Some workplaces proudly uphold the motto, “We’re a family,” despite all the red flag signs that statement sends to employees. These words are empty platitudes when upper management doesn’t actually care about workers’ lives outside of their 9 to 5.
One woman on TikTok says her manager’s attempted display of generosity proved that bosses don’t care about their employees, despite what they may claim.
A pregnant worker said her boss giving her a baby gift for a boy when she’s having a girl proves bosses don’t care.
“If you were to ask me how it felt when my boss of two and a half years, whom I’ve worked very closely with, gave me a baby boy gift on my last day of work when I’m actually having a girl, I’d say, ‘It’s fine,’” Hannah Kalmar wrote on a TikTok.
“If you were to ask me on a deeper level, I’d say, ‘It just shows how your job and bosses don’t actually care about you or the details of your life at all,” she continued, then offered advice on how to find true work-life balance.
She advocated for people to treat their job as a job and care for themselves in the process.
“Take the PTO,” she insisted. “Find a new job when they treat you poorly. Clock out and go home on time.”
Kalmar’s suggestions center around the idea that our lives outside of work deserve more attention than our 9 to 5’s.
“Don’t waste energy thinking about a place that doesn’t think about you,” she concluded.
The mom-to-be shared a screenshot of the gift her boss gave her.
“Congratulations on baby boy #1!” The handwritten card declared. “This baby is so lucky to have you love him.”
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The sentiment of the card was truly lovely, but the boss’s glaring mistake seemed to undo any goodwill.
The gift basket was clearly gendered as though Kalman was expecting a baby boy. Both the ribbon and the card were blue. The gifts included a dinosaur stuffie, squeaky rubber sharks, and blankets in varying shades of blue and gray.
“Wishing you the best!” the boss signed off, adding a little corporate spin.
While some argue that gender is a wide-ranging spectrum, the fact that Kalmar’s boss believed she was having a boy signifies that she wasn’t paying attention to a basic fact that the employee shared about her non-working life.
The boss’s mistake highlights that she wasn’t really listening when the mom-to-be revealed an important detail about her pregnancy.
According to Forbes, every workplace and every manager is different, however. Some industries are better suited to more personal connections between bosses and employees, while others are not. And since there is no “one size fits all’ approach, it’s hard to say that this manager was being deliberately obtuse or just sincerely made a mistake.
Everyone makes mistakes, and gifting a baby girl a shark stuffie isn’t the worst of them, but Kalmar’s point holds.
Bosses care mostly about profits and output, not about who you are outside of work. Recognizing that truth allows employees to center what’s important to them. It offers them permission to take that long-awaited vacation and clock out right at 5 so they can get home to dinner with their kids.
By sending the wrong baby gift, Kalmar’s boss gave her the gift of perspective and insight into what really matters.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango’s news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture and all things to do with the entertainment industry.
