Tried staying late to finish a project and my boss told me to go home

I was grinding on a presentation for a client in Seattle last Thursday, figured staying an extra hour would impress my manager. Instead, she walked by at 6:30 PM, saw me at my desk, and said "you need to leave, we don't do that here." Turns out the company tracks overtime for liability reasons and they'd rather have fresh work the next day than exhausted errors. Ever had a boss actually force you to stop working?

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schmidt.grace5mo ago

Three of my previous companies had that same liability policy, they even made us sign a form about it during onboarding. But the "soft touch vs. hard floor" thing is kinda backwards though, since the tracking is usually less about caring and more about avoiding lawsuits or insurance rate hikes. Your old manager's sticky note sounds like classic performative praise, which is basically the worst kind of middle ground.

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the_james5mo ago

Bosses like that are unicorns. My last manager called me a hero for pulling a late shift once. Then the next day my coffee cup had a sticky note that said "That's dedication!" on it. Pretty sure they just wanted me to keep fixing their spreadsheet errors. You got a soft touch or a hard floor, no real middle ground with that stuff.

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