Man refuses to cancel approved trip when coworker’s babysitter cancels, manager tells him people with families need “more flexibility”

Having your vacation approved weeks in advance should generally mean you can start looking forward to it. Still, one employee’s plans came with an unwritten condition: whether his coworker’s babysitter would be available.

A 29-year-old man says he refused to cancel a prepaid weekend trip after a coworker asked him to cover her Friday shift because her childcare arrangements fell through. His manager then got involved, suggesting that employees with families sometimes need “a little more flexibility.” 

The employee shared his account on Reddit’s r/AmITheJerk, explaining that he had worked at the company for four years and previously covered several shifts for the same coworker. This time, however, he had already booked a hotel and transportation, and his manager had approved the day off weeks earlier. Apparently, his approved time off was subject to the babysitter’s availability.

His approved vacation suddenly became negotiable

According to the post, his coworker, whom he called Sarah, has two children, ages four and seven. A week before his trip, she told him her babysitter had canceled and asked whether he could work her Friday shift instead.

He declined because he was going away. Sarah then asked if he could at least work until lunch and “figure something out” for the afternoon, but he refused that compromise too. “It’s different when you have kids. You’ll understand someday,” she reportedly told him.

The Reddit poster’s situation echoes another employee’s approved trip, which reportedly became a workplace dispute when her manager tried to make her postpone attending her sister’s wedding. Good luck telling the bride that her sister will have to take a raincheck!

The following day, his manager asked him to reconsider because Sarah had nobody else available. When the employee pointed out that his leave had already been approved and his trip was paid for, the manager acknowledged his situation but added that “people with families sometimes need a little more flexibility.” 

He reminded his manager that he had already accommodated Sarah on several occasions. He argued that having children did not automatically make someone else’s plans less important. The employee went on his trip as planned, but the workplace dispute did not end when the weekend did. 

His coworkers had more to say when he returned

After the weekend, Sarah was noticeably colder toward him. Another coworker called him “selfish” for refusing to help with the childcare emergency and argued that people without children have more freedom, so they should be willing to “give a little.”

That reasoning was precisely what bothered the employee. He said his coworkers appeared to treat his free time as available for reassignment simply because he did not have kids waiting at home. If that reasoning rings a bell, then it’s probably because the internet is crawling with horror stories of parents demanding that other people sacrifice their convenience for their kids. “Having children doesn’t make my time less valuable, and being childless doesn’t mean I’m sitting around with nothing to do,” he wrote.

Reddit commenters had suggestions for the people who wanted him to sacrifice his vacation. “The coworker who thinks you were wrong should have covered her Friday for her,” one person wrote, receiving around 1,000 upvotes. Another added, “The boss too.”

Several commenters suggested that the manager and coworkers so concerned about Sarah’s shift could have volunteered to cover it themselves. Others shared stories of being assigned holiday shifts because, apparently, having no children means having no plans worth keeping.

The employee acknowledged that finding last-minute childcare for two young children could be difficult and that he technically could have helped. Yet after repeatedly covering for Sarah in the past, he wanted to know why his own plans were treated like they were perpetually open for rescheduling. 

His vacation had been approved, booked, and paid for. Unfortunately, it seems that his leave is never truly finalized until Sarah signs off on it. 

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