- cross-posted to:
- mop@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- mop@quokk.au
I gotta be honest.
My employer did notice company wide no one was using sick days and “converted” them into “mental health days” (literally changed nothing but the name).and suddenly everyone is taking them left right and center.
Apparently labeling matters.
All I hear these days is either:
Never give the company anything because they’ll never give anything to you
or
Work hard and you’ll be noticed and climb the ladder.
Neither is inherently true.
You can be in a ‘family’ company where the next lazy AF 18 YO will be your next boss
You can be in a corporate meritocracy where your boss is an idiot and just stands on your shoulders without passing anything downhill.If your company has upward momentum and your boss is both a decent and transparent human being, you can work hard and move up.
You can also work hard and succeed at projects and hop job to job with a strong resume (assuming the market isn’t shit, like it is atm)Know your boss.
Most companies are politically fiefdoms of a sort. This is by design. You’re completely dependent on the benevolence of the management chain above you. This also explains why decadent or malicious management is nearly impossible to overcome without resorting to involving lawyers.
Absolutely. So the key is to understand the management chain above you and optimize that relationship. You either give them just enough that they would fire someone else first, or you make them dependent on you. Of course the real problem is when someone in the change swaps out from a benevolent manager to dick :)
Of course the real problem is when someone in the change swaps out from a benevolent manager to dick :)
Had this happen with a VP seat. The resignations that followed made the office look like ground-zero for an extinction-level event.
next lazy AF 18 YO will be your next boss
The age of the person isnt part of the problem. Literally, the boss could be any age and have knowledge and thoughtfulness to lead the company.
Literally, the boss could be any age I have issue with your use of “literally”, but I’m willing to put a pin in that.
Generally, at 18 years old, you’ve not had any significant amount of time in managing people. You lack the experience to understand where the other workers are coming from and therefore any empathy you have for them is constructed from an inexperienced world view. While not impossible to be a natural born leader at 18, most are emotionally and intellectually ill-equipped to handle day to day problems at arise on the workplace. In context, this 18 year old was placed into this position, not because of their natural born leadership and excellent negotiation tactics, but rather because the family needs to groom them to take over the business. In my decidedly greater than 18 year old experience, those situations do not breed strong leaders and those that are under them generally suffer. In your late 20’s to early 30’s, given the appropriate opportunities to work in management, many can thrive. It’s not ageism, it’s just that maturity and experience does play a significant role in being able to lead others, especially when it comes to others that aren’t particularly good at taking orders or producing work without close supervision.
No they don’t. I knew this from day one.
Then again, I live in Europe where pretty much everyone including management thinks that anyone “skipping sick days” is a fucking moron.
Actually the company benefits if you take days off. It’s a risk leveling benefit for them if your PTO is a liability they must pay when you leave.
I have unlimited PTO and take at least 3-4 weeks of vacation/sick time a year, never had anyone complain or give me shit for it.
The company is happy with my work output and sees me as a valuable source of knowledge. If it weren’t for C-level fuckery, this would be an amazing job
I’ve been told C++ level fuckery isn’t great either
/this is facetious just in case anyone thinks I actually thought they were talking about C programming and not the suits.
I get a pretty nice package of time off but pretty much never used it until recently, our team of four turned into just me and I’m seriously eyeing the 500+ hours of sicktime I have banked.
I’m not going to keep just working through stuff, it really doesn’t seem to pay off.
I don’t get punished for not taking sick days. I just have to double up on missed billing stuff the next day usually. So it’s like it’s own punishment.
it’s a nice incentive to double down on my degoogle efforts
Imagine having a set amount of days you’re allowed to be sick and are expected not to use them when you actually are sick.
The US is not failing. It has always been fucked up.
You make my current government look reasonable even when it’s making using healthcare as much of an annoyance and throwing as many obstacles in your way as possible.
If I had a set amount of days I’m allowed to be sick, I would use every single one of them every year.
The US is failing, though. The entire world has always been fucked up. Every place has its problems. There was a point of divergence between the US and countries that have things better off where the US stopped improving, though. This moment happened after FDR died in 1945. With his death, the movement to universal healthcare died. Then, just two years later, the Taft–Hartley Act passed and gutted the power of unions. That same year, McCarthyism became a thing. And after that, it just took a while for the momentum to die and for everything gained to be lost. If we want to look at the moment of failure for the US, it happened long before Trump, Bush, Reagan, and Nixon. Henry Wallace was the vice president of FDR from 1941-1945. Then, the party decided to replace him with a conservative, Harry Truman. This decision is ultimately what screwed the US. Had FDR refused to replace Henry Wallace, history would have taken a very different path.
You make my current government look reasonable
Do you understand how little that narrows it down?
I remember once I had an interview and they told me the number of sick days and I was so confused lol. How could you possibly determine the number of times I will be sick before it happens.
If I’m sick I’m not coming I don’t care what number you wrote down lol
My favorite interview experience was at a company that listed the expected salary on the job posting. Then when the question of my salary came up I told them I was happy with what they said they offered in the ad. It was in line with other ads for similar positions. That was not the right answer. They said that if I was actually passionate about the company that I would have made a low offer to save the department money. I remarked that I wasn’t an employee yet so the department and companies wellbeing wasn’t one of my priorities. I didn’t get the job, although I wasn’t upset I didn’t.
Jesus fckn Christ, what a shithole company. Massive bullet dodged there.
You’re allowed to be sick more days, they just won’t pay you for it.
No big deal, the government does.
I have a set amount of sick days too unfortunately.
180 days in a year. After that the government says tough luck, work or starve.
Won’t happen here either. If you are sick, your employer has to pay your regular salary for six weeks. After that, your health insurance pays Krankengeld (usually 70% of your gross salary) for up to 72 more weeks. After that, unemployment insurance covers you.
Employer only pays first week or two here, after that it’s the government till you hit 6 months. Companies would go bankrupt left and right if they had to pay 6 weeks lol. My ex takes the maximum sick leave she can while still getting paid, about half a year of sick leave every year. Essentially, she gets a job, works for a week or 2, then breaks a wrist on purpose or gets a migraine. But it’s not always the whole six months straight, sometimes it’s a month and then she works for another week. That would reset the employer’s duty to pay her sick leave and puts the company in an awkward position if it’s a smaller one.
Half the year in sick days? Is this satire?
Edit: Maybe I missed a really obvious point somewhere lol.
Edit: sobstory lol
I’m part time, but if I don’t miss any hours at all the entire year, I “earn” 19 hours of “vacation time” / PTO. There is no “sick time”. 😂 Basically a week off per year if I blew it all at once and didn’t want to make up the hours somewhere else. The pro strat is just “don’t get sick” I guess /s.
Wow, almost 2.5 whole work days a year?!?! Slow your roll there Rockefeller /s
Hey now it’s not like I can get a doctor appointment anyway
They will notice, they will appreciate it, and they will reward you with even more work.
Two kinds of employees. The irreplaceable widgets in the soulless machine of industry and the hot-swappable cogs.
Curiously, it’s the irreplaceable widgets that get paid the worst, because the company has a vested interest in keeping these costs minimized long term. The real money is as an expendable, as the jobs are created when the industry is growing and flush with cash to blow on empty suit executives and PowerPoint brain consultants. And when the party is over, they’re the ones with all the networking connections to jump ship soonest. Meanwhile, the irreplaceable widgets are the ones wedged into a sinking ship.
If you work hard and never use any sick days, you’ll be secure in your position at Lehman Brothers or Silicon Valley Bank as the last guy left to turn the lights out when the business fails. If you’re at Deloitte or Capspire or PWC, you’re already on to the next host organism long before your old firm even knows it’s got a terminal case of rot.
Exactly. So many jobs in my early 20s where I’d work my ass off, get thrown into a manager position, gain substantially more responsibilities, and then end up making less money than half the staff a year later.
How long were your early 20s?
Probably like 10-12 years
Yeah, I appreciate when my grocery store has an awesome sale on the products I wanted to buy, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pay them more or anything. To your company, you’re just a product.
Oh they’ll notice alright… Then take advantage of you by giving you more tasks but not more compensation while they appreciate you being such a rube they can control.
Unfortunately they DO notice when you actually take sick days. Avoiding taking sick days isn’t so much about thinking you’ll get rewarded as it is about trying not to get punished.
Nothing like FMLA to signal your employer to scrutinize the minutia of your job performance.
I threw up on my boss once. He doesn’t bother me anymore. Mainly cuz I got fired, but it wasn’t for throwing up on him, no, I just fucked his wife while his dog watched. He walked in on us. It was an affair of an affair, I gotta say, at least I finished, and then I threw up. Spermicide does that to me for some reason, so I just raw dog it with whomever, or let them bareback me.
If everyone was like you my friend we wouldn’t need unions
Prostitutes would still need unions

Art, obviously
Currently at the office on a Monday morning after they fired they guy above me a few months back and are now expecting me to not only do my job but his job as well. They raised my pay by $1 an hour, by the way. Jokes on them because I’m putting in exactly as much effort as one should while expected to do two peoples jobs for low pay and it’s not that much work at all.
I’m in a similar situation, my entire team of 6 was laid off except for me. Now I’m on a team of 3 with an AI and expect to do more now than before. I’ve told them numerous times the AI has only slowed us down due to the numerous mistakes it makes but they don’t like hearing things that make them question their “brilliant” decision making abilities.
I’ve decided to in a way to quiet quit and literally let the AI do everything like they wanted. I know its making tons of mistakes but I simply don’t care anymore. Things will go to shit and deadlines will be missed I’ll blame the AI and tell them I was told numerous times its great and to use it. I’ll probably still get fired but then they will lose the last person who understands all of the projects my team had worked on for years. I’ll be fine but I can’t say the same about them.
This is how you’re supposed to respond to awful management directives. Follow it to the T and when it fails tell them why.
If you ‘do the right thing’ and create work-arounds and hidden fixes to problems management created, they will think their decisions were absolutely justified and were the correct course of action. They’ll pat themselves on the back, give you an attaboy, and move into the next disaster with misplaced confidence, all without ever seeing all the cracks in their plan that you silently filled as you carried the weight on your back.
We’re having a major go-live this month. Management wanted someone to visit on the third (when we observe the holiday). I volunteered because: I’m close, my kids are all grown, and I’m technically part of the management team.
While I was there, there was an issue. I dutifully reached out to one of the people managing some processes to see if her processes could be causing the issue. She didn’t reply.
I told one of the managers on site that day that I was proud of her for ignoring me, that she was doing exactly what I told her she should do, and I’d be upset if she had responded.
It turns out she never got the message until today. I told her if she had actually replied I would have yelled at her for reading work messages on the holiday.
It’s a weird kind of psychosis. I had to ask her, but I was happier not getting the response than I would have been if she had replied.
Is this a linkedin shaped joke? If not, why the hell reach out if you’re so adamant against her actually replying? If a collegue of mine has time off, no chance in hell I’ll actually call or write them.
Primarily because if I didn’t reach out, my manager would have. Except he wouldn’t have stopped with a teams chat message. He would have started calling her cell phone, personal phone, etc.
When I said I’d reach out to her, I circumvented that. It gave us time for him to move onto the next thing.
He’s getting better, but when he panics he falls back into bad behavior.
Fizbo the clown is no fool, I’ll have you know.
Pagliacci the clown goes to the doctor. He says he’s depressed, that life seems harsh and cruel in a lonely threatening world. The doctor tells him that the treatment is simple, and that they should go to the monster truck rally this sunday sunday sundaay. So they do and have a great time, and it’s pretty good first date












