He lost his job over ‘unplanned leave’ to visit his wife stuck abroad; four months later, his former manager reached out and got shut down

Four months after losing his job, a former specialist thought the worst was behind him. Instead, a late-night message from his old manager reopened the wound, triggered by a blunt, one-star review the employee had posted on Glassdoor.

The message was brief and loaded: “I always thought we had a good working relationship.”
The response was sharper. “Remember when you told me, ‘fu*k my training’? Is that what you call a good relationship?”


Moments later, the manager blocked him. What followed on Reddit was a raw account of how a job unraveled during one of the most difficult periods of the employee’s life and why the review struck such a nerve.

A job loss amid injury, family stress, and broken promises

According to the post, the employee was the company’s go-to specialist for a niche piece of equipment that few others knew how to maintain. Then life intervened. A broken ankle left him unable to work for at least 10 weeks. During recovery, the CEO reached out, but, the former employee says, only to ask about work, not his health.

At the same time, his wife, who is not American, was denied a visa to visit him. He was injured, stuck at home, and unable to earn money. A promised certification reimbursement, discussed during his interview, never materialized, even though he completed the course while recovering.

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Family tensions compounded the stress, prompting him to travel abroad to see his wife after months apart. That trip, he says, ultimately became part of the justification for his dismissal.

Fired for “one mistake” and an “unapproved” reunion

The official termination cited a single error made weeks before the injury and what the company labeled “unapproved leave.” The employee notes that everyone who signed off on the decision was married, a detail he says made the rationale feel deeply hypocritical.

“They could have just emailed me my termination papers while I was traveling,” he wrote. “I would have signed them on the spot, traveled to my wife’s country, and probably never returned to the US.”

Instead, he returned unemployed and has now been job-hunting for four months.

Reddit reacts: consequences, power, and resume gaps

The post quickly drew support. One commenter urged him to ignore the outreach entirely: “Tell them to pound rocks. Some managers learn about consequences the hard way.”

Another zoomed out to a larger debate playing out across today’s labor market. “Because of all the layoffs, reorgs, and acquisitions, they have no moral authority to hold resume gaps against us,” one user wrote, arguing that disrupted employment has become the norm, not the exception.

The manager is still employed. The former specialist is still searching. And the message that reignited it all leaves an uncomfortable question hanging: when companies move on quickly, why do former employees struggle to do the same, and who really controls the final word?