Is my manager out of touch when speaking to me?

Posted by Obvious_Armadillo_16@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 18 comments

I'm in my first full time job and was speaking to my manager about holidays. I've never been abroad because I haven't had the opportunity to. I was going to go away next month but ofc that is no longer happening. In response my manager, expressed their shock and mentioned how they came back from a yacht holiday with their partner (I also have no partner and my manager knows this). It was really awkward and ofc made me feel really down about myself. They were rlly gushing when they were saying it aswell Then I started to wonder why did they even say that to me? I think I'm a bit autistic but surely that's not an appropriate response to someone whose said they've never been on holiday.

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18 Comments

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PsychologicalRun1911@reddit

No. Not out of touch. This is the type of mentality that breeds class division. If someone doing well isn't even allowed to talk to someone doing less well about their personal life than we just end up segregated by economic opportunity and that's unfortunate.

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Obvious-Water569@reddit

Your manager isn't out off touch, he's just a showy prick. You get these from time to time. Just ignore it. Nod along and say how nice that sounds.

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Victorius_Meldrus@reddit

He?

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Obvious-Water569@reddit

My bad.

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Severe_Mastodon8072@reddit

It’s a little insensitive, and a sign of someone who’s a bit stuck in their own bubble. That said I would not assume she was trying to put you down. She just wasn’t very socially aware. Sounds like you can relate to that. Also… > ofc this is no longer happening Why of course?

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TogepiXTyphlosion@reddit

Ww3

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Severe_Mastodon8072@reddit

It’s a likely explanation, was just confused by it being presented as self evident. Many travel plans won’t be affected at all.

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LongjumpingMacaron11@reddit

It's a bit insensitive to talk about how great his holiday was when you've said that have never been abroad, and just cancelled your upcoming trip. I don't understand (as others seem not to) why your upcoming holiday is "of course" not happening. Could you elaborate?

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MrMonkeyman79@reddit

Its a little insensitive to mention his nice holiday when you've cancelled yours but maybe he assumes you'll book another one somewhere other than the middle east. And people will mention their partner to single people, thats perfectly normal, they're not trying to rub salt in your wounds.

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fickle_tartan@reddit

>And people will mention their partner to single people, thats perfectly normal, they're not trying to rub salt in your wounds. Yeah the part about just coming back from a holiday is a little insensitive, but mentioning their partner is absolutely normal. Honestly I'm surprised OP took that bit personally.

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Suspicious_Gift_67@reddit

It either motivates you or you let it get you down

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bellabanjsk@reddit

Why can’t you go away next month anymore?

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Mountainenthusiast2@reddit

Try not to overthink it. I’ve come to realise people say things that are either not thought through or quite frankly meaningless and some will like to talk about themselves. It’s a bit of a showy offy reply but not everyone wants to go on holidays or are bothered by yachts. They just don’t realise that.

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mistakenforzen@reddit

Out of touch and entitled, certainly. Probably not intended to be cruel, just oblivious of how it would come across.

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fortyfivepointseven@reddit

Holiday chat is pretty normal workplace discussion. It's usually uncontroversial, because everyone likes holidays and usually everyone has something to contribute. It's an area where it's okay to disagree with someone else's preferences without attacking them as a person, so there's some back-and-forth to it. It's obviously hard to gauge your manager's tone here, which matters quite a lot, but based exclusively on the text of what you've said, it sounds like they just shared some information that would normally be totally uncontroversial in a workplace context. Maybe it wasn't the best time to share it, but I think at worst this is someone on conversational autopilot where the autopilot just slightly misjudged the landing. I'd say that if you really don't want to discuss holidays at work, that's a preference you'll have to state. People will share their holidays with you unless you say you don't want them to do that.

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Competitive_Test6697@reddit

Why isn't it happening anymore? Was it Dubai. Welcome to work place. Work on letting things slide off you like it's nothing.

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Truewit_@reddit

But out of touch yeah but tbh a lot of people don’t hear themselves when they say stuff like that. They just think “this is a conversation about holidays I will give my recent holiday anecdote now”. Don’t take it personally.

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