It seems like managers are always skeptical about whether or not their employees are actually sick. Perhaps it’s a worker’s inherent guilt of leaving your team in a bind with your absence, but most likely it’s because managers don’t trust their staff. Truth is, most people only have a handful of PTO to use per year, so workers would rather show up ill to the office once or twice a year instead of forgoing their 2 week trip to Bermuda. Alas, when employees are actually sick, it’s never a smooth process to try and figure out how to cover for their shift. In this case, a teacher of an after-school tutoring program learned exactly how far her boss was willing to go to call her ‘bluff’.
When u/HariSeldonwaswrong called in sick to work, she was struggling with some pretty horrific flu symptoms. She was coughing, sneezing, hacking, and fighting a fever– the whole shebang– when she messaged her manager with the news that she wouldn’t be making it in to work that day. Annoyed by her ‘late notice’ (as if she could have predicted the illness’s severity any sooner), her boss simply said, “Sorry, we can’t find someone to cover. Guess you’ll have to come in.”
OP was horrified, but geared up for the grand reveal of her sickness in the most dramatic way– including multi-layered N95’s, sterile gloves, and the most gut-lurching cough you’ve never heard. For more malicious compliance, check out this traveling salesman who gets stuck with a cheap hotel 2 hours outside his city, but makes hundreds of dollars of overtime in the process.
