Need to vent here before my head completely explodes at my desk today.
I (30M) work in a mid-sized local company. Overall the job is fine, but my boss (40s M) has this absolute workaholic toxic habit of having zero boundary awareness when it comes to resting hours.
Last night, I went to sleep around 11:30 PM after a long day of back-to-back meetings. My phone was on silent mode on my bedside table.
At 2:14 AM, my phone screen lights up with a WhatsApp message from him. Out of pure reflex because I was waking up to drink water, I glanced at my phone and saw the notification preview:
“Hi, not urgent at all, don’t worry! But can you quickly update the Q3 revenue projection deck with the new regional client numbers and send it over before our 9 AM management meeting tomorrow morning? Thanks!”
WALAO EH?! 💀💀💀
“Not urgent” but “need before 9 AM tomorrow morning”?! BRO, THAT IS THE LITERAL DEFINITION OF URGENT!
What time does he think normal human beings sleep?! Does he think I am an AI chatbot running on a local server that operates 24/7 with zero downtime?!
The best part? Because I opened WhatsApp in my half-asleep state, the blue ticks appeared. He saw that I was “Online” at 2:15 AM! Two minutes later, he followed up with another text:
“Ah, saw you read! Since you’re awake, can help to check the figures now? So I can review before I sleep. Thanks bro.”
I was literally stunned like vegetable. I immediately locked my phone, turned off my Wi-Fi, rolled over, and pretended I was dead until my 7:00 AM alarm rang.
This morning, I rushed to complete the deck by 8:45 AM and sent it through. When we walked into the meeting room at 9 AM, he looked at me with a smirk and said in front of the whole team: “Wah, someone slept late last night ah? Thanks for the deck, but next time try to be a bit faster so I don’t have to remind you at night.”
BRO. WHAT?! 🤬
He sent it at TWO IN THE MORNING! He speaks as if he gave me a 3-day deadline and I failed to deliver!
It’s so infuriating how local SME culture normalizes this kind of passive-aggressive boundary stomping. If you text someone after midnight, it better be because the office building is actively on fire, not because you suddenly had a random thought about a PowerPoint slide!
Now I’m sitting here chugging my third cup of kopi C kosong just to stay conscious.
How do you guys deal with bosses who treat WhatsApp like an instant command portal at 2 AM? Do you ignore until 8:30 AM, or do you straight up set hard boundaries? Sibei dulan sia.