My manager is one of those older guys that laments not being in the trenches with the grunts anymore and has to leave promptly at 5:00 PM every day to spend time with his kids or he will get nagged.
About a year or so ago the team I was working with got quarantined and the only people left standing out of about thirty people were myself (I was out the week prior recovering from a minor surgery) and my boss (who sits in a private office). We had a huge deadline scheduled for the end of the week with higher ups from corporate stopping by for a demonstration.
I am sweating bullets when I show up Monday and realize the situation. My boss is of course, nowhere to be found. Around 4:50 PM he shows up in the work area and ask me with a big smile on his face “Ready for your one man show?“. I tell him that I have been trying to get ahold of him all day and that he is going to have to push back the demo until the team is ready or he and I are in for a hellish week of all nighters to make it work.
He just laughs and says “Well, you are going to have much more fun working here all night than I will driving my kids to practice” with that used-car-salesman grin.
I am 100% sure that is when I mentally checked out. I got things into some kind of shape before the big meeting, but I started leaving every day promptly at 5:15 that Monday and haven't stayed an extra minute over since.
What was yours?