Was She Right? Woman Refuses to Give Day off to Co-worker Whose Son Died

Finding the perfect balance of being kind, understanding, and respectful towards your friends, family members, and co-workers, while also not being an overly agreeable doormat can be tough for some people to strike.

On the one hand, there will certainly be people who will try to manipulate your willingness to help them out to their benefit while simultaneously not caring about whatever happens to you as a result.

On the other, seeking approval from others is a very real phenomenon and so is not wanting to rock the boat and ensuring that you aren't being too harsh/selfish. This means that many of us, in the pursuit of doing what is right, can oftentimes allow our feelings to dictate what is "right" situationally.

And in the process, we lose ourselves a little bit and let folks walk all over us.

But what if the situations aren't so black and white and we're not entirely sure if we're making the right move for ourselves, or are just caving to pressure?

That's the question posed by Redditor @Grand-Ad196 who wanted to know if they were in the wrong for not giving up their mother's day off to a co-worker who had lost her son?

OP, who is a 22-year-old full-time student who works a part-time schedule talked about the circumstances that lead to her posting on Reddit and asking for other people's thoughts on the situation.

She says that a co-worker of hers, Linda, had lost her year-8-year-old son in an accident a year prior.

As a kind gesture, many employees (OP included) gave up their paid days off so Linda could take paid time off to mourn her child. She was gone for two months before returning to work.

At the time of the post's writing, OP stated that they had been working at the company for about 5 years, and during that time they had a change in management.

Their new manager allowed folks to take off on Christmas, Mother's Day, and New Year's off, but a list of who would be taking off needed to be sent in a month before.

OP said that she had made plans to make Mother's Day her paid time off and said that several other co-workers, who were moms, asked to trade with her, which she politely declined.

Linda had approached her and asked if it would be all right for OP to switch off days with her because it would be the first Mother's Day she would be spending without her child. However, since OP had already made plans, she apologized profusely and said that she wasn't able to give up the day.

Although Linda seemed initially OK with it, a co-worker approached OP and said that it was really messed up of her to not offer the paid-time-off day to Linda. When OP asked the other co-worker why she didn't give up her own day, she said that she's a mother of five and wants to spend Mother's Day with her kids.

OP did seem conflicted but her boss said that she was entitled to the day as she had family plans of her own. And while she volleyed back and forth in her posts with edits and updates oscillating between whether or not she was going to give up her day to Linda, it seems that she ultimately decided to remain steadfast in her decision.

Which could've been a byproduct of the support she received from a large number of Redditors in the AITA sub, where OP initially posted about the situation.

Many stated it was deranged of co-workers to place the onus of her not having proper time to grieve on a full-time student rather than the company itself.

Others stated that OP is in now way the a**hole, but rather the company for not giving a worker a day off on a Sunday, a Mother's Day, to someone who lost their child in an accident a year prior.

Others said that her coworkers were at fault and no one else has a right to know if you're not working or working on a day off and that's OP's business alone.

What do you think? Does the onus fall completely on the shoulders of the company? Or should OP have gone about things differently? Or if her coworkers were so obsessed with getting Linda her day off, then why didn't they give up their own days?