CEO Leaves Work At 5 PM And Never A Minute Later, Employee Learns Why He's Doing It And Shares How It's The Opposite Of A Toxic Work Culture

Go home, get some rest, work will still be there in the morning. Don’t all of you Pandas wish that your superiors would tell you something like this? The mark of a good boss is that they know how to lead and manage their employees with support and growth opportunities. And helping establish a healthy work/life balance is key to motivation and job performance.

But, really, how many people have you worked for actively practice what they preach? How many managers have you known who strive to make the lives of their colleagues easier rather than harder? One way that bosses can contribute to positive work culture is to help their employees draw clear boundaries where work ends.

Content creator and work expert Alec, aka @pm_alec, touched on this issue in a viral TikTok video. In it, he shared how a CEO he used to work for would always leave the office at 5 pm, sharp. He later asked his boss why he did this and got the most wholesome answer that we’ve heard in a long time. Check out Alec’s full video below.

At the time of writing, Alec had 10.2k followers on TikTok and had amassed a whopping 576.5k likes across all of his videos. On his account, he tackles a very wide range of work-related topics and dishes out useful tips and tricks for, well, pretty much anyone who’s employed.

The video about the CEO leaving at 5 pm highlights a very simple but essential fact: your boss sets the tone and pace for your work. Like it or not, a lot of your company’s culture depends on how individuals in influential positions behave. How they act. How they speak. How supportive or strict or a combination of both they are. All of this reveals what their true values and priorities are.

To simplify things a tad too much, you can tell if your boss puts their profit or their employees first by looking at their behavior. Of course, businesses are created to make money. However, it also matters how you achieve whatever financial goal that has been set and what kind of team spirit everyone feels.

Pretty much nobody is going to feel comfortable leaving their desk before their boss does. Especially if everyone works in an open-plan office and everyone can see everyone else. However, as TikToker Alec mentioned, his former CEO would promptly exit at the (official) end of the workday so that everyone else wouldn’t feel pressured to stay just for show. The boss would then continue working as needed, but from outside the office.

Perception matters a lot in the job industry. Your future career depends quite a bit on your reputation and people skills, not just your talents and education. Naturally, you want to leave a good impression. Unfortunately, that can mean working a lot of overtime to compete with your coworkers… or pretending to look busy. That comes at the cost of time that could be spent in the company of the people you love, taking care of your health, traveling, focusing on your hobbies, etc. When your superiors signal that, hey, it’s perfectly all right to live for other things besides your job, it’s a breath of fresh air.

As we’ve covered on Bored Panda before, the 9 to 5 work model (aka, clear and reliable opening hours) is necessary for certain businesses like restaurants, hospitals, and others. However, when it comes to jobs in the tech and creative industries, some would argue that this model is completely outdated and creates a ton of wasted time.

The same logic applies to remote work. Certain positions require a lot of eye-to-eye interaction, coming into the office is unavoidable. Other jobs, however, allow professionals to be far more flexible: what matters is the result, not how many hours you’ve clocked in (so long as all deadlines are met).

Some managers believe that their coworkers aren’t as productive when they aren’t physically present in the office. Training employees and helping them grow professionally can also be a hassle when it’s all done remotely. It’s essential to figure out whether your boss’ reluctance to allow for hybrid or fully-remote work is due to legitimate and logical reasons or because they’re stubborn, don’t want to change, and wish to retain as much control over others as they can.

The upsides of hybrid and remote work, as we’ve covered before, include better focus, less commute time, and a smaller focus on in-office politics, drama, and gossip.