A recent post on Reddit has sparked a significant online discussion regarding toxic work environments, boundary violations, and managerial overreach. An employee detailed his manager’s alleged attempts to pressure him into unpaid overtime and even control aspects of his personal life, prompting hundreds of users to share similar experiences and offer advice.
The Manager’s Unpaid Overtime Demand
In the post, titled “My manager expects unpaid overtime, controls my personal life, and told me I’m ‘too young to have a life’ while HR says he’s wrong but cannot move me yet,” the anonymous employee stated that his manager routinely pushed him to work beyond the standard eight-hour shift without compensation.
The employee stressed that the demand for extra hours was not based on poor performance:
“He is convinced my performance is slipping because I do not put in unpaid extra hours. There has been no formal performance warning, no missed deadlines, and no refusal of work. I complete everything assigned to me within office hours,” the user wrote.
My manager expects unpaid overtime, controls my personal life, and told me I’m “too young to have a life” while HR says he’s wrong but cannot move me yet
byu/Efficient_Pen3804 inIndianWorkplace
The Escalation to Personal Life Control
The situation escalated dramatically when the manager began targeting the employee’s personal interests and relationships at work:
- Discouraging Interests: The manager allegedly discovered the employee’s interests outside of work and directly told him he would no longer receive “any new or extra responsibilities.” The manager explicitly said the employee “only work[s] for the money.”
- Dictating Social Life: The manager also objected to the employee talking to colleagues who shared his personal interests, instructing him “not to sit with those people at lunch or during breaks.”
- The Final Blow: The Redditor recounted the “worst part”—the manager’s assertion that because he is young, he should “focus only on work and not have a life.”
The employee summarized the manager’s overreach: “At this point, he is trying to control what I do outside office hours, what I am interested in as a person, who I talk to at work, where I sit at work, and even whether I am allowed to have a life at all.”
HR Acknowledges Misconduct, Offers No Solution
The employee took the matter to Human Resources, who reportedly acknowledged the severity of the situation:
- HR Confirmation: The employee said HR agreed the manager’s expectations were “inappropriate.”
- Stuck in Place: However, HR informed the employee that they could not immediately move him to another team due to a lack of open positions. The user concluded: “So for now, I am stuck reporting to the same manager.”
Online Support and Advice
The post quickly garnered hundreds of supportive responses, with users offering practical advice and sharing stories of standing up to toxic management:
- One user shared their radical policy: “Let me work and I will do wonders for you, try to control me and my resignation is always in my drafts… Am I prioritising the right aspects of my life? 100%.”
- Another commenter recommended becoming a “rebel employee.”
- A third advised maintaining strict boundaries: “Do your job, ignore extra, avoid manager for talk other than job, and prepare to switch if you don’t get to move internally.”
The discussion underscores the growing trend of employees prioritizing work-life balance and refusing to tolerate managerial attempts to control their time and identity outside of their contractual duties.