The British CEO of a marketing company has come under fire for denying two days of leave to an employee getting married. Lauren Tickner has been accused of ‘rage baiting’ the audience with her poorly-worded post on Threads, where she claimed that her employee was denied time-off due to not training a replacement. She then tangled herself in contradictions while attempting to justify her stance.
If rage-baiting was indeed Tickner’s end goal, she succeeded with aplomb.
Her post has registered over 2.9 million views in two days on Meta-owned Threads, where many accused the CEO of Scale Systems to creating a toxic work environment.
What the CEO said
Lauren Tickner initially said that she denied two days of leave to an employee who was getting married as they had already taken 2.5 weeks off and had not trained their replacement to take over in their absence. She explained that the team had two critical projects to complete.
Tickner said she asked the employee to “find a replacement” and “train them on your daily to-dos” before going on leave.
“With our unlimited time off policy, don't ask next time!” she wrote.
{{/usCountry}}“With our unlimited time off policy, don't ask next time!” she wrote.
{{/usCountry}}Readers were very much confused by her contradictory statements on leave policy. While Tickner initially denied two days of leave, she also told the employee that they need not ask her for permission next time and could use the company’s “unlimited time off policy” for their leave.
Flexible Time Off policy
The London-based CEO of Scale Systems also explained in detail her company’s policy on unlimited time off. “It's called Flexible Time Off. (The opposite of micromanagement & outdated policies),” she wrote.
Under this system, employees can set their own work hours, work wherever they want and take “take days off when they choose.” She said that the biggest benefit of this policy is that “A-players don't respect slackers.”
“Anyone taking too much time off loses status,” Tickner said, adding that the flexible leave policy creates trusting teams.
Many contradictions, much backlash
However, social media users noted that she had contradicted her own stance by denying time off to an employee.
Faced with a storm of criticism, Tickner tried to explain her stance. “When I say ‘find a replacement and train them on your daily to dos’ I literally meant: show them your checklist and have them follow it. Everything is documented,” she said.
Her replies to the backlash she received only left her followers more confused than before even as she repeatedly insisted that people “read till the end.”
“I did read all of it. Why would you require an employee to train someone else to do their job just to take a day off?” asked one person.
“We don’t require that. We have processes that anyone on the team can follow to get the job done. So they’d just ping someone and say ‘hey could you do XYZ for me today?’ It’s very simple and efficient,” Tickner replied. “Most tasks don’t need to urgently be done daily tho, so it can wait til they’re back from their day(s) away!”
The explanation did not go over well with users who said she was only contradicting her earlier statements.
“She said it quite plainly that the employee must train their replacement. Now apparently it's a job their co-workers can do. You're rightly confused because she's flat out contradicted herself,” a user pointed out.
“So you offer unlimited time off but refuse time off for the biggest day of their lives ? And why is it your employees job to train someone to replace them it’s yours surely,” another wrote.
The British CEO was also accused of ‘rage-baiting’ for increased engagement as people accused her of intentionally creating a poorly-worded post.
“Train a replacement for 2 days? To get married? If your team can't function without one person for TWO DAYS, and you can’t help with their tasks or delegate them, then you aren’t running your team very well. I hope this post was rage bait because it’s gross,” a user said.