'Win win for [me], not the company': Consultant finagles freebee PTO days when manager insist they work on impossible days

Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor

Sep 4, 2023 10:00 AM EDT

Sometimes managers can be a little… ditzy, to say the least. They request things from their employees that are not even possible. And that's exactly what happened to this consultant who posted their story on Reddit.

This OP was working as a consultant at a firm they very much enjoyed. They had a pretty good relationship with their manager, so when they requested time off to travel, they didn't think there would be an issue. And initially, there wasn't. However, three days before they were supposed to leave, their manager asked them to stay. Well, they had already bought the tickets and made the preparations to travel, so, of course, they said no. So then the manager asked them to worked remotely, which was also a perplexing idea since most of the clients did not allow their data to go international. OP tried to remind their manager of this, but they said to work anyways.

So OP did what they were told, and worked. However, since they didn't have access to their clients data internationally, all they were able to do was answer emails. So they got paid full days for answering just a few emails. That's a pretty sick setup, if you ask me!