

​Those jobs that think just because they pay you a salary, that you deserve it because of your work, are entitled to use all your time like it’s theirs. They think they pay for you, like a slave, but no, they in fact only pay for you to work for the hours that your shift consists of. And there is also a common misconception that makes employees believe that just because they have a job from 9 to 5, they HAVE to correspond to bosses and managers before 9 and after 5. Is understandable their position. They probably think that if they ignore the intent of contact, they can get fired or have their career stuck. But actually, there is no right for a manager to be contacting an employee outside of normal work hours. And they shouldn’t do it at all, unless there is some kind of emergency that cannot wait till the next shift.
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What is worse is to have a hypocritical manager. Like in this Reddit story, the boss complained about being reached after hours, even though it was over something that the employee thought was utterly important. But then instead of using that opportunity to set boundaries for everyone in the team, she continues to contact employees after hours for mundane things that weren’t relevant enough to be bothering someone in their free time. This manager had no problem placing boundaries for herself but could not understand that it also applied to the people below her.
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This behavior is so common in management. Being so worried about people knowing when to contact you but completely forgetting that everyone below you also deserved to enjoy their free time without being bothered. As if when they advance in their career. They, at the same time, start to forget the people they met along the way. They forget that once they were also a normal employee who didn’t like to be bothered in their free time. Jobs should have stricter policies about this to avoid having overworked employees. Work is important, but if you are not a doctor, nothing is really that urgent.