In 2024, many professionals are moving away from the “hustle culture” and leaning toward prioritizing their health and personal lives. Work-life balance There’s a lot of talk about this, and people are quick to call a company’s work culture toxic if something doesn’t sit well with them. Something similar happened to a British CEO who denied her employee a two-day wedding leave and posted about it on social media. Tickner, who runs a marketing company, wrote to Threads about her decision, but instead of gaining support, she found herself in the middle of a conflict. social media storm.

CEO’s post goes viral

Tickner’s post, which has since gone viral with more than 3 million views, has led to accusations of creating toxic workplace and “rage-baiting”—the publication of controversial content that provokes a strong reaction. She explained that her employee had already taken 2.5 weeks off and was unable to train someone to cover for them during the wedding, leaving the team to manage two important projects.

In her post, Tickner said she asked the employee to “find a replacement” and train him to perform day-to-day tasks before taking any further leave. She also made a confusing statement: “With our unlimited free time politics, don’t ask next time!” leaving readers scratching their heads over the true nature of her company’s vacation policy.

Unlimited vacation or not?

Tickner tried to clarify her company’s situation. Flexible day off A policy that she said allows employees to set their own hours, work wherever they want and take time off whenever they want. However, this policy seemed to conflict with her denial of honeymoon leave, leading to further criticism.

Under this supposedly flexible system, Tickner explained, “great players don’t respect slackers,” meaning that those who take too much time off lose respect on the team. However, her statements only added to the confusion as people struggled to reconcile the concept of “unlimited vacation” with her actions.

“Corporate Madman,” Says the Internet

It didn’t take long for social media users to understand her logic. Many noted the contradiction in that she required an employee to train a replacement while simultaneously boasting about the simplicity of her team’s processes. Tickner’s attempts to defend herself by saying that most tasks could wait until the employee returned did little to calm the backlash.

One user said: “That’s right, don’t ask next time! She should just tell you that she needs two days off, no matter what. Next time she should tell you instead of asking. And isn’t it your responsibility to find a replacement? Typical corporate madman.”

Another user commented that a manager’s job is to make sure people can take time off: “Well… what if everyone on the team refuses to cover for them? Now my “unlimited vacation” is suddenly dependent on whether a coworker is willing to cover for me, which is a terrible idea unless you have a reasonable, realistic system that incentivizes people to cover for someone else on my team, although we don’t have unlimited vacation time, and people are given 26 days of vacation (without sick leave) – the task of managers is to ensure that people have the opportunity to take vacation,” they wrote.

This post has gotten a lot more reactions and people are constantly calling the CEO about her posts.