Furious by her manager's ignorance towards menstrual pain, a woman ranted on Reddit and shared how her boss dismissed her leave request during painful period cramps. The woman, who works at a Mumbai-based mental health NGO, shared a screenshot of the conversation with the director.
She wrote that intense pain had begun a day earlier, leaving her in need of rest, and asked if a coworker could step in to handle her one-hour workshop scheduled for Sunday. The director's alleged response was: "Pls don't cancel workshops every week. It reflects very bad on us".
"We have online workshops every Sunday (smh) with another NGO, despite only having Monday to Friday 8-4pm working days. This time, we held a training programme for staff at a college which lasted for two days, Fri and Sat 9am to 4.30pm. I had no choice but to attend, despite dying from the pain because of my period, but I still finished my responsibilities.
I requested for someone in our team to take the Sunday 1-hr weekly workshop and this is what the director told me. No ‘take care' or ‘it's fine'. No feedback on our work yesterday and the day before. This is an NGO in Mumbai which works for suicide prevention and mental health. This is our reality," the post read.
She explained in the comment section that there had been no prior cancellations, noting that two workshops were delayed due to issues faced by the partner NGO, and one more was affected because her team was away at a conference.
Several users noted the irony of an employee at a mental health NGO encountering such insensitivity, calling attention to the disconnect between the organisation’s stated values and how it treats its own staff.
The post swiftly went viral, amassing a myriad of responses.
One user wrote, “I remember working for a mental health startup and boy it has the worst terrible work life balance. I was making a module for grounding exercise with positive affirmations during my panic attacks. It was hilarious if I think about it. Tell them you can't do it, What's the worst that could happen if you don't ?”
Another commented, "Development sector work is toxic. Very few NGOs in India with good work life balance."
A third said, “that is so ironic lmao.”
A fourth user said: “First work on welfare of your employees.”
