My boss texts me at all hours expecting instant responses. It doesn’t matter if it is a Sunday morning while I’m trying to enjoy a quiet coffee or a Tuesday night in the middle of a movie. He treats my personal time like an extension of the office, and for three years, I let him get away with it because I was afraid of being seen as “not a team player.”
The man’s name is Julian, and he runs a high-pressure real estate firm in the heart of London. He’s the kind of guy who thinks sleep is a sign of weakness and that “hustle culture” is the only religion worth following. I’m an analyst, meaning my job involves a lot of deep focus and long hours looking at market trends, but even an analyst needs to unplug eventually.
Last night at 11 PM, I ignored his texts. I saw the screen of my phone light up on the nightstand with four consecutive messages about a minor spreadsheet error that could easily have waited until 9 AM. I felt that familiar pit of anxiety in my stomach, but for once, I reached over and flipped the phone face down. I decided that my sanity was worth more than a middle-of-the-night apology for a rounding error.
This morning, the atmosphere in the office was cold enough to see your breath. Julian didn’t even say hello when I walked in; he just pointed toward the glass-walled conference room for our weekly team sync. As soon as the door closed, he called me “unresponsive and uncommitted” in front of the entire staff. He went on a five-minute rant about how the “modern workforce” lacks the fire to succeed and how I was letting the whole firm down by being unavailable.
I stayed calm, even though my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I didn’t yell, and I didn’t offer a frantic excuse about a dead battery or a family emergency. I simply looked him in the eye and said, “I am committed during business hours, Julian, but I am not on call twenty-four hours a day.” The rest of the team looked terrified, staring at their notebooks as if they expected the ceiling to cave in.
Julian just laughed, that sharp, condescending sound he uses to make people feel small. He told me that if I wasn’t happy with the “expectations of excellence,” I should consider if I was in the right career. He spent the rest of the morning making my life miserable, assigning me three extra reports and checking over my shoulder every twenty minutes. I kept my head down, doing my work with the same precision I always have, waiting for the clock to hit five.
That afternoon, everything changed in a single moment. Julian was in the middle of hovering near my desk, ready to crititque a draft I was working on, when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen, and I watched the color drain from his face until he went completely white. He didn’t just look surprised; he looked like he had seen a ghost as he scrambled to answer it.
The call was from Sir Alistair Vaughn, the primary investor and the “silent” owner of the entire firm. Julian had been trying to land a massive redevelopment deal with Sir Alistair for months, a deal that would essentially secure Julian’s future for the next decade. Sir Alistair was known for being incredibly private and notoriously difficult to reach, a man who valued old-school etiquette above all else.
Julian took the call on speakerphone in his office, but because he was so flustered, he didn’t realize the door was wide open and the volume was up. “Julian,” the booming, sophisticated voice echoed through the hallway. “I spent my morning reviewing the market analysis your team sent over on Friday evening. It was brilliant work—specifically the sections on the West End projections.”
Julian started to stammer, trying to take the credit for the work I had stayed late on Friday to finish. “Thank you, Sir Alistair, I personally oversaw the—” But the investor cut him off with a sharp, dry chuckle. “Don’t bother, Julian. I know exactly who wrote those projections because I spent two hours on the phone with the author last night.”
The entire office went dead silent as Julian looked through his glass walls directly at me. I sat there, calmly typing away, as Julian realized that the “unresponsive” employee he had been berating was the same person who had been privately consulting with his boss. You see, Sir Alistair had reached out to me on my personal LinkedIn weeks ago because he was tired of Julian’s filtered reports.
He wanted the raw data, the truth without the “hustle” spin, and he had asked me for a private briefing on Sunday evening. When Julian was texting me at 11 PM about a rounding error, I wasn’t “ignoring” work; I was actually finishing a direct project for the man who paid Julian’s salary. Sir Alistair had specifically told me not to mention it to Julian yet because he wanted to see how Julian was managing the team behind the scenes.
“I called your personal mobile first, Julian,” Sir Alistair’s voice continued over the speaker. “But you were busy sending frantic texts about a decimal point at midnight. It’s a bit unprofessional, don’t you think? Harassing your best people over trifles while the big picture is being handled?” Julian looked like he wanted to melt into the carpet, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Sir Alistair went on to explain that he was moving the lead on the West End project away from Julian’s direct oversight. He wanted the project managed by someone who understood “sustainable productivity” and didn’t burn out the staff with unnecessary late-night drama. He named me as the new project lead, reporting directly to the board of investors rather than to Julian.
The “uncommitted” analyst was now the person Julian had to answer to for the firm’s most important deal. It was a rewarding conclusion that I hadn’t even dared to imagine when I flipped my phone over the night before. Julian had to spend the rest of the afternoon handing over files to me, his hands shaking as he realized his ego had almost cost him everything.
But the real win wasn’t just the promotion; it was the realization that Julian wasn’t just a bad boss—he was a scared one. In his desperation to look like he was in control, he had become a micromanager who couldn’t see the talent standing right in front of him. He thought that by owning my time, he owned my loyalty, but loyalty is something that is earned through respect, not through 11 PM text messages.
I took the new role, but I didn’t become a mini-Julian. I sat the team down the next day and established a new rule: no work communications after 6 PM unless the building was literally on fire. I told them that I valued their brains, not their hours, and that a rested employee is a brilliant employee. The atmosphere in the office shifted from a graveyard to a greenhouse almost overnight.
We started hitting targets faster than we ever had under Julian’s “always-on” regime. People were happier, the work was better, and I finally had my Sundays back. Julian stayed on in a diminished capacity, and I actually found it in me to be kind to him. I realized that his behavior came from a place of deep insecurity, a fear that if he wasn’t constantly “working,” he wasn’t valuable.
I learned that your worth as a human being is not tied to your response time on a smartphone. We live in a world that tries to convince us that we are failing if we aren’t constantly available, but the truth is exactly the opposite. True success comes when you set boundaries that allow you to be your best self, not just a shadow of yourself at 11 PM.
You have to be the one to teach people how to treat you. If you answer the phone at midnight, you are telling them that your sleep doesn’t matter. If you apologize for having a life outside of your desk, you are telling them that your life is an inconvenience. Stand your ground, do your work with excellence during the day, and then go home and be a person.
Your career is a marathon, not a sprint, and you can’t finish the race if you’re running on empty every single night. I’m proud of the work I do, but I’m even more proud of the person I am when the laptop is closed. I’m glad I flipped that phone over, because it turns out the world didn’t end—it actually just began.
If this story reminded you that your time is precious and your boundaries are worth defending, please share and like this post. We all need a reminder every now and then that it’s okay to unplug and just breathe. Would you like me to help you draft a professional message to set some healthy boundaries with your own boss or clients?
