Exactly this. Imagine one Friday evening, your boss says, “We need this to be done by Monday” You - “Monday EOD?” Boss - “Um, no Monday first half” You - “Th

Exactly this. Imagine one Friday evening, your boss says, “We need this to be done by Monday” You - “Monday EOD?” Boss - “Um, no Monday first half” You - “This seems like a whole day’s work, and it’s already Friday. Are you expecting me to work over the weekend to do this?” If they really need this to be done, they will explicitly make the request. You can choose to say “yes” but this also gives you space to follow it up with “but I hope this doesn’t happen too frequently” or “I understand that this is a crunch period and I’d be happy to do extra this one time”. If you say “no”, you can help them figure out alternative arrangements. None of this would be easy without them making the explicit request. In a healthy environment, the explicit request would come without any of these games, but we’re not always blessed to work in such places.