Employee shares 'boring' WhatsApp chats with boss on leave, WFH requests

An employee shared WhatsApp chats showing his manager calmly approving leave and work-from-home requests.Employee shares ‘boring’ WhatsApp chats with ‘normal’ boss on leave, WFH requests (Photos: r/IndianWorkplace) An employee’s screenshots of conversations with his “normal” boss regarding leave and work from home requests offered a refreshing change from the usual workplace horror stories on Reddit.On r/IndianWorkplace, the employee shared a post titled “One from the manager’s side”, along with screenshots of the WhatsApp exchanges.Explaining his decision to share what he called “boring” screenshots, he said he often saw conversations between toxic bosses and colleagues on the subreddit and wanted to share a few exchanges “from the other side.”“Few WhatsApp exchanges with a couple of colleagues, nothing dramatic, just responding to perfectly reasonable requests for leave/WFH,” he wrote in the Reddit post, adding: “Yes, sometimes the screenshots are boring because the manager is actually being normal.” The screenshots showed employees informing the boss that they were unwell, asking to work from home or seeking leave, with the requests being met with brief and understanding responses.In one exchange, an employee told the boss that their throat had felt better the previous day, but their cough had worsened again at night. They said they thought it would be best to work from home and apologised for the short notice. “Ok, makes sense. Take care,” the boss replied. Photo: r/IndianWorkplace In another exchange, an employee informed the boss that they had started feeling unwell after returning from the office. They had realised they had a fever, adding that they had taken medication and would see how they felt the following day.The boss responded simply, “Take care.” Photo: r/IndianWorkplace Another employee asked to work from home after saying they were feeling low on energy following family functions and would find it difficult to travel to the office. The boss replied, “Ok, no problem.” Photo: r/IndianWorkplace The employee clarified that the post was “not a flex” and said he had shared the conversations simply as a “change of flavour” from the many toxic workplace posts on the subreddit.The post prompted users to discuss what good management should look like. One user said managers should build systems and processes that allow teams to function even when someone takes leave.“If your team can't function without a person coming in or taking leave, it's your fault as a manager that you didn't set up systems or a process,” the user wrote, recalling a former Canadian boss who was strict about getting work done but respected employees’ time outside their working hours.The user said that during five years of working with the boss, they had received only one after-hours message asking for help finding documents on a Saturday, and even then, it had been a 10-minute task followed by an apology from the boss.The screenshots, while showing ordinary exchanges about leave, illness and WFH, stood out precisely because there was no confrontation, guilt-tripping or prolonged negotiation - just straightforward requests and equally straightforward responses.- EndsPublished On: Aug 25, 2026 17:25 IST