my boss asked me to join a work call on my day off … then stood me up

A reader writes:

I have a weird, complicated relationship with my boss, Amelia, who is part of the C-suite. We have very different working styles. We are both from the same Latin American country but both of us live and work in the U.S.

Last week, she asked me to join a call with her and the CEO of our company in another country. The CEO suggested Friday but Amelia said she was taking that day off and suggested Monday instead. Monday was a holiday for both her and me, but she was traveling to a different country so she was going to be working anyway.

When I pointed out that it was a holiday, she said, “Oh come on, it’s only 30 minutes.” This made me feel like my day off is not as valuable as her day off. But I was going to be the least senior person on the call so I figured I’d just do it.

I spent the whole morning of my day off thinking about the impending call and when it finally arrived I dutifully connected, and so did the other country CEO. Amelia didn’t show.

The CEO and I ended up having the meeting ourselves.

Two hours later, Amelia sent me a Teams message saying, “Sorry, I was in an in-person meeting that ran long.”

So here are my thoughts:

– This meeting was clearly not as urgent as she made it seem. Otherwise she would’ve shown up. If it was not urgent, we could’ve had the call the next day.

– I could’ve had the meeting without her in the first place and had it on Friday as the CEO suggested, without having to work on a holiday.

– I know different cultures see time and especially other people’s time differently. But she and I are from the same country, so I don’t think this is cultural.

Am I justified in feeling enraged? I feel frankly disrespected but I’m not sure if this is just a minor inconvenience or if I’m right to be deeply offended. And if I’m right to be deeply offended, do I say something to her and how would you word it?

I need a reality check and would appreciate your opinion.

I don’t know that deeply offended is warranted, but deeply irritated? Absolutely.

The most generous reading of what happened is that because it was a work day for Amelia, she lost track of the fact that it wasn’t a work day for you. But that doesn’t make it okay; it’s absolutely not.

In fact, it wasn’t okay for her to ask you to take the call on a holiday in the first place, unless the meeting topic was truly urgent and had to happen that day. Maybe that was the case, I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like it since when you tried to push back, her answer was “it’s just 30 minutes” — not something else that would explain and justify the urgency like “I know it’s not ideal, but unfortunately we’ve got to finalize the proposal before it’s due to the client the next day.”

Regardless, once she had asked you to set aside time on your day off, she really needed to show up for that call — or at least let you know it wasn’t happening. Not doing that was disrespectful and rude. And then it was compounded by how casual she was about it later; she should have profusely apologized and acknowledged that you were waiting for her on your day off.

As for whether you should say something to her about it … I don’t know that there’s a lot of point to it, but if you want to, you could say, “What happened on Monday? I was supposed to be off but set aside time to meet when you said you needed me to.” But with the way she’s already handled it, I’m skeptical that she’ll get the message.

There’s more value in thinking about what patterns you see from her generally: is she regularly disrespectful of your time? Does she not respect your off hours in other situations too? Does she assume her schedule should be your schedule, or that you should never object to giving up off time to make life more convenient for her? There are a lot of different patterns that could be in play, but identifying what they are will help you figure out what boundaries you need to set with her going forward. And in particular, if in the future she asks you to schedule work on a day you’re supposed to be off, you might make a point of already having an unmovable conflict.

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