An employee of a «large American technology company» from the Netherlands said that his manager in the United States wanted to reprimand him for finishing work at exactly 5:00 p.m. Aitivets noted that he felt sorry for American employees who have to work overtime due to poor management.
An employee of a «large American technology company» from the Netherlands said that his manager in the United States wanted to reprimand him for finishing work at exactly 5:00 p.m. Aitivets noted that he felt sorry for American employees who have to work overtime due to poor management.
«We recently had a new middle manager from New York. He seemed like a nice guy at first, but it turned out he was completely obsessed with the 'fuss culture,'» the Dutchman said in a now-deleted Reddit post.
He noted that they had a 1-on-1 call where the American stated that he was «concerned» about his commitment to the team.
«He didn’t like that my Slack status went offline at exactly 5:01 PM every day. He was annoyed that I didn’t respond to an email he sent on Saturday morning by 9:00 AM on Monday. And he was especially upset that I refused to join a Zoom ‘team building’ call that was scheduled for 7:00 PM my time, which is 1:00 PM his time,» the IT guy noted.
According to the Dutch employee, he had to «bring the manager back to reality a little bit».
«I looked him in the eye via Zoom and said that in the Netherlands, if you can’t finish work by 5 p.m., it doesn’t mean you’re committed. It means you’re inefficient or understaffed,» the man claims.
He added that both cases were not about him and reminded him that his contract was for 40 hours, not «40 hours plus nights and weekends.» In response, the manager began threatening to introduce KPIs.
«I immediately forwarded the email to our local Dutch HR representative. She literally laughed when she read it and told me to ignore it. She said she would ‘talk’ to him about local labor laws,» the IT guy added.
According to him, after that, the American manager did not send any emails after 5:00 p.m.
«I honestly feel sorry for you guys in the US. The fact that you have to apologize for your life outside of work is crazy for us [Europeans],» the Dutchman added.
