Worker says her boss asked her to host his wife, toddler, and dog for a week — and the update only made the company’s favoritism look worse

A woman on Reddit said one text from her boss managed to capture everything that already felt broken about her workplace. In a story later collected by r/BestofRedditorUpdates, she wrote that a higher-up she calls “Bob” asked whether she could host his wife, toddler, and dog at her house for a full week during a January work trip, with the company maybe covering hotel costs as an afterthought if that did not work out. She said the request left her “gobsmacked,” not only because of how personal and presumptuous it was, but because it came from the same workplace where she says she had just been silently demoted after having a baby while Bob kept getting promoted for being seen as a “family man.”

According to the BORU post, the bigger issue was not one inappropriate text. It was the double standard around parenthood. She wrote that Bob’s wife became a stay-at-home mom, and after that he kept rising in the company despite showing up late, missing more work, and being hard to reach. Meanwhile, she said having her own child became a reason for leadership to treat her like less of an asset rather than more of a proven one. In one comment preserved in the thread, she put it bluntly: Bob has “a dick” and she has “a vulva,” and that seemed to explain why his family life made him look competent while hers made her look like a liability.

She also said the ask was wrapped inside a much more dysfunctional office structure. In her telling, the CEO, whom she nicknamed “Dick,” had already made a habit of playing favorites, rewarding men for behavior women would be punished for, and creating financial problems inside the company with what she described as “stupid stunts.” She wrote that she had been looking for another job already because of a separate incident involving him just three weeks before the housing request. So when Bob texted asking to move his whole family into her home, she did not read it as one clueless favor. She read it as another reminder that the men above her expected her personal life to stay open for their convenience.

The BORU thread also makes clear why the logistics felt so insulting. She said her house was fairly large, which may have made leadership think she was an easy target, but she was also a working mother with a young child and a home life that was already stretched thin. In a reply quoted in the post, she said the company may have been trying to save money on Bob’s travel by quietly shifting the burden onto her. She also pointed out that Bob seemed to drag his “entourage” along on work trips even though he often did very little actual work once there. The whole setup, in her account, made it look like his family responsibilities were treated as something the company should accommodate, while hers were treated as a problem she should quietly absorb.

The update posted on December 29, 2025, did not suddenly turn the story into a neat HR win. Instead, it made the environment sound even more chaotic. She wrote that she had already said no, had interviews lined up, and was counting down to a “boss-free home next week.” In the comments preserved in BORU, she also said what had happened to her occupied a legal gray area because the company had fewer than 50 employees, which complicated what protections might apply. Readers in the thread mostly focused on the same thing: whether or not the company could be sued, the culture clearly looked rotten.

What makes the story stick is how specific the request is. A bad boss asking too much is common. A boss asking an employee to house his wife, toddler, and dog for a week feels almost cartoonishly entitled. But the update trail is what gives it weight. This was not one ridiculous ask floating in a healthy company. It was one ridiculous ask inside a workplace where a mother says she was demoted after childbirth while a man was celebrated for the same milestone, where favoritism shaped promotions, and where basic professional boundaries had already collapsed. By the end of the BORU discussion, the housing request barely felt like the real story anymore. It felt like the perfect summary of a company that had already decided some people’s lives mattered more than others’.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1q4cmus/my_boss_just_asked_me_to_host_his_entire_family/