Most of us have played hookey once or twice (or more) in our lives. Heck, when I was growing up, my parents let me take one day off per school year “just because.”
Usually when you play hookey – be it for school or for work – you call out sick. Whether you blame it on a backache, GI distress, or some malady, it’s typically juuuuust minor enough to keep you away for a day or two, and then you’re back, no questions asked.
That is what Grace, a freelancer who splits her time between Europe and her home in Bali, thought would happen when she called out sick from work in order to catch a flight.
Grace needed needed to head back to Indonesia, so she told her job she had a doctor’s appointment that Friday and wouldn’t be able to work.
“Long story short,” she said, I was waiting in the line and then I saw a familiar face coming to me which called my name.”
It was her manager.
Ummm….awkward!
Grace video posted to her TikTok account, on June 22. “Me taking a sick day from work just to end up in the same airplane as my manager.”
In the video, Grace, sits on the flight with her hood up and a grimace on her face, before sharing a screengrab of (edited out) messages between her and her manager, who had taken a photo of himself, with Grace visible a few seats behind.
Here’s the video:
@grachevaaleidya
Grace later explained that, as a freelancer, she told her work she had a doctor appointment on Friday (the day of her flight), so asked to change her working day to that Thursday instead. They were fine with it. She also let them know that she would be working from a different time zone the following week, because she would be in Bali. Again, no problem.
Unfortunately for Grace, she didn’t realize that her manager also stays in Bali on a semi-regular basis.
Grace said that when the manager, who is usually very supportive, recognized her ahead of the flight, he couldn’t resist one comment: “Oh, so this is a hospital?”
It wasn’t that bad though; she said: “I was so shocked but we ended up laughing together.”
“We ended up talking all the way to the airplane and while we’re inside, he took that picture and sent it to me.”
The aftermath?
We’ll never know. Grace didn’t say if she faced any ramifications for what she did. But she did mention that both she and the manager who caught her on the plane “ended up resigning” not long afterward. She gave no reason, though.
Not the first one
Not surprisingly, Grace hasn’t been the first person to call out sick from work and wind up meeting their boss on the plane. It happened to Australian Leila Soares earlier this year.
In the video, which currently has 17.6 million views, Soares said that she had called in sick to work, making up a health-related excuse for the day off. But the joke was on her when she discovered her boss was on the same flight as her. Here’s THAT video:
@leilabelosoares And a oop #fyp
Soares had thousands of comments, asking or what happened next. She saw her boss but did her boss see HER? What happened next? She finally gave a part 2:
@leilabelosoares Replying to @Silvia Sandino Nieto
It looks as if, thanks to her award-winning acting, she got away with it.
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2 comments
Many years ago in my airline career I was interviewing with a competing airline (which was also in the process of trying to do a hostile takeover of my then current employer). I needed to go to Atlanta on a Thursday, so I told my boss I needed a personal day. He seemed to think he knew what was up with a “the grass isn’t always greener on the other side” call the night prior. Well, of course, there I am spotted the next morning boarding that competitor’s morning flight to ATL wearing a suit….. our airline had people stationed in their gate area at our hub counting the number of passengers on/off each of their flights. Thankfully they just reported it to their boss (the director of the hub)…. she later told me (about a week later when I gave a 2 week notice) she knew it but didn’t share.
This reminds me of the occasion when an employee, where I worked at the time, filed paperwork for an emergency FMLA leave to care for a dying parent. Instead, she went on a Colorado ski trip and extensively posted photos on Facebook regaling her skiing, drinking, and hot tub adventures. Unfortunately for her, her coworkers, also Facebook followers, were quite pissed that they were reassigned the dodger’s workload for the two weeks of FMLA leave. So they took the photos and postings to HR without telling her. Upon returning to work, she was summoned to HR where she reaffirmed the lie that she had been taking care of her sick parent who was now recovering. She was presented with the Facebook postings and was HIGHLY OFFENDED! that the company was monitoring her private life. The HR director replied that the company did no such thing—the photos were publicly published by the offender herself and she had been ratted out by her coworkers. Her problem wasn’t having a personal life; it was lying to obtain a leave of absence and then lying during an investigation. She then promptly resigned without being asked.