Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here.

I’ve been with the company for about 6 months. Everyone else on involved has been here longer than me, so I’m still kind of finding my footing. For context, this was the first time I’d ever been asked to work over the weekend—and I’m not someone who normally works overtime unless absolutely necessary. I try really hard to finish everything within work hours.

My team was pulled in last-minute to help another team with an urgent, high-priority project. Despite already having a heavy workload, our boss told us directly that we’d need to work over the weekend to hit the Monday deadline. This was made very clear during a Thursday morning briefing.

Now here's where things get messy: I told everyone on Thursday that I wouldn’t be fully available over the weekend because I was flying out of the country. It wasn’t work-related, but it was something I couldn’t reschedule. I said I was happy to do extra hours Thursday and Friday to finish my part, and everyone (my team + Kristen from Team 2) said that was fine. They said they'd be working over the weekend anyway, they just needed to get other projects out of the way first.

So I busted my ass Thursday and Friday, working overtime. I kept my team in the loop with updates (we’re all remote), though Kristen was the only one actually responding.

Saturday morning around 9 AM, I sent a final update with turnover files and a clear list of what still needed to be done. I was still on the ground at this point, and I reminded them I’d check in again at 5 PM just in case.

By the time I landed (around 1 PM), no one had even seen my message. I sent a follow-up, got no response. 5 PM comes… nothing. Long story short: I ended up doing like 90% of the work myself over the weekend.

Come Monday, everyone suddenly pops up saying they didn’t see my messages because they had notifications off. And THEN they tell me I shouldn't have messaged them on the weekend because we’re a company that "respects work-life balance." That I was being inappropriate for following up.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. Yes, our company has a no-weekend-work policy in general, but this was a situation where we were explicitly told by our boss that weekend work was required. I even made it clear in advance that I wouldn't be around and would front-load my work. It’s not like I was messaging them at 2 AM or harassing them—I sent a handoff, followed up politely, and only because we had a mutual deadline.

So now I’m being side-eyed (virtually if that makes sense) for “crossing a boundary” by messaging during the weekend, even though if I hadn’t, we never would have gotten any work done.

AITAH?