A woman found herself at odds with her employer over a first-class plane ticket while on a work trip.
Speaking to Reddit’s r/AmITheA hole, the confused employee asked people on the sub-reddit if she should have handled the conflict differently.
A woman didn’t ask for anything out of the ordinary when she returned home with her “boss” after a conference they had both attended. She was shocked when the lady called her out for her resourcefulness.
Her boss thought she was entitled to his employee’s first-class upgrade.
The frequent flyer said she was booked on the same flight as her manager for the return trip. The two, however, were not sitting together.
Because it was common for her to use her airline’s credit card when traveling, she had accumulated enough points to get a free upgrade to first class and decided to take advantage of it. His boss stayed in the assigned seat that the company had paid for. The Redditor didn’t think twice about it since they were never going to sit together even if she stayed on as a coach.
To her surprise, after everyone got off the plane and stopped at baggage claim, her manager took the time to confront her about the seat change. The woman accosted her and claimed she had shown a ‘disrespect for protocol’ by moving to a first class seat, leaving the employee stunned and confused.
To make matters worse, the Redditor’s superior suggested that because the company had paid the bill for the tickets and she was higher up in the corporate hierarchy, the upgrade should have been offered to her.
The woman thinks her boss is way off base. She called her manager’s expectation “crazy” to use a travel bonus obtained through someone else’s personal credit card.
Nonetheless, she turned to her fellow Redditors to find out if she was wrong.
The first commenter posted, “NTA (not the asshole). If you want to (ensure) in the future, you can always email HR and ask, ‘X happened on this trip and manager Y advised that I should have done Z. Can you tell me where I can review the protocols so I know how to move forward?
The employee admitted that she liked the tactful idea of avoiding telling her boss. She claimed the woman had a history of retaliating against people who had made complaints about her to human resources in the past.
A woman challenged the woman’s unwitting travel companion. She added, “Red flag coming from a red flag. The boss can’t try to pull such a rank to begin with and certainly not when it was your personal expense that got you the upgrade. Also , if they like to retaliate against complaints, they should be fired immediately as soon as the evidence is presented”.
Not only is militarizing your position in the workplace a red flag, it has also proven to be detrimental. This prevents employees from presenting new ideas and limits healthy conversations. That, coupled with the alleged retaliation, is a recipe for a toxic corporate culture and a ton of turnover.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington, and author of seven books. It covers lifestyle, entertainment and news, as well as workplace navigation and social issues..