A TikTok user’s video about bumping into her manager on the same flight after claiming she was at a doctor’s appointment has gone viral.
This flying nightmare has nothing to do with delays or unruly passengers — but it may make travelers cringe all the same. TikTok user @grachevaaleidya posted a video recounting how she called out of work claiming she was sick in order to catch a plane — only to find herself on the same flight as her boss.
“Me taking a sick day from work just to end up in the same airplane as my manager,” she wrote with four crying face emojis on her video, set to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please.”
The clip features a screenshot of a text conversation between Grace and her boss with the content of the messages blacked out, and two selfies: one of her looking cool and collected before she was found, and another looking overwhelmed afterwards.
The clip, dated June 21, has been liked over 33,000 times as of publishing. Fellow TikTok users sounded off in the comments experiencing secondhand embarrassment. “I’d cry like a baby and give my resignation letter 😭😭😭😂,” one user wrote. “Had to catch a flight to get the medicine she needed 🤷🏽♀️😂,” another commented, suggesting a further excuse. Another shared a similar experience: “I thought it was bad when my manager phoned, bc I texted her I was sick. I had to answer the phone while at the airport,” they said. “There was announcements like boarding at gate number… in the background.”
According to Newsweek, who spoke to Grace about the incident, she’s a 23-year-old freelancer who divides her time between Bali, Indonesia, and Europe for her job. When she wanted to travel back home to Bali on a Friday, Grace said she had a doctor’s appointment and called out of work.
“Long story short, I was waiting in the airport line and then I saw a familiar face coming to me which called my name,” she told Newsweek. Her boss asked her: “Oh, so this is hospital?”
Despite the unexpected run-in, Grace and her manager took things in stride. “I was so shocked but we ended up laughing together,” she said. “We ended up talking all the way to the airplane and while we’re inside, he took that picture and sent it to me,” hence the screenshot in the video.
