Unfair in the workplace

[dclpluto]

If you’re drunk and call off from work no problem take your pto.

If you don’t feel like coming into work and call off no problem take your pto.

Your pet is sick and you call off and you take them to the vets and my work finds out- no pay plus points after so many points is disciplinary actions

Your pet dies and you call off from work and they find out no pay plus points.


Your thoughts?

 

[Moliphino]

That doesn't make any sense. If "I don't feel like it" is a valid reason then anything should be. Maybe you don't feel like it because your pet just died.

 

[AprilsZoo]

Guess you just always say you didn’t feel like coming in to work, regardless of why with no further elaboration.

DH who is a VP at his company said, “That doesn’t really sound very fair, or like they want to keep good employees. Calling off for being drunk is where they should be giving the points… “mental health” days are a real thing now, so the ‘don’t feel like coming in’ maybe falls in with that, but that would even wear thin after a while.” He says you should ask to see the employee handbook to look up under what circumstances call offs are subject to discipline and take it up the ladder to HR if policies aren’t being applied fairly.

 

[kdonnel]

PTO should be PTO.

Not sure why companies would require a reason for PTO other then they have policies that are not employee friendly.

I learned a long time ago that if asked why I was out, it is best to answer diarrhea. No one questions diarrhea, no one wants to talk about diarrhea.

 

[disneychrista]

I assume there are other reasons that you get points for calling out besides pets.

I worked for an employer that gave points for any call out that was not related to being sick, but only if you had sick leave available. So both your points examples would incur points.

 

[brockash]

If you’re drunk and call off from work no problem take your pto.

If you don’t feel like coming into work and call off no problem take your pto.

Your pet is sick and you call off and you take them to the vets and my work finds out- no pay plus points after so many points is disciplinary actions

Your pet dies and you call off from work and they find out no pay plus points.


Your thoughts?

Just say your sick and be done with it. If you insist on having some kind of justification; sick can be physical or mental.

 

[tvguy]

I thought the idea of PTO was "no questions asked".
I know my daughter got marked down on her performance review for using too much PTO (mind you, she carried over 10 days to the next year so she had the time) and they are allowed to comment on their reviews and she did note that PTO is supposed to be no questions asked. HR reviews the reviews before they go to corporate and kicked it back and told the supervisor he could not mention PTO use, so it got removed.
Unfortunately, much of my 42 career I worked overnight shift so I took a lot of sick calls over the years. In 1980 my bosses wanted me to ask what was wrong, and if the person thought they might be out more than one day. By 2021 when I retired, All I could legally do was let that person's supervisor know that "John Doe won't be in today".
In the era of when I could ask, or people volunteered why they were not coming in I got some doozies. Dog is having an anxiety attack. Ate a bad sausage. Windshield wipers broken on my car and it's raining. Someone on the staff bought him a bottle of RainX after that. Same guy, locked myself out of my house (and declined an offer of us sending someone over to pick him up). Also hated situations where I got caught in the middle of a situation where someone called in sick, but had long ago exhausted all their available sick and vacation time. It was the weekend so I was the de facto boss and their supervisor asked me to call them back and warn them that this would be a day off without pay.

 

[dclpluto]

I thought the idea of PTO was "no questions asked".
I know my daughter got marked down on her performance review for using too much PTO (mind you, she carried over 10 days to the next year so she had the time) and they are allowed to comment on their reviews and she did note that PTO is supposed to be no questions asked. HR reviews the reviews before they go to corporate and kicked it back and told the supervisor he could not mention PTO use, so it got removed.
Unfortunately, much of my 42 career I worked overnight shift so I took a lot of sick calls over the years. In 1980 my bosses wanted me to ask what was wrong, and if the person thought they might be out more than one day. By 2021 when I retired, All I could legally do was let that person's supervisor know that "John Doe won't be in today".
In the era of when I could ask, or people volunteered why they were not coming in I got some doozies. Dog is having an anxiety attack. Ate a bad sausage. Windshield wipers broken on my car and it's raining. Someone on the staff bought him a bottle of RainX after that. Same guy, locked myself out of my house (and declined an offer of us sending someone over to pick him up). Also hated situations where I got caught in the middle of a situation where someone called in sick, but had long ago exhausted all their available sick and vacation time. It was the weekend so I was the de facto boss and their supervisor asked me to call them back and warn them that this would be a day off without pay.

It use to be that way until the state took over the pto days about 6 years ago or so. The state has reasons why you can call off. Sick or a family member sick, you have a medical appointment or taking a family member for medical appointment, school or day care closed for the day, something like you have covid or child has covid.

 

[dclpluto]

Guess you just always say you didn’t feel like coming in to work, regardless of why with no further elaboration.

DH who is a VP at his company said, “That doesn’t really sound very fair, or like they want to keep good employees. Calling off for being drunk is where they should be giving the points… “mental health” days are a real thing now, so the ‘don’t feel like coming in’ maybe falls in with that, but that would even wear thin after a while.” He says you should ask to see the employee handbook to look up under what circumstances call offs are subject to discipline and take it up the ladder to HR if policies aren’t being applied fairly.

HR doesn’t know the person is calling off because they are drunk. They just call off work sick but some of the people they work with know the real reason. I guess they are sick from drinking too much.

 

[dclpluto]

Guess you just always say you didn’t feel like coming in to work, regardless of why with no further elaboration.

DH who is a VP at his company said, “That doesn’t really sound very fair, or like they want to keep good employees. Calling off for being drunk is where they should be giving the points… “mental health” days are a real thing now, so the ‘don’t feel like coming in’ maybe falls in with that, but that would even wear thin after a while.” He says you should ask to see the employee handbook to look up under what circumstances call offs are subject to discipline and take it up the ladder to HR if policies aren’t being applied fairly.

The people who don’t want to come to work call off work and say they are sick. The same people who gets sick on Fridays a lot.

 

[Travel60]

I have a feeling there is more to the story than OP included. Employers need and deserve to know that employees will show up ready to work on most days. Especially if it's a position that interacts with customers or whose absence impacts other employees

I once fired a guy who failed to show up on a Monday three times in two months in his first six months of employment. Each time had a "plausible" reason but put the frequency together with the fact that each occasion followed a beautiful summer weekend ..... I didn't need that.

 

[tvguy]

It use to be that way until the state took over the pto days about 6 years ago or so. The state has reasons why you can call off. Sick or a family member sick, you have a medical appointment or taking a family member for medical appointment, school or day care closed for the day, something like you have covid or child has covid.

Covid was an HR department nightmare. Due to privacy laws, you couldn't say when someone had covid, but they disappeared from the schedule for two weeks. And then anyone that worked around them would get a call and were told "someone you had contact with has covid" because they were required by law to do that. Hmmm, Johnny is off the schedule for two weeks, I was around Johnny, and someone I was around has covid. Do the math.

 

[dclpluto]

I have a feeling there is more to the story than OP included. Employers need and deserve to know that employees will show up ready to work on most days. Especially if it's a position that interacts with customers or whose absence impacts other employees

I once fire a guy who failed to show up on a Monday three times in two months in his first six months of employment. Each time had a "plausible" reason but put the frequency together with the fact that each occasion followed a beautiful summer weekend ..... I didn't need that.

What is more to the story? If you call off work sick and they find out you wasn’t sick but it was your pet who was sick or has died you get points. You keep your mouth shut but if they find out you then get the points.

 

[shh]

If you’re drunk and call off from work no problem take your pto.

If you don’t feel like coming into work and call off no problem take your pto.

Your pet is sick and you call off and you take them to the vets and my work finds out- no pay plus points after so many points is disciplinary actions

Your pet dies and you call off from work and they find out no pay plus points.


Your thoughts?

That is truly awful. I could never work for a place like that. When I worked, I always pitched in to help with the workload for employees who needed a LOT of time off for their kids, parents, siblings, etc. In turn, I'd expect them to support me if I needed time to tend to a sick or dying pet - pets are family members to many people - especially today, with so many people living alone - single, divorced, child-free, etc.

 

[emmybee]

How would the employer find out if you were home d/t a pet? If my pet died, I may very well be bereft with grief and therefore unable to work. If I'm not well, I'm not well. My work doesn't need to know why.

 

[bcla]

Where I've worked we generally never had to say why we wanted a day off, but technically at one place we had just PTO that wasn't specified. It could theoretically be used for anything including holidays (some were automatically taken unless we asked to come in). But informally we just told our manager that we weren't coming in because of illness or medical visits, and they didn't really care as long we didn't lie about it. Later on there was a specific requirement in state law for 5 days of sick time, and occasionally I'd tell HR I was sick and they got some sort of tax break out of it.

But once my dog died and when I called in my manager said take the day off and don't worry about reporting it. There might have been one other time I got a day off like that, but it wasn't a pet dying.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

There were pros and cons to when I was at the insurance company. PTO was a don't ask don't tell policy. Your supervisor couldn't ask the reason for you taking PTO. Same-day PTO usage could get you into issues; it needed to be available in usage and they could use it as a performance metric depending on the supervisor but why you called out was your business and your business alone. But on the flipside even if you had someone sick even in the hospital, someone in an accident and you needed to leave immediately if it was same-day it could be used against you.

Some policies could depend if you were hourly vs salary too. My husband has always had so much flexibility in PTO usage than I ever have with being salaried compared to me being hourly.

 

[Magical2017]

"I am not going to be able to come in today. I have a personal matter I need to attend to and wanted to let you know." That's all they need to know. If your pet or child are sick, you are sick, or you want to binge watch every episode of The Office, that is not anyone's business but your own.

 

[DawnM]

I am the wrong person to ask. When I worked in public education in CA, we got 10 sick days per year. They didn't care if it was mental health or physical sick, they just said to call in sick and they didn't care the reason.

NC is different and they want to know the exact reason. It is ridiculous. I am still in CA mode and will call in sick when I need a day and none ya business! But I have been told that is lying. I just don't see it that way.

I say take your days, don't explain, and just enjoy!

 

[_19disnA]

Every company/business makes their own rules regarding attendance/vacation days/paid vs. unpaid personal time off. A lot of factors go into a company's decision on how such things are handled. It isn't a topic where you can ask a hypothetical question and then expect everyone to be talking about the same thing. Depends on where you work and what rules they have regarding attendance.

While you may have an opinion on how something SHOULD work, what matters are the rules of the specific place where you work.