'If you miss even one shift you get demoted': Father/Boss forces son to miss the birth of child

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Sep 12, 2022 10:00 AM EDT

It's never a good thing when an employer forces their employee to miss a significant life event in order to assert their authority over the employee's life and ensure that they never dare to question the importance of their work again. Such instances are dehumanizing and toxically reinforce the bizarre idea that our work is more important than our family and health. It's shocking then to think that a parent could do this to their own child who works for them.

Well, that's exactly what happened in this thread initially posted to Reddit's r/AITA subreddit by a worker who was forced to miss the birth of his child. His post was then crossposted to the workplace subreddit r/antiwork by an outraged reader, there the post went viral, earning over 20k upvotes and reaching Reddit's top trending page, r/all. "Holy cow, this sh#t's way too common," the title of the r/antiwork post proclaims.

Commenters lambasted the worker in the original thread for not standing up to his father and leaving his job at his dad's restaurant long ago. They felt that he should have made the call at that moment to end things with his father and go be at his wife's side. They definitely have a point, but it's easy enough to tell someone to leave their job with their parents from behind the safety of a computer screen. The reality of doing something like that is far different. If he were to leave his parent's restaurant, he would be facing unemployment along with probable disownment from his entire family. It would have been difficult to take this step knowing you must take care of your pregnant wife and prepare for the child's arrival. No doubt, the father uses exactly these considerations to exercise control over the entire family.

Yes, the moment he was told by his father to stay should have been when he called it quits and walked out, but it's hard to expect someone who has suffered a lifetime of abuse to be able to walk away from their abusers.

What's your take here? Is the original poster in the wrong as well? Or does the blame rest solely on the shoulders of his father?