I very much depend on my pay check to sustain my life in the long run, although worker protections and a small (!) nest egg make it so I wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of abuse. I see employment as an agreement for a set number of hours of my expertise in exchange for a fee. End of transaction.

The real world is slightly less black and white of course, but that’s the gist of it.

But if $DAYJOB actually keeps you from your dying kid's bedside, is it still there to "sustain" it? Or is it just leeching into your life?

Many of us live in countries with work legislation that disallowes this kind of management.

It seems the poster was aware of that

"That's what I would've been thinking in the shower 2 days after the conversation, anyway."

You can always find another job, even if it's worse than your current one. A prick who thinks my family is less important than a transportation project, and has the audacity to assert that to me, can do the project himself or in the company of spineless worms.