An Indian woman recently took to social media to share that she broke down in a meeting with her manager after she was forced to work from the office on Diwali. She wrote in a Reddit post that she works for an American multinational corporation (MNC) in a hybrid mode. 

“I understand at the end of the day we’re just cheap labor for them, but god forbid I believe we’d have some policies that treat us like humans,” she wrote in the post. She also mentioned how American and European employees can happily take long vacations during spring break, Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

She also said that all her team members are working from the office during Diwali, and 1-2 people will be off on different days. The user added that she was hoping to fly home and work from her hometown that week. 

“Until I was told I can’t go because someone needs to be in the office. Believe me, we’re still working on a week we deserve to be off. But now they want us in the office. We’ve saved leaves and WFHs all year for this,” the user said. 

She also talked about the heated argument she had with her senior manager over the situation. “I had a crying sobbing angry argument with my senior manager and asserted I HAD TO GO HOME. It’s the ONE time I get to.” 

She added that a colleague from her team decided to cancel their leave to come to the office as they would suffer the least damage that way. 

Fellow Redditors empathised with the original poster’s plight, saying that for Indian MNCs, everything is 24×7. Some even shared their own stories of working with demanding managers. 

One of the users wrote: “Well, that’s pretty much how things work in Indian MNCs. I do empathise with you, but unfortunately, you won’t find any respite here. Everything is 24/7 and #1 priority.”

“Most Indian manager flex is not optimal resource utilisation, execution or timely delivery. Rather they would flex about all year, round the clock deployment of resources, which is pointless exercise,” a second user said. 

“It is not you, it is your managers. I am an Indian working in Germany. Our project has a small team in Pune, and the managers always keep proudly proclaiming in the meetings that their team is so dedicated that they can work on weekends and holidays as well,” a user commented. 

“Work can wait, Family will not be forever. I always give my manager flying an airplane analogy. Captain and First officer both need mutual understanding- If the manager doesn’t back up it’s team then the plane might soon emd up crashing,” another user mentioned.