SINGAPORE: A Singaporean employee has sparked an online discussion about workplace culture after claiming that their boss reprimanded them for leaving work “on the dot”, despite completing all assigned tasks and arriving early each day.
In a post shared on the r/askSingapore Reddit forum, the employee said their boss took issue with their punctual departure, even though they consistently came into the office about 30 minutes before official working hours.
According to the employee, their boss told them that “it’s not very nice” to leave work exactly on time, adding that it gave the impression that they were “running off” or “running away.”
Reflecting on the incident, the employee wrote, “I guess working with an older boss comes with so many disadvantages. It’s pointless to stay if you have completed your urgent work and [are only doing so to] please your boss’s unrealistic requirements. This local culture of staying late after working hours is [just] so prominent in Singapore.”
The employee also said work-life balance did not appear to be valued in their office. They claimed some colleagues regularly worked beyond official hours without overtime pay, while others continued working through their lunch breaks.
“I don’t want to be a workaholic,” the employee added. “But that’s their culture. Yikes.”
“If leaving on the dot is an issue, it’s time for you to stop coming clearly.”
The post quickly struck a chord with fellow Redditors, many of whom flooded the comments section with their own experiences and unfiltered opinions.
One user shared, “Yeah, one of my workplaces was like this—the boss would come in one hour late but stay an additional hour and criticise anyone who dared to leave before him, but also get upset over people not logging into the system before 9 am.”
Another commenter urged the employee to leave the company. “They don’t care about you,” they said. “Find another employer who is better at fostering the well-being of their employees. Don’t put in any resignation notice. They don’t deserve it. That mung hai boss can stay late every day by themselves.”
Others pointed out that, contractually speaking, the employee had done absolutely nothing wrong. As one Redditor put it, if you are being paid from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., there is no “obligation to show up earlier or linger later.”
“This just sounds like a typical boomer boss mindset where you need to ‘show face to show respect’ to them, of course,” they added.
Amid the frustration, some users chose humour as their coping mechanism, offering tongue-in-cheek suggestions on how the employee might turn the tables.
One quipped that the employee should tell their boss, “It is not very nice to pay your salary exactly as stated in your employment contract. Should add a bit more so it doesn’t look like the company is losing money.”
Another joked, “Tell your boss, ‘It’s not very nice of you not to give me a pay raise. I feel like you don’t appreciate me as an employee.’”
A third shared, “I always reflect the energy they give me. If leaving on the dot is an issue, it’s time for you to stop coming clearly because they clearly don’t appreciate it. Unless they are flexible with you being late/leaving early or even give free days off when there’s nothing to do, then that’s a different story.”
In other news, a 30-year-old Singaporean woman has admitted to having second thoughts about her relationship after her 35-year-old boyfriend unexpectedly told her that he would like to split all household expenses equally in the future.
In a post on the SingaporeR Reddit forum, she wrote that she is not used to the “50/50” arrangement because, in all her previous relationships, her partners preferred to be the primary financial providers.
Read more: ‘I cook and do the laundry’: Woman conflicted after boyfriend proposes 50/50 financial arrangement
