Can you predict if you’ll catch a cold in the next week? Or foresee a stomach bug a week ahead? Clearly, that’s not possible.
So when a manager in India informed an employee that sick leave requests must be submitted seven days in advance, it left many people around the world puzzled. The employee shared a screenshot of their conversation with the manager on the “antiwork” Reddit forum.
In the screenshot, the employee notified the manager: “My health is not well, so I won’t be coming to the office.”
The manager then asked if the employee intended to take sick leave. After confirming, the manager responded: “To take sick leave or casual leave you need to inform at least 7 days prior.”
“How to know if I am going to be sick in the next 7 days?” the employee questioned in their now-famous post.
The conversation sparked a range of reactions in the comments.
“Send an email every day: ‘This is to inform you that I may get sick seven days from now and may thus need to use sick time,’ See how long it takes,” one Reddit user suggested.
“Malicious compliance time…..every Monday morning submit a preemptive sick leave notice, then cancel it the following Monday when you submit a new one,” another user agreed.
Others shared their own encounters with unreasonable company policies. “I used to work in a supermarket. One day I had an evening shift. At some point in the early afternoon, I fell down a flight of stairs and had a bruised knee and a minor concussion. I called in sick and got told I needed to come in anyway or be written up because calling in sick must happen before 8 am. Yeah, I’ll schedule falling down the stairs next time,” a Reddit user recounted.