aka: Please spend an hour in transport so you can spend 10 minutes fixing the issue while we breath down your neck and constantly ask stupid questions that won't help us solve anything.
"Everything has gone to hell and we're panicking and need to feel like we're doing something so we're calling all of our remote workers in and wasting lots of time in the process."
That's the usual reason for me having to go to the office.
"There's an all day meeting we need you in for. It's not relevant to you, and we expect you to work on other things while you are in, but we feel like its beneficial for you to be here."
"Using words to describe the problem I had would be too much trouble, it would be easier for you to drive an hour to get here so maybe you can see it if it happens again."
Your boss is stupid. Does he want you to come in and cough your filthy germs into the rest of the office, or to take the day off entirely? There are plenty of states of "sick" where I'm not going to the office (contagious, constant need for the bathroom, headache exacerbated by fluorescent lights) but could get most or even all of a regular days work done at home.
I think the point is that if you're going to be sick, you should be sick and not shouldn't work at all. Not that you have to come to the office and work rather than work from home.
No, his boss isn't stupid, he's exercising the "duty of care" part of being a decent boss. If you're sick, you should stay home and recover, whether you think you can be as productive or not (from personal experience of breaking this rule - you probably won't be).
Meh. From personal experience, taking motor transport makes me throw up if I'm at all sick, but I'm otherwise usually fine. If my choice is "do nothing, or spend 90 minutes commuting to and from work" then I'll do nothing. If I can work from home, I'll pretty much have a normal work day.
Same here - in fact, I've had to say this to members of my own team recently. It's strictly forbidden by HR - if you're sick, you take days off until you're better, so you are not putting yourself at risk of getting worse/prolonging the issue by not getting the rest you need. WFH is not there as a handy tool to avoid recording sick leave.
What a shitty place. If you feel under the weather, you're starting to get some sniffles or a little bit of a sore throat, just work from home. Sick time is for when you are actually sick, work from home is a tool for when you might be getting sick so you don't spread it.
Personally, I don't need excuses, I work from home whenever. It does seem that it is a rare place that treat's its emplpoyees as adults though.
I think it matters a lot whether sick days are tracked. If they aren't, taking a sick day when you're under the weather, so you're on your feet tomorrow, is entirely reasonable. If they are, then you're wasting an allocated sick day, yes.
Does your employer not treat its employees as adults? Shouldn't adults be able to be honest about how many sick days they need, without tracking?
Sick and I don't feel the best are different things. Sick I need to stop and rest, I don't feel the best could be I didn't sleep much the night before or I could be coming down with something. Neither of the latter requires me to stop working, causing work to pile up for myself and others on the team. I do however, have the option of playing it safe and trying not to infect others while also not causing a back log of work.
Forcing a sick day because I woke up with a headache and a sore throat that could be nothing is not going to endear the company to an employee, on the otherhand that same situation that turns out to be something but I have to come in because I'm not sick yet is prettyshitty to everyone else you come in contact with. In both cases, working from home is the safe course of action.
Now, where I work, that option is fully supported. I, and basically every full time employee, has a vpn and a ip phone. There is nothing about my job that requires physical presence in the office on a normal day, and with the team spread out accross the US anyway, my being in the office or remote really are the same thing as far as everyone else is concerned. I can work from home (doing it right now) simply because I felt like it that day.
> Shouldn't adults be able to be honest about how many sick days they need
Yep, but I'm talking about when you're not sick, but you feel like you might be coming down with something, or you're feeling like you're over it but we all know you're probably still infectious. A fully supported working from home environment allows you to be far more conciderate to those you work with. Hell you can also get more rest, since that appears to be what many are hung up on, because you no longer have a commute those days, but still get stuff done because you don't feel like you're dying.
> Does your employer not treat its employees as adults? Shouldn't adults be able to be honest about how many sick days they need, without tracking?
Should they? Yes.
However, by your definition the vast, vast majority of employers do not treat their employees like adults. Even those in this industry, which seems to be the only one to adopt "take as you need" sick and vacation time in any significant way.
This is mostly a reaction to the incredulity I (perhaps mis-)read in your statement.
It mostly seemed odd to say/imply "My employer treats me like an adult" about permissive WFH, but then turn around and assume that sick days must be carefully tracked. And it seemed like a number of people were talking past each other based on having opposite assumptions about both of these.
Eh, the other comments are overreacting. If I was vomiting constantly, of course I wouldn't try to work.
But if I felt contagious-but-not-really-impaired, just sneezing or whatnot, I don't see any reason personally why sitting (at home) at a computer and watching Netflix is going to help me recover faster than sitting (at home) at a computer and working.
> But if I felt contagious-but-not-really-impaired, just sneezing or whatnot, I don't see any reason personally why sitting at a computer and watching Netflix is going to help me recover faster than sitting at a computer and working.
Cold and flu kill old people. By going into work you are spreading disease to your co-workers, who then spread it to their family, who then risk death because you didn't want to work from home.
The flu also kills healthy adults. Get your flu shots. Etc.
But yes, I have great distaste for people who could work from home while sick and instead ruin the productivity of the entire office for what can be months afterward.
In Korea they do this, and no one so much as blinks. Sick days also don't exist in that country. If you're not literally in the hospital, you're expected to show up for work.
To whomever created this: You should offer a button to skip to the next excuse without rating it. I'm interested to see other suggestions, but I don't want to alter the rating.
I didn't realise there was rating going on at all at first - the number is quite subtle. I assumed "won't fly" was required to give me another excuse (I hadn't thought as far as what "hell yeah" would actually do in that case).
I think it's broken and shows that one for everyone in a repeating loop resulting in people furiously downvoting it. That's what's happening for me at least.
We have a pretty liberal WFH policy (well, as liberal as it can be when the expectation is that you come in unless you have a "good" reason).
The reason I said this wouldn't fly is that it's very much like a "because I want to" type of answer. It's almost certainly true, but it's not that much better than me telling my boss that I want to WFH so I don't have to answer my desk phone. I will get more things of value done, but it's also my job to answer the phone when it rings.
But it's a phone, so forward the number and take it on your phone, or switch it to a mobile line. Yes this is very much a "because I want to" answer, but I think looking for reasons to work from home is the wrong way to think of this issue. We shouldn't have to and it should be the default, because I (and I'm sure many others) can't think of a single reason I need to be in the office to get my job done and still be in contact. I think the 8-12 hour workday is societal conditioning that's going to take a very long time to break.
The post links to that exact quote, so everybody clicks "this won't fly" to get another quote. OP should have removed "?quoteId=132" from the URL or the author should have used a system for not changing the URL (e.g. POST, reloading or AJAX).
I mean no offense to the author of this, but isn't this type of thing one of the easiest to scale? There's quotes (easy to cache), voting (also very easy to cache), what else? I didn't see the original, so wondering what was there now that made it difficult to scale.
sorry about that! was not expecting the server to blow up when we went to bed and it was running off a very small instance since it was a fun little project. no excuses though! we fixed it and it's running now :)
Around my office we use "It's Thursday." At some point my boss started working from home on Thursdays and we pretty much all followed. Although now sometimes I come in on Thursdays precisely because it's quiet.
The rating system is interesting; it looks like the ratings reflect which excuses are more believable regardless of if they're true or not. Friends visiting? Too bad, come to work. Family visiting? Stay home, work and take breaks whenever you need to! My manager is out this week? Too bad, there's other managers and executives here to supervise you and crack the whip if you need it. I have to pay my rent? Too bad, but you need to work to make that rent money. However if your pipes are messed up and you need to wait for the plumber then it's okay to work from home.
What's more interesting is that the reasons to work from home are isolated from productivity.
This just totally bums me out. It's funny and snarky, but truthfully, it's the opposite of how I want to work and want people around me to work. We have only one goal: finding an optimal work situation that lets us execute like we want.
If you need a day off, take a day off. If you need to work from home, and it doesn't hurt the team, work from home. If you need excuses to not come in, you are in the wrong job, and that's a total bummer, because you could be doing something you enjoy that has an impact you care about.
I've been working at home, with other people remotely for 15 years precisely because that's what I wanted to do. Sure, I go on the occasional trip, quarterly meeting or interview with a new client but most of the time, I work the way that I want to and make a good living.
Not doing what you really want to in life is a recipe for frustration.
hi guys, i created this together with @bencxr. thanks for the support! sorry about the server issues, was not expecting it to blow up when i went to bed :p no excuses though, its fixed now! happy monday!
FYI, it's a little confusing initially what you're meant to do with this. I clicked one of the buttons repeatedly without realising I was essentially voting.
I suppose this is downvoted because it doesn't apply to most people but the quoteId (I assume is sequential) indicates that this person understands my suffering.
67 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] thread"There's a production incident, we need you to come in."
That's the usual reason for me having to go to the office.
Personally, I don't need excuses, I work from home whenever. It does seem that it is a rare place that treat's its emplpoyees as adults though.
Does your employer not treat its employees as adults? Shouldn't adults be able to be honest about how many sick days they need, without tracking?
Forcing a sick day because I woke up with a headache and a sore throat that could be nothing is not going to endear the company to an employee, on the otherhand that same situation that turns out to be something but I have to come in because I'm not sick yet is prettyshitty to everyone else you come in contact with. In both cases, working from home is the safe course of action.
Now, where I work, that option is fully supported. I, and basically every full time employee, has a vpn and a ip phone. There is nothing about my job that requires physical presence in the office on a normal day, and with the team spread out accross the US anyway, my being in the office or remote really are the same thing as far as everyone else is concerned. I can work from home (doing it right now) simply because I felt like it that day.
> Shouldn't adults be able to be honest about how many sick days they need
Yep, but I'm talking about when you're not sick, but you feel like you might be coming down with something, or you're feeling like you're over it but we all know you're probably still infectious. A fully supported working from home environment allows you to be far more conciderate to those you work with. Hell you can also get more rest, since that appears to be what many are hung up on, because you no longer have a commute those days, but still get stuff done because you don't feel like you're dying.
Should they? Yes.
However, by your definition the vast, vast majority of employers do not treat their employees like adults. Even those in this industry, which seems to be the only one to adopt "take as you need" sick and vacation time in any significant way.
This is mostly a reaction to the incredulity I (perhaps mis-)read in your statement.
But if I felt contagious-but-not-really-impaired, just sneezing or whatnot, I don't see any reason personally why sitting (at home) at a computer and watching Netflix is going to help me recover faster than sitting (at home) at a computer and working.
Also, possibly save your coworkers from the infection. I'd rather have my coworkers take a WFH than come in if they feel low.
Cold and flu kill old people. By going into work you are spreading disease to your co-workers, who then spread it to their family, who then risk death because you didn't want to work from home.
But yes, I have great distaste for people who could work from home while sick and instead ruin the productivity of the entire office for what can be months afterward.
The reason I said this wouldn't fly is that it's very much like a "because I want to" type of answer. It's almost certainly true, but it's not that much better than me telling my boss that I want to WFH so I don't have to answer my desk phone. I will get more things of value done, but it's also my job to answer the phone when it rings.
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/bofhserver.pl
How is it better than just working from home?
What's more interesting is that the reasons to work from home are isolated from productivity.
If you need a day off, take a day off. If you need to work from home, and it doesn't hurt the team, work from home. If you need excuses to not come in, you are in the wrong job, and that's a total bummer, because you could be doing something you enjoy that has an impact you care about.
Not doing what you really want to in life is a recipe for frustration.
Also, the number of times 'locked in my own bathroom' and 'locked inside my own house' come up is startling! Whats life like for those people :S
I suppose this is downvoted because it doesn't apply to most people but the quoteId (I assume is sequential) indicates that this person understands my suffering.