manager says I have to come in despite a doctor’s note, boss interrupted me in the bathroom, and more

by Alison Green on October 31, 2024

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Manager says I have to come in even though my doctor says to stay home

My company has just increased the number of days we’re expected to be in office. We were fully remote for two years during the pandemic, so the shift to hybrid work has been a big adjustment, as is the new increase to our in-office days.

If you miss an in-office day and don’t make it up in the same week, you get a strike. After three strikes in a six month period, you may be subject to disciplinary action / it may impact your performance review and standing.

Today, I’m working from home with a horrendous cough and fever. My doctor has advised that I should work from home all week to avoid getting my coworkers sick (and gave me a note that I submitted to work). My manager has advised that I should come in later this week as long as my fever is gone so that my performance review doesn’t suffer. I’ve been advised to mask up and to find a meeting room where I can set up camp for the day, so I can isolate while checking the attendance box.

Is there any world in which this is reasonable? I think that if a medical professional has said I shouldn’t be around other people, I shouldn’t come into the office. And asking me to contradict a doctor’s guidance is pretty wild. (For what it’s worth, we live in a large city so coming in will mean being next to strangers on public transit or spending $50+ each way on an Uber.)

No, there’s no world in which that’s reasonable, unless you’re, I don’t know, engaged in some kind of life and death work where you are the only person who can carry out your portion of an incredibly important mission that will result in loss of life or limb if you’re not there. Any chance that’s the case?

Assuming not, your manager is being wildly unreasonable. Maybe that’s because she is wildly unreasonable, or maybe it’s because she’s under extreme pressure from above to make people comply with the new in-office policy and doesn’t have the savvy to know there are times when you still need to push back, who knows.

You can try spelling it out for her: “Are you saying my performance review could suffer because I’m following a doctor’s advice to stay home for a full week? That doesn’t seem right and I wonder if it’s something we can check with HR.”

Otherwise, she’s telling you to return as long as your fever is gone, so it sounds like your fever won’t be gone this week.

Related:
does an employer have to act on a doctor’s note?

2. My boss asked me to take a call while I was in the bathroom

I was sitting at my desk this morning when I suddenly needed to go “number two.” I hate to do this because I work in a converted townhouse where the bathrooms are just one toilet and sink, like in a house. But this was a serious situation!

I was sitting there and I heard my boss outside the bathroom door:
“Molly, are you in there?”
“Um, yes. Yes, I am.”
“Mr. Smith is on the phone.”
Well, I certainly can’t take a phone call NOW, you boob! But I said, “Could you ask him to call back?”
“How long are you going to be in there?”
A very personal question, sir! “As long as it takes, I guess.”

Then another coworker walked by and he started discussing something with her, right outside the door. It was like a staff meeting, except one person was trying to poop. This whole experience left me discombobulated! Should I complain to him about it, or talk to HR?

Eh, hopefully it was one awkward/thoughtless moment and not the start of a pattern. He was in the wrong, but it’s not something you need to do anything about unless it keeps happening. If it does happen again, you could say to him (not through the bathroom door, but when you’re in more of a position to talk), “When I’m in the bathroom, I’m indisposed and can’t take calls. Can you please let the person know I’m away from my desk and will call them back if that happens?”

This isn’t an HR issue unless it’s happening a lot and he’s, like, banging on the door while you’re in there.

Also, a white noise machine inside the bathroom or right outside of it might make this set-up a lot more comfortable.

3. My employee asked me for a reference … for a job I’m also applying to

I’m a mid-level manager at a company who is happy with my job but open to other opportunities. One of my employees, Sansa, is looking for other work openly, because we can’t offer competitive compensation or the hours that she would prefer. I love Sansa — she’s great at her job and I absolutely understand why she would be looking for other employment. She asked me to be a reference and I happily agreed. All has been well, and I have provided a reference for her that resulted in a job offer that didn’t end up working out. Yesterday, she mentioned a job that I also applied to. Eeek!

This job would be a step back in responsibility for me but would offer more pay, better benefits, and more time off. It would be a step forward for her, and probably a great fit. If they called me for a reference, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her. But in the back of my mind, I worry about all eventual scenarios. What if we’re in the final round, and they ask for references? What if I get the job and haven’t told her that I applied? Will she feel lied to? Backstabbed? What if she gets the job and finds out after I also applied but lost out to her … will our professional relationship be awkward afterward? Should I tell her now before we’ve even gotten to interviews? We are in a niche field so are bound to continue running into each other. But more importantly, we get along really well as coworkers and generally have a lot of department camaraderie that I wouldn’t want to color with a negative experience at the end of our working relationship. I have a lot of respect for her. I always tell my staff that it’s a job, not a family, and they should put themselves first, but I’m having trouble navigating the lines between what’s professional courtesy and what’s divulging information that’s unnecessary for them to know.

Oooh, yeah, if you feel like you can safely share with her that you’ve applied for that job yourself, without risking repercussions in your current organization, I would. Otherwise, if you end up getting the job and that’s the first time she learns of it, she’s likely to wonder if you only applied because she told you about it (not that people have dibs on job openings, but no one wants to feel their reference swiped an opening out from under them) or if you gave her a less-than-glowing reference in order to get the job yourself.

You can avoid all that if you tell her now. Say that you want to be up-front with her that you had already applied for the position and you are still happy to give her a glowing reference if she wants, but you wanted to be transparent with her in case she’d rather use someone else.

Related:
my reference applied for the job I wanted, after I told her about it

4. Is it better to be interviewed first or last?

Is it better to go early or late in the interviewing process?

I usually choose the first interview time available to (1) show I’m excited about the position and (2) set the standard for everyone else (and to knock out the competition if I’m lucky). But that means I’m waiting on tenterhooks while the employer figures out what they’re trying to do and out of sight, out of mind. Would it be better to go as close to last as possible because it, in theory, shortens my wait time and my meeting is fresh in the mind?

Basically, I need a damn job and I’m willing to try any voodoo that might help.

It really doesn’t matter that much.

There is research showing people remember the first and last in a series better than those in the middle, but if you’re a strong candidate you’re very unlikely to be forgotten just because you were interviewed in the middle. Plus, if you go first, you might set the bar for everyone else — or your interviewer might think, “She was good but we’re so early in the process” and not put any special weight on you.

Moreover, you don’t have enough context on the list of slots they’re offering. For all you know, someone else has already taken an earlier slot or a later slot and you’re just hearing about the remaining ones. Plus, things change all the time — you could have what you think is their last slot and then a great candidate emerges and they need to wait until that person can be scheduled, which drags out the process for everyone, or things get delayed for other reasons. There’s just really no way to game this. Take the slot that’s convenient for you and don’t put more thought into it than that.

To the extent that any voodoo is available, it’s in preparing really well for the interview, not in where your interview falls.

5. My title is different in different places — which one do I use?

In part thanks to your resume advice, I have managed to leave my old, hated industry and entered a new one! There’s a whole new set of industry norms to maneuver, however, and one is perplexing me. On internal documents, I have one title — think “llama farmer relationship manager II” — but on outside-facing or public documents I am styled simply “operations specialist.” Which one do I use — on credit card applications, on my voter registration, on future resumes? When my parents ask?

In cases where someone is likely to check the title (like a background check), you should use the title that your company will confirm, which might be the internal one … but might be either of them, depending on how your company does things. For everything else, you can use whichever of the two you prefer, since they’re both accurate.

And for the first category, where you need to make sure it’ll match up with what the company will say, ask your boss! You don’t need to say it’s for future reference checks; you can say you want to make sure you’re using the right title on things like credit card applications.

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{ 343 comments }

{ 343 comments… read them below }

  1. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    Ah yes, another letter about how we learned nothing from Covid about not spreading germs.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Or taking actual sick days when you’re sick, even if you are allowed to work from home. LW your boss or someone up your reporting chain sucks, obviously, and I don’t know if that gave added pressure to work through a fever and cough, but if you’re sick enough to warrant a doctor’s note, you’re sick enough to at least take a sick day on the day you have a fever. If you don’t have sick days, there’s a lot wrong going on here.

      1. Miko*

        Yeah, #1 sounds like a white collar office job, but unless I’m misreading the letter, they don’t get sick time… at all? If you’re out you’re supposed to make it up later in the week. What if you’re actually… sick? For an entire week?

        1. Daria grace*

          A previous dysfunctional workplace of mine expected days in office to be caught up if you were working from home because you were too sick to be in the office but not sick enough to need sick leave

          1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

            If that’s the case, the solution is obvious. Oops, she’s feeling worse and won’t be able to work at all today after all and will need to take a sick day.

          2. I Can't Even*

            This person said a fever and a cough. That is sick enough to be off of work as a fever means they are likely contagious.

              1. Lenora Rose*

                This; I can barely think when I have a fever, and I can’t check my work over the same way. I’m bound to make significant mistakes.

                I tend to have a cough linger for days/weeks after all other symptoms and long past the point where I am fine and *itching* to do something useful with my day; I will generally try to be masking when it’s going on but I can absolutely work, including in office. Fever? Fever is a 100% guarantee I am not working.

          3. Cmdrshprd*

            Eh I think that sounds like. a reasonable policy if they don’t make you make up your in office day if you take. a sick day.

            Aka they would much rather someone take a sick day and just be fully out, rather than say they are too sick to come into the office, but not sick enough to take the day off.

            I agree there are days where you are mildly sick, but if that is the case you feel better later it can be reasonable to make up the in office day.

            1. not nice, don't care*

              Ah yes, reasonable to our zillionaire overlords. We should feel grateful we are allowed to enrich dudes at the top, amirite?

          4. The Other Dawn*

            Same. Our office dealt with this the first year or so we came back, having hybrid for the first time under a CEO who wanted to see real faces, not video. As a middle manager, I felt like such an asshole having to enforce something like that; however, the team was such that we had a couple people who would do anything they could not to come in as required, potentially causing hybrid to be taken away. I gave leeway when I could do so under the radar, but it was a pain.

      2. Elsa*

        Yes, I also don’t understand why LW1 isn’t taking sick leave. And if she is choosing to work from home instead of taking sick leave (in order to save up sick leave for something else??), then it’s perfectly legitimate for the manager to insist that the days be taken as sick leave once LW1 is not able to fulfill the requirement of coming in to the office.

        1. Snow Globe*

          Possibly this is a company that has one PTO bank that includes both sick leave and vacation. The result of this is that people usually avoid taking sick leave if they possibly can; otherwise it feels like they are losing vacation days.

          1. Elsa*

            Yes, that’s possible, and it sucks, but if the company policy is workers need to be in the office twice a week and someone is sick, then it’s legitimate for the manager to ask them to either come in or take two sick days.

            1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

              One would still hope there’d be leeway for LW’s manager to use discretion, like if it’s a particularly bad day to be out completely and LW feels up to 50% productivity then manager can grant an exception to the in-office requirement for that week.

              1. Cmdrshprd*

                IDK I feel like only 50% productivity does warrant use of a sick day. I would say that even when I am normally scheduled to work from home if I don’t feel like I can be about 75% productive I take a sick day.

                1. Manic Pixie HR Girl*

                  This is where I land. When I had the flu over the winter, I ran a fever for two full days, and I took sick leave. By the third day I woke up and was newly fever free and felt a LOT better, but I was most likely still contagious. I was able to work remotely the rest of the week and was productive, but in pajamas (which helped, and also was good in case I started to feel worse again, could log off and charge additional sick leave if I needed to). If I hadn’t been able to work remotely I I would have at a minimum charged a third day of leave.

                  I am fortunate to have generous, separate sick leave. All in one PTO buckets encourage presenteeism!

          2. Momma Bear*

            This is our company – it’s one pot of leave. That said, if you’re too sick to be in the office and must isolate there, what is the point of being in the office? You’ll still be avoiding your coworkers, just miserably. I’d clarify this policy with HR.

            Right now we have a variant of pneumonia making its way across the country. I don’t want it. I don’t anyone to bring it anywhere near the office. My kid is old enough to not be a sniffle factory. I wonder what LW’s coworkers would think to see them in the office that sick.

            1. Nesta*

              It’s good ol’ Puritanism, of course!

              The overlords have decided that working from home is disloyal to them, even when it makes the most sense, like when you are sick and contagious, but still want to be productive, so you must demonstrate how much you love your overlords, by coming into the office even if you sit alone in a room and speak to know one.

              That is the only way they can know you were sufficiently miserable… I mean, productive at work.

              Pardon the heavy sarcasm, it isn’t directed at you. You are absolutely right, but I’m so sick of these folks. I wish anyone with this mindset was unemployable.

              1. DJ*

                I agree with you. I’m facing this at my workplace next year due to some zealot deciding we have to mainly work from the office. The only group exempt are employees with disability who require WFH as a reasonable adjustment. Nothing for other groups including sole parents, parents with a difficult partner they can’t rely on, older workers or those who have a lengthy or difficult commute.
                Not allowed to work whilst commuting (realise can’t be done in a car or when making several connections so no time to really get some work done) but a way of avoiding incredible long days or working nights to catch up.
                Also not allowed to WFH if too sick to travel in but can do some WFH.
                Extra problematic for those who live in areas no access to doctors or with most can’t see their doctor that day for a certificate for something the doctor can’t usually treat and takes a consult away from someone who does need it!

        2. Smithy*

          I do think that it’s very likely that realities like this may be why the boss might be feeling pressure to aggressively enforce the policy.

          If the higher ups overall are aiming to get folks back into the office – for what may very well be a mix of genuine business needs and less genuine ones – the reality is that it is an adjustment. And so it literally may be the case that right now where the optics of butts in seats is important for how the boss is reviewed. Even if the place is overall reasonable or at least normal, managers may be pressured to tell staff to formally take a sick day, go through a more formal accommodation process under FMLA or ADA, or they need to make those days up.

          Again, if this place overall isn’t ridiculous, I could see managers also communicating this kind of top down messaging oddly.

          1. Malarkey01*

            Yes agree. The reality is for a mix of reason full remote is going to be less frequent and while I am trying to be very understanding there’s a real expectation mismatch right now with people trying to use lots of excuses for more WFH.

            Unfortunately under our company policy’s (which I am not setting) you either need to be in the office your days, schedule a make up that pay period, or take leave for that day that you are now sick/childcare issue/repair man coming/ errand to run. There are too MANY requests right now to have any fair leeway.

            1. Manic Pixie HR Girl*

              Yup, this is the unfortunate reality in many workplaces. I have the authority to be flexible with my staff, fortunately, but in some places it is a minefield.

            2. Smithy*

              Exactly – to use that phrase “quantity is a quality of its own” – when the volume of exceptions is really high, finding a way to be both accommodating and fair becomes harder and harder.

              This isn’t to diminish the reality of how contagious ailments like the common cold are and for parents/caregivers with a finite number of sick days – balancing those days for themselves and their dependents is tough. But I think the desire is to put supervisors in a place to deal directly with issues of a caregiver running out of sick days, going through the process to get on FMLA or go through a formal accommodation process vs everything being the judgement of a supervisor.

              Because honestly, that is where a lot of inequity can seep into a workplace. Supervisor 1 gets away with always allowing WFH because they’re in the basement and the c-suite doesn’t walk by as much but because of where Supervisor 2 sits, they’re really strict.

              1. Reluctant Mezzo*

                Wait till the next plague gets going–H5N1 looks like a possible candidate. Also, there’s a potential leader who wants to take all vaccines off the market (not joking, wish I was).

      3. Keyboard Cowboy*

        Yeah, that was my take too. Policies like this probably have exceptions for actual OOO. So if you have the sick time to spare, use that instead of dinging your in office counts. If they wanted your work when you’re sick, they would have made an allowance in the policy for this incredibly common situation.

      4. Roland*

        Yes! We regressed so badly in this with WFH. Just because you won’t get anyone sick doesn’t mean you should be working.

        1. AlternatePerspective*

          Large numbers of people were doing hybrid and (less frequently) fully remote for decades, and ,any of them successfully worked at home while too sick to office but not too sick to work. Weird attitudes from the pandemic are ruining systems that have been in place and working for a really long time.

      5. Emmy Noether*

        I didn’t know physicians even issued doctor’s notes for WFH! Fever normally means bedrest.

        I’ve pushed through illness before for things I didn’t want to miss, and I always end up paying for it triple later. For me it’s usually a choice between a day of bedrest, or a week of being at 20% performance and 300% error rate due to brain fog.

        1. Jake Purralta*

          I was once given a sick note to work from home for two weeks back in 2016. In the space of 6 weeks, I’d caught various bacterial and viral infections. Every time I went back to the office I caught something else (from a particular team who sat near mine). My doctors asked that I work from home in the hope I’d be back to 100% and not pick up something else so easily.

          1. Myrin*

            What on earth was up with the one germ-infested team?!

            (And I’m sorry to hear about that situation in general, that sounds incredibly unpleasant. I hope you’re doing better nowadays!)

            1. OpenOfficeWoes*

              very common in open office environments – if one person gets something anyone vulnerable to illness gets it the next day. I know people who are basically perpetually sick because of it. Even cubes help a lot with keeping the spread down, but open offices are incubators.

              1. Emmy Noether*

                It’s like the daycare sniffles phenomenon for grownups!

                Yet another reason open offices suck.

                1. AMH*

                  Yeah, my friends are always shocked at how I come down with something frequently during the shoulder seasons, but I work in an open office with contact with the public, and many of my coworkers have school aged children. I just expect extra sickness when the kids go back to school, and during flu season.

                2. MsM*

                  In my experience, closed door offices don’t help much if most of your coworkers are parents of young children.

                3. I Have RBF*

                  Seriously. I got pneumonia because of one open plan “benching” hell pit full of contractors (no sick time) and people who didn’t wash their hands in the bathroom. I was out for three weeks, unpaid, because I was a contractor too.

              2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

                Ex virologist here. Offices (and they are all open plan here in the UK) are even worse for generating new variants of all kinds of bugs than daycares/schools – because the kids in schools etc. are generally all local whereas an office tends to have have adults from anywhere from next door to commuting hundreds of miles a day to work.

                And while we have lots of beneficial bacteria in/on our bodies to protect us from the harmful bacteria there isn’t an equivalent for viruses.

                First year of my virology degree we were all ill for months!

              3. Colette*

                Yeah, back around 2016 the person in the cubicle next to me got really sick, and the illness radiated out from there in circles. A few days later the people immediately surrounding him were sick, then a little later the next circle was out.

                1. Ama*

                  At my last in office job, the first office we occupied had basically two wings with our reception/meeting room in the middle. If someone came to work sick and we didn’t have an all staff meeting during that time, whatever wing they worked in would all get sick and the other half would be fine.

                  In 2017, we moved to an office where there was just a big square of cubicles and the staff kitchen was big enough to eat in (before it was just enough space to store your lunch and heat it up in the microwave). Every time anyone came to work sick the entire office would have the same illness within three weeks. To their credit, senior management really tried to encourage taking sick days and not coming in if you didn’t feel well (and we got enough sick days that this was feasible for most people) but there wasn’t a lot of staff redundancy, so there was always someone during busy season who would insist they had to work through a cold to get something important done and then got everyone else sick.

              4. Llama Lamma Workplace Drama*

                I used to work with a manager who bragged about never using sick time (we had unlimited too!). She actually would be in the office and point at all the cubes around her while bragging and say ‘I made him sick and her sick and him sick’

                2. I Have RBF*

                  What an unmitigated scumbag. I hate it when people come to the office sick, and I consider it to be more unprofessional than picking your nose in a meeting or shouting at your grandboss! That jerk sounds like a resume generating event horizon.

        2. TooTiredToThink*

          I saw a surgeon about a possible surgery and as soon as he found out I work from home he told me I could be back to work within 3 days. They definitely adjust the doctor’s note for WFH vs In Office.

        3. Learn ALL the things*

          I got a doctor’s not to work from home while I was recovering from surgery. I had been off work for a month already and I was healed enough that I could sit in a chair and look at a computer, but not enough that I could drive across town for our 3 in office days every week, so I requested permission to work from home for a few weeks.

        4. Needs Coffee*

          When I had shingles a year or so ago, my doc asked if I needed a note to work from home. The affected dermatome was my *foot*.. I generally felt fine and my brain was online, but I couldn’t wear shoes (never mind walk or drive, since it was my right foot) without extreme pain. Nothing to stop me from working from the couch with a series of ice packs on my foot, though.

          Fortunately, I already was fully remote, so it was a moot point.

        5. WillowSunstar*

          And then there are the bosses who want you to be 100% perfect, despite anything you are physically or mentally going through, which is never a realistic expectation. But if we are ill and taking cold/flu meds, the risk of making errors will multiply, especially since most of those meds make people drowsy as a side effect.

      6. SickTime*

        What privileged world do you live in where you can take a week off for an illness mild enough that you’re capable of working at home? In theory I have unlimited sick time but if I took off when I was mildly sick instead of working through it I’d never actually work.

        For many folks sick time is mainly for medical appointments with limited use for days when we’re completely non-functional. And managing to keep that to the 6-12 days office jobs typically give or consider reasonable takes effort. And that doesn’t consider that there are certain days when you’d better not take a day unless you are dead or dying because you’re doing something essential that day. I had one of those days yesterday (two public presentations, one to a state agency taskforce that couldn’t be rescheduled). If I’d taken a sick day it would have had real consequences to my org. I have a good boss who does tell people to take sick days, but it would have been an issue yesterday despite my unlimited sick days.

          1. Worldwalker*

            No, in that world people couldn’t afford to take sick days and just came to work sick, and shared the joy (and germs).

        3. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          What privileged world do you live in where you can take a week off for an illness mild enough that you’re capable of working at home?

          Some meds discourage driving. Mass transit isn’t universally available. Driving (especially in city-type environments) isn’t the easiest task in everyone’s day. Some meds make you more sensitive to the sun (as a redhead, I assume they’d cause me to spontaneously combust). Some SME can function at 40% with an extra review cycle, which is preferable to no progress at all. Some jobs don’t offer sick leave or bundle it with so little vacation that sane employees must treat it all as vacation to maintain their mental health.

          Et cetera.

        4. Seashell*

          Things vary widely in the world of benefits. I currently have a lot of sick time saved up. I try to save it as much as possible in case of emergency, but using a week wouldn’t be a major problem for me at the moment. It would have been more of a problem when I used all the sick time up on maternity leave or when my kids were smaller & required my full attention when home sick.

          Not everyone is in your exact position, and most people are not going to have the same exact situation throughout the duration of their career.

        5. Bast*

          One company I worked at rolled back WFH privileges while sick. The theory was, you’re either too sick to work, or you’re okay enough to come into the office. More diseases than usual began making the rounds because we had one bank for sick and vacation, and it was fairly minimal. Upper management could not seem to figure out that this encouraged people to come in sick, despite a huge push back.

          1. SometimesCharlotte*

            Sometimes it’s not “too sick to work,” it’s “too sick to shower, get dressed, hair and makeup, spend 45 minutes in traffic, walk .25 miles across the parking lot, through the lobby, up a flight of stairs, work all day and then do it all in reverse”!

              1. I Have RBF*

                Seriously. Last time I was in office, I took an hour to get ready for work, and hour and 15 minutes to drive there, barring accidents, 15 minutes to park half a block away and then schlep all my stuff to the building and upstairs across half the building to my desk. Going home was the whole thing in reverse, except the commute was often as much as two hours, and I was working 10 – 6:30. If I tried to go in for an 8 to 5, the commute time total was over four hours. I would often get to work exhausted and need to spend an hour drinking coffee and reading news just to unwind from my commute.

          2. Good Lord Ratty*

            My office is like this – if you’re too sick to come to work, you’re too sick to work; you can’t just work from home, you are forced to take an entire sick day. It’s awful and I know for certain people come in when ill (because they admit it).

        7. Falling Diphthong*

          You are saying you are mildly sick every day. That is not the norm.

          I continued my remote freelance work while recovering from meningitis. If I had had to get into work clothes, commute by walking many blocks plus train for 45 minutes (I mostly worked for my old employer, so a known known), and be in an office for 8 hours with no option to lie down: Welp, I’m off for a month. But if I could wear soft clothes and lie down frequently, it was fine.

        8. Jackalope*

          I’d say that having a fever often means not being mildly sick. It depends on the fever, of course, but if I’m over 100 F then I’m prob not able to do any actual work, and anything I do is going to be error-riddled. That’s not everyone, but it’s also not a unique experience.

          1. Irish Teacher.*

            That was my thought too. Yeah, one can’t necessarily take time off every time one has hay fever or a headache or hasn’t slept the night before and is overtired or has period cramps, but…a fever shouldn’t be that common. I think the only times I had a fever in the last 5 or so years was when I had covid. Perhaps I’ve had five days of fever in…about the last ten years?

            1. YetAnotherAnalyst*

              This is wild to me, but I guess everybody is different. I got a fever for about 3 days from the flu/covid shot just last month, which seems pretty typical in my experience. I ended up on antibiotics for an infected chicken scratch this spring and ran a fever for about 12 days straight – that one did require a doctor but I didn’t get a note because I wasn’t contagious. And typically I run a fever for a day or two every month as part of my standard menstrual cycle. I’ve got like 3 dedicated sick days, but all told I’m probably feverish 20-30 days of most years.

          2. Kit Kendrick*

            I find a fever usually does deduct IQ points for me. These days, I have enough vacation time and social capital to say “ok, I am not functioning at full capacity — I should not be working.”

            That was not always the case. I once put in a full week of in-office work with walking pneumonia because I was a contractor and had neither insurance nor sick days. I remember roughly a quarter of that entire stretch of days, but apparently, I functioned just well enough in zombie mode that nobody called me on it. (I did see a doctor Tuesday evening because a non-work friend of mine pinned me down and said ‘you keep saying you can’t afford to see a doctor — can you afford to wind up hospitalized?’ and even through my brain fog that made sense. Turns out I was walking around with a 104F fever and my lungs solid with fluid. I shudder to think what would have happened if my friend had not intervened.)

        9. Caramel & Cheddar*

          Who said anything about taking a week off work for a mild illness? I said if she has a fever she should take a sick day. If a fever is lasting an entire week, you should be in hospital, not working on your TPS reports.

          1. Colette*

            Back in 2015 or so, I had a fever for a week. I was unemployeed, so I did nothing – but I had no other symptoms. I was fine, except a few times a day I had to lie down. It happens; it’s not unusual for an illness to last a week or more. And there’s not much a hospital can – or should – do for a mild fever.

            1. Caramel & Cheddar*

              It’s less that the hospital can do something for a mild fever, more that they’re well placed to figure out if something other than a cold is causing the fever if it’s lasted a week and then act on it if it isn’t a cold. Even if you are someone who gets a fever when they have a cold, lasting a week would be really unusual and by that point I’d be worried that I had one of the many other even more serious issues that can cause fevers (meningitis, pneumonia, TB, UTIs, etc.).

          2. YetAnotherAnalyst*

            Surely your standard cold typically comes with a fever that lasts 3 or 4 days and is broadly manageable with over-the-counter meds? A fever that lasts a work week is barely reason to see the doctor, let alone be hospitalized!

            1. Caramel & Cheddar*

              I’ve never had a fever when I’ve had a cold, so I can’t agree that’s standard, unfortunately. I do generally think that if an illness is manifesting in a way that you haven’t experienced previously, you should get that checked out. A week-long fever from a cold would be entirely alarming for me.

              1. YetAnotherAnalyst*

                Definitely get new symptoms checked out. But a low-grade fever (101F) is a pretty normal thing to manage at home and for most people is likely to last a few days, and with DayQuil or whatever is unpleasant but entirely workable. The guidance I’m used to is you’re probably contagious until you’ve gone 24 hours unmedicated and fever-free, so a week of too-sick-for-the-office-but-reasonable-functional is pretty unremarkable.

            2. Person from the Resume*

              My standard cold isn’t accompanied by fever.

              If I have fever, I have more than a cold.

              When I’ve had fever in the past few years, I had pneumonia and COVID.

            3. Lenora Rose*

              I can’t say I’ve measured my temperature reliably every time I’m sick, but I was sick this week Monday night to yesterday evening and I had no recognizable fever symptoms. And when I have measured, the fever symptoms that make me feel like doing nothing thinky start well before the point where a doctor will worry.

          3. Worldwalker*

            In the US, that would come at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars. Most people can’t afford that. And most hospitals wouldn’t admit someone for a non-disabling fever anyway.

            1. YetAnotherAnalyst*

              Heck, even most cases of pneumonia I’ve seen (my whole family is asthmatic) have been managed at home with pulseox checks and antibiotics. I think my brother got admitted overnight once, but he let himself get pretty dehydrated.

            2. Wayward Sun*

              For a while I had insurance where if you went to the hospital and weren’t admitted, you had to pay out of pocket. The idea was to make people go to cheaper urgent care clinics instead, but the basic lesson I took was “you’d better be REALLY SURE you’re deathly ill if you’re going to the ER.”

        10. Learn ALL the things*

          A fever means you’re more than mildly sick. Trying to work through a fever instead of resting is almost a guarantee that your illness will be prolonged because your body isn’t getting enough rest to heal. Working at home when you’re sick is better than going to the office and giving everyone your illness, but sometimes you’re sick enough that you should rest.

          And frankly, if I was OP’s coworker and found out that my manager knew one of my coworkers was likely contagious and required them to be in-office anyway, I’d be livid at that manager.

        11. Freya*

          A world where leave doesn’t expire every year – I’ve used sick leave twice at my current job, once for a doctor’s appointment all the way across town, and once when I was in bed with Covid. So I have over 7 weeks of sick leave accrued (and over 6 weeks of annual leave but that’s not the point). I admit I’m far more likely to WFH than take sick leave if I feel up to it, but that’s because I’d really like that sick leave to be there when I need it (a co-worker was in a catastrophic car crash earlier this year, and they have absolutely needed their accrued sick leave). I trust my boss to do their best to staff adequately so that when one person is out, the rest of us aren’t completely stuffed, and my boss trusts me to do things such that if I have to go to hospital, nothing else bad happens.

      7. a commenter*

        I’ll note, if managed well it’s perfectly fine to work from home instead of taking a sick day sometimes. In my country we have infinite paid sick leave, and i’ll still take an extra WFH day instead of calling in when I e.g. have digestive issues, which I would not go to work with, but at home I’d spend most of my day reading a novel in bed.

        As long as the employer appreciates this as a concession vs. calling in sick it can make sense sometimes.

        1. a commenter*

          Further – I’ve had fevers where i’ve been actively contagious and felt sort of like shit, but still got some work done from home. This is not because i’m a martyr or in love with my job, but because my employer appreciates doing what you can and doesn’t punish people for taking sick leave. It’s a matter of mutual respect. I know my decision whether or not I can work will be respected completely – and in return I’ll do some work when I can even when i’m at home due to an illness – as long as it doesn’t delay my recovery or cause discomfort.

          Naturally, work is much slower on such days, but it’s better then no work getting done or taking longer to recover.

        2. Baunilha*

          Same here.
          In fact, when we were in a car crash a few months ago, my husband was told by the doctors to stay home for six weeks. Even with unlimited sick leave, that’s still a lot of time for him to be out. Thankfully his employer agreed to have him WFH for a month, so he was only out (and I realized that’s actually a lot in some places) for the first two weeks.

        3. Caramel & Cheddar*

          I mean, you’re the best judge of what’s happening to your body and you should make choices accordingly. I also can work from home under certain illness conditions, but “fever requiring doctor’s note” is one that, even if you believe you can WFH like that, is maybe something to reconsider. Too many workplaces pressure people to work through illness just because WFH is a possibility now.

        4. Lady Danbury*

          This is especially true when the symptoms are caused or exacerbated by being in office. One of my friends is allergic to the cleaning products at her office, so what might be a mild reaction when her immune system is functioning normally becomes far more severe when it’s impaired. Outside of the office, she may be ok to work because she’s not also exposing her body to an additional stressor at the office.

      8. LCH*

        plus, if i’m unwell the number of mistakes i could make goes way up! i had covid earlier this year and was staying home the appropriate number of days, but i felt a lot better on the last day of it. so i started sewing project. when i went back to it later, i discovered i really screwed up some things. because my brain wasn’t back up and running yet, although i couldn’t tell at the time.

      9. Seven hobbits are highly effective, people*

        For me, I have plenty of sick days but I also know that no one else will do my job if I call in sick and the work will build up while I’m out. I will then be trying to do 5 days of work in the remaining 4 days of the week, or 3 days, or however many days. This is going to be true for pretty much any absence shorter than a month. If I can work from home, even only on some of the parts of the job, it will keep the backlog down to a dull roar.

        (I’m the only one at my job who has a specific skill that’s “spend a few years in college learning this” level of specialized – not something you can cross-train. Not at all my actual job, but the level of knowledge you’d need would be like if we had 4 people who all do tech support for the same product in different languages. If I actually quit or was out for a month they’d find another “Russian speaker” and train them in the product, which would take them a bit to get up to speed in, but the person sitting next to me who handles the “French” requests really isn’t going to be much help with my queue even though they know the product and “cross-train them to speak fluent Russian just in case Hobbits is out for a few days” is not a reasonable sort of plan. Again, my actual job has nothing to do with speaking a foreign language, but it’s that level of “we’d just hire another person who already had that skillset and then train them on the job-specific bits if Hobbits quit” in terms of the required level of knowledge that isn’t readily cross-trainable.)

    2. Vipsania Agrippina*

      At least where I live people have internalized that working while sick is acceptable. Here we have 1,5 years of paid sick leave, so there is no reason to take it if you have a cold/flu/covid/whatever that is contagious or not that contagious but makes you suffer.

    3. Green great dragon*

      If wfh is not available, and you’re too sick to come into work (which you are, with an actual doctor’s note to say so) then you are too sick to work at all.

      I know it’s a different matter if you don’t have the sick days to take, but if you have them, take them, and don’t even look at your work stuff.

    4. Finnish Toast*

      Forget working from home, if I have a fever and a bad cough, I’m taking at least one sick day, probably more.

      1. londonedit*

        Yep, we can self-certify as sick for up to 7 days without a doctor’s note, and that’s what I’d be doing if I had a fever. Last time I had Covid I tried to WFH because I ‘didn’t feel too bad’, but when I had to stop at 2pm because I was falling asleep and none of my emails made sense I just took the rest of the week off.

        1. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

          I’ve had too many “what did I mean this function to do?” regrets from fever working.

    5. Powerpants*

      When Covid happened, I thought finally we will have better access to health care for all, everyone will have paid leave, everyone will mask when they are sick to avoid getting others sick, everyone who can will be able to work from home when they need to. Boy, was I naive.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        Multiple people in my org this week have been sick/are currently sick and no one’s masking. It’s really disheartening because, as a manufacturing plant, we don’t have the option to work from home, so if someone gets too sick to come in, they just have to either take PTO* or, as it’s so late in the year and most people are out of PTO, have an unpaid day. If we get a lot of illnesses, production goes down, so you’d think it’d behoove people to wear a mask, but I guess not?

        *We have the one bucket of PTO. I know, I know, but the old system we had was bonkers and we needed a way to simplify things. And we increased the overall PTO.

      2. Nesta*

        I feel the exact same way. I saw so many ways we could make the world better, and instead those in charge decided they should actually make it worse and they conditioned so many people that there was only one way to be free/happy/belong that people are just going along with it.

    7. frustrated*

      as someone with long covid and an immune deficiency this drives me nuts. I get the level of precautions we were taking isn’t needed and I really don’t like going back to what was often the pre pandemic norm of unless you are on your death bed you need to come in.

  2. Priscilla Tells It Like It Is*

    Whenever my boss pulled that nonsense on me I would just say “on the shitter, hon”

    2. Coffee*

      I probably would answer “I am not here” and keep insisting that I am somewhere else if they continue the conversation

      1. LCH*

        right?

        “Molly, are you in there?”
        “No.”

        with the indication of move it along, nothing to see/hear here!

    3. Tea Rocket*

      Luckily I’ve never had a boss pull this, but I know that people talking to me through a bathroom door is a pet peeve thanks to my mom and my best friend, who are both repeat offenders on that front.

      I operate on the principle that when someone is in a bathroom, whatever they’re doing (using the toilet, brushing their teeth, taking a shower) is something they can’t and wouldn’t want to interrupt for anything other than a life-and-death emergency. If that isn’t true for someone, then the onus is on them to make that known.

      1. Bast*

        I find it odd that adults in a work environment do this. My children do it, but they are CHILDREN. My cats will also interrupt me in the bathroom. I have told my children (there’s no telling the cats anything) that the next time someone decides to knock and shout at me for the 2 uninterrupted minutes I have alone while on the toilet that there better be a fire or blood.

        1. Jam on Toast*

          @Bast. Same. I didn’t reliably shower or go to the bathroom by myself for the best part of 4 years when my children were toddlers. They wanted to be involved in everything. And now my dog comes in with me when I shower because she wants to make sure I’m not attacked by feral squirrels while I’m vulnerable shampooing my hair (it could be she just likes the heated tile floor!) but at work? NO! Strong no. Absolute no. Utterly unacceptable.

          1. Teapot Librarian*

            A heated tile floor in the bathroom? I’d never get my cats out. (What an amazing and possibly necessary luxury.)

            1. Carol the happy*

              I’m almost blind without glasses- my toddlers used to pull the shower curtain out quietly so as not to bother me, and I didn’t realize it. The bathroom got mopped a LOT!

              I would have to humiliate any male boss who tried conversation through a restroom door, though.

              Our current restroom fans sound like jet fighters taking off; some people hate it, but at least there’s no “Whoever is in there is peeing, because it sounds like Niagara Falls!” It clears the smells by the time you’ve dried hands, though.

              1. MissMaple*

                I just need you to know that your second paragraph literally had my push back my chair and laugh out loud, good thing there’s no one else in the hallway today lol

            2. allathian*

              Yeah, I love our heated tile floor in the bathroom. It’s not quite as enjoyable in the summer when the floor’s cold, though.

              But it’s one of life’s necessary luxuries for me. I especially enjoy our big sauna/shower room (two standing showers and a bathtub). The walls and floor of the room are tiled, and I enjoy the warm floor under my feet even when the sauna isn’t on.

              You’re right about the cats, my parents also have a heated tile bathroom floor, and their two cats used to love to hang out in there when the heating was switched on, even though their litter boxes were also in there.

      2. This Old House*

        I might not mind talking to my sister or my best friend through the stall on a night out, but I HATE talking to coworkers through the stall in a shared work bathroom. It drives me crazy when people try to chit-chat while they’re washing their hands but I’m on the toilet peeing. Surely we can at least try to maintain the illusion of privary?

      3. roann*

        The bathroom is a portal to another plane of existence. A person who has gone to the restroom has briefly departed our universe and work must wait or be done around their absence.

      4. Baunilha*

        There’s absolutely nothing in my life that can’t wait for me to finish whatever I’m doing in the bathroom.
        If someone tries to talk to me while I’m in there doing my business, they’re not gonna like the answer.

      5. Aggretsuko*

        My mother and my ex would both make phone calls while doing number two. YES, I WAS AWARE OF THIS. NO, I DID NOT APPROVE OF THIS. Because guess what, sometimes people can hear what’s going wrong!

        1. Freya*

          I’ll answer spam calls while using the toilet. But no calls that involve anyone I might need to have mutual respect with at any point in the future.

        2. Lenora Rose*

          I was absolutely flabbergasted when a coworker not only answered the phone in the bathroom, she answered it THEN walked into the stall and did her business. Complete with flushing, then washing her hands.

          While on speakerphone.

          (I was being VERY VERY QUIET for the duration.)

          I guess speakerphone meant she didn’t touch the device until she was clean again? But eeek.

      6. Blackbeard*

        In this case it’s important to subtly convey a thinly veiled message to your boss and your coworker so that they can take the hint. For instance by saying:
        “FOR CHRISSAKE FOLKS I’M SHITTING HERE! GO AWAY!”

      7. Lenora Rose*

        I don’t think it’s a big deal AT HOME to knock and ask an easily answered question that is not technically an emergency but might be too time sensitive to wait, but that’s at home, and with people whose limits I know, including children. At work – I’ve come back to a phone message on my desk. Which is what you do. Which is all you do.

    4. Chauncy Gardener*

      I think I would be SO much less than polite if this happened to me.
      What on earth are these people thinking?
      Did we all become feral during the panini? Yes. Yes, we did.

      2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        I don’t know- some people have always had it in their head that answering the phone or having a conversation in the bathroom was fine. In the early 10’s, I was a receptionist and the company got me a cordless that I could answer wherever I was in the building and I was fine with that- except in the bathroom. I had to explain that I might have the phone on my body, but as soon as I went into the bathroom, the phone. would. not. be. answered. Which resulted in some awkward phone ringing in the two stall bathroom and me refusing to pick it up, but that was better than me having a conversation with me doing my business.

      3. sofar*

        When we returned to office, one of my coworkers took her laptop IN to the stall and had it sitting on the floor (camera off, I hope) while taking a call.

        I find it weird enough when people want to talk about work stuff at the bathroom SINK (like, hello, we are literally feet away from folks taking a ****, I don’t want to linger here, can you maybe just come by my desk later???).

    5. JMC*

      Luckily a boss never did that to me but my ex would insist on talking to me through the bathroom door and I would just keep saying “I’ll be out in a minute” until he’d shut up. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, leave people in the bathroom alone!

    7. JustaTech*

      I have a boss who used to have the terrible habit of standing directly in front of the door to the women’s bathroom to continue a conversation. Like, his team would have a meeting, the meeting would end, but there was Dan, standing directly in front of the bathroom door, yacking away!

      Finally one time I simply couldn’t wait for him to leave and just kind of pushed by with the comment “Do you have to stand *directly* in front of the bathroom door? It’s weird!”

      Reader, he had never noticed.

  3. Priscilla Tells It Like It Is*

    Number 1, you are so sad you can’t come in because you wake up over and over with the fever this week. Heartbreaking!

    1. Software Engineer*

      #1 sounds like my former employer during the pandemic. They forced people to come in sick and isolate in private offices… to participate in Microsoft Team meetings.

      2. ferrina*

        I guess at least in a Teams meeting you can’t get your coworkers sick? But seriously, that’s ridiculous.

      3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Yeah come in so we have butts in seats, but you are in a conference room by yourself. So then what is the point to being there? If all the meetings are virtual anyway?

        This increased come in to work is just bosses who will not believe people are productive if they aren’t watched like hawks, and companies paying for commercial real estate no one is using.

        1. JMC*

          yes exactly. And the whole “it’s so we can collaborate and blah blah blah” is ridiculous because that is NOT what ends up happening. Just ask a certain red and white bank that didn’t find an employee that passed away at their desk IN OFFICE for 4 days.

      4. Wilbur*

        May I recommend that OP hunkers down in their bosses office to isolate? Just explain that people kept coming into the conference room you were using to isolate. You can spray paint “INFECTED INSIDE!” like it’s a zombie movie. You know, to share the germs and the Halloween spirit.

      5. Another Software Dev*

        My toxic ex-employer decided county health orders about allowing WFH if at all possible just didn’t apply to them, since people had private offices. It was lovely to see the county health department censure them for that.

        My toxic ex-employer was also one of the last to stop flying its employees across the country to install software in… you guessed it… hospitals.

  4. Nodramalama*

    Huh, interesting answer about LW4 interview times. I don’t know if it’s because government interviews are highly regimented with rubrics and specific questions that need to be answered, but honestly, if I’m interviewing 8-9 people a day, by the 7th the interviewees tend to blend into one, and it can be hard to keep track. There are only so many ways to tell a STAR example of when you had to take initiative in a task.

    Although I don’t really understand this idea that interviewing early in the day means you’re waiting longer. I’ve never seen a hiring decision made the day of the interview so you’d be waiting either way.

    I would personally avoid interview slots late in the day or just before lunch.

    1. Decidedly Me*

      I don’t think this is necessarily about interview slots that are all on the same day. When I last interviewed, I had choices ranging from the next day to the end of the following week. As it turns out, I was one of the first people interviewed, so I definitely had a longer wait between interview rounds. However, I wouldn’t have picked a later time just to reduce those wait times.

      1. Nodramalama*

        Ohhh yes tht is a good point. I was envisaging it across one or two days because thats how most of the recruitments I’m familiar with is run.

    2. DifferentDays*

      I’ve never interviewed multiple candidates in the same day when I’m the interviewer – interviews are scheduled around other work which still has to get done. As a candidate I’ve only encountered it once, for a 4 week contract when they were interviewing 3 people on a Friday for a Monday start. Never for even other short contracts.

      1. Bast*

        In the job where I participated in interviews, HR usually preferred to blitz them all out in a week, so we’d have multiple interviews a day. This definitely did interfere with work getting done, but they were big on filling the position ASAP. It was rarely straight through from 9 to 4 interviews though — we might have 3 interviews in the morning and then nothing else until the next day, or maybe another day we had someone at 10:00 and then the next didn’t come in until 3:00.

        1. Lady Danbury*

          This is how I’ve tended to do them as a hiring manager. I have a vested interest in getting the position filled asap, so I make it a priority. Of course there’s always other work to do, but just like any other meeting, you figure out how to adjust accordingly. Usually it’s 2-3 people a day over several days, from a short list of 5-10 candidates.

      2. Great Frogs of Literature*

        When we were desperate to hire someone, I did four or five first-round interviews one day (~30 minutes each, with 15 minutes to decompress after), and concluded that in future I should probably cap it at three per day, because my brain was definitely melting a bit by the end. I take good notes, though, so I could mostly go back over the notes and remember each candidate. It was mostly just that it was exhausting for ME to be in interview mode that long, and I didn’t get much of my other work done that day.

        As far as which interview slot, personally I will always take the earliest slot that’s convenient for me, because if the market is hot, I’m more worried about the chances that they’ll find a different candidate they want to hire and make an offer, than about optimizing my spot in the queue.

        1. Another Kristin*

          Yeah it’s pretty well known that in, like, music or theatre auditions, you want to be scheduled as early as possible, because the auditioners will get less and less charitable as time goes on and you’ll have to work a lot harder to stand out. However it’s pretty rare for job interviews to consist of singing 24 bars of “Let me entertain you” followed a 2-minute monologue or to be scheduled back-to-back.

    3. ecnaseener*

      Surely that’s what the rubric is for? So that even if candidate #7 doesn’t stand out in your mind, you can look at the rubric and see that they did better than candidate #2?

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      There are only so many ways to tell a STAR example of when you had to take initiative in a task.

      In song. While accompanying yourself on ukulele.

        1. wendelenn*

          Just walk in the door, Flor,

          Send some cookies to share, Mare,

          Make your resume green, Dean,

          Just listen to me. . .

    5. possibly*

      Not all interviewing is as regimented as your process. I had an interview with a company (actually 5 over 2 weeks, but that’s not unusual), where I was the last in a 2-month window.

      1. possibly*

        And I forgot to mention that if you were first in that process, you’d definitely be waiting longer to hear back than if you were last. At a private company they’d rather wait for the “right” person than hire a “Good enough ” person. At least, in my experience.

        1. Wilbur*

          It all depends on the situation. My company has a large intern program and positions are filled continuously. It’s a pretty competitive program, so they don’t want to miss candidates because they waited 2-3 months to start sending offers. For that case interviewing later in the process might mean there are less positions open that might fit your candidacy. For a full time position it might be a bit different but any control you have takes place during the interview.

          In terms of what time of day I’d try to schedule for what time I might interview best. If you’re not a morning person, don’t sign up for the 7:30 AM interview.

    6. el l*

      Yeah, if possible avoid 11:30 interviewer time or 4:30 interviewer time. That’s on the off chance there’s a “hungry judge” effect here.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect

      That aside: As unsatisfying as my answer is (I certainly hated it when I was searching) it’s important to remember all the ways that you can knock everything out of the park and not get the job – in other words, where you did everything right and it’s just not in your control to get. Examples:

      Boss’ Nephew
      Internal Candidate
      We’re Not Serious About Hiring
      Job is a Bullet that Missed You

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Or, more prosaically, there’s just another candidate with more experience or who is a better match in a way that wasn’t even clear from the ad. You might be an expert in TechXXX, but sometimes the other candidate invented it.

        1. ecnaseener*

          Yep. Or the other candidate is exactly as well qualified as you but they still only had one opening, and it just wasn’t your lucky day.

  5. Not your typical admin*

    Number two is crazy! I can’t imagine asking someone to take a call in that situation. I think my response would have been “I’m sorry, but I’m indisposed at the moment”, and then just kept repeating that until they stopped/went away.

        1. Annie*

          I have to wonder if Alison did that on purpose. I really hope so, but I also have the mind of a 10-year-old.

      4. Love me, love my cat*

        Wonder if that was just happenstance, or if Alison saw the humor in posting it that way?

      6. allathian*

        Some time ago there was another poop-related short letter and someone commented that it should’ve been #2, so I guess Alison took their advice this time!

  6. Certaintroublemaker*

    LW5, my institution has done a great job of creating job families and hierarchy to ensure common job duties and pay levels across the whole organization. Those are the job titles that show up in the org phonebook and what HR would confirm. But a sysadmin III who is team lead for Microsoft Outlook is different from a sysadmin III who operates the high performance computing data center, which is what a more direct reference would confirm. I use the generic, public title on regular forms like taxes, and use the descriptive title in places like my resume.

    If you think an interviewer might call a reference and central HR, you could have both:

    Big Ag Corp.
    2022-present
    Llama Farmer Relationship Manager II
    Operations Specialist responsible for …

    (Or if the job you’re looking for isn’t llama based, switch the placement of the titles and emphasize the way your skill set can work for their needs.)

    1. Disappointed Australien*

      Where I work it’s even worse. We have Directors, Engineers and Factory Staff. And an Admin. That’s it. Although we may be changing to have Senior Engineers as well, because we have graduate engineers who’ve been here too long to still be called graduates. I want to be an “Elderly Engineer” but the person making up the org chart is being difficult.

      I get the impression the USA puts more weight on job titles and qualifications, though. Australia tends to be laid back, employers are more interested in how well your CV matches their requirements.

    2. Jake Purralta*

      A large business my OH used to work for decided all the PAs would be renamed Project Managers. Which is great until the PAs looked for new jobs and struggled as they never actually had Project Management experience.

      1. CQ*

        Or could you put something like this in your CV?

        Llama Farmer Relationship Manager II (internal title); Operationals Specialist (external)

      2. Bumblebee*

        Our (higher ed) HR decided to make all Assistant Directors “Program Managers,” because “no one uses the assistant diretor title anymore.” Except in Student Affairs, where it is a key progression step, but they do not believe us.

        1. Cmdrshprd*

          Have they actually done any kind of survey?

          My spouse just applied (well actually about 2 years ago now) for jobs in higher Ed and assistant directors, associate directors were very much titles/positions that were being hired for and not just in student affairs but across university departments.

          1. Bumblebee*

            Oh, of course the title is still widely used! Our HR is not terribly aware of higher ed practices, ironically.

    3. Snow Globe*

      I find it interesting that people are that specific on tax forms or loan applications. I work at a bank; therefore I say that I am a Banker. I don’t think the IRS cares about exactly what I do.

      1. ecnaseener*

        Same, I figure most people don’t know what the acronym in my official title stands for (and the spelled-out term still isn’t self-explanatory) so I just use [wider department] analyst.

        1. ecnaseener*

          Oh, also: I only noticed last year that one of my tax forms still said “student,” 4 years after graduating. So, I can confirm the IRS really doesn’t care about the job title if everything else checks out!

        2. bamcheeks*

          I had a job title like that fifteen years ago, and it was so annoying. I’ve just been applying for jobs which relate back to that area of work and had to keep referencing it, and I’m annoyed all over again!

      2. metadata minion*

        Yeah, I just say “librarian” even though technically that’s a distinction of a degree that my title doesn’t require (I do have an MLS, don’t yell at me), because nobody is going to know what a cataloger is and nobody except other library people care. And if I put my actual job title, it’s going to look way more tech-y than it actually is.

      3. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Yup. And I don’t think credit card applications care much either. I mean, don’t put Llama Wrangler if you’re a banker, but as long as your job title is accurate enough they’re not going to nitpick which title you use. At my last job, I was the crm/database admin, but my title was something like crm database associate (because they didn’t want to pay me a manager’s salary). On my resume, I did put my correct title, but for anyone who asked in any situation where it really didn’t matter my exact title (like loan applications and such), database admin was actually a lot more descriptive and accurate as to my everyday work.

      4. Sneaky Squirrel*

        Same, I just use the general field category and not my specific title (E.G. Human Resources instead of HR Business Partner or Benefits Specialist). I’m making an assumption that the IRS is probably trying to make inferences about how much people make in the US and my title is niche enough that one wouldn’t necessarily figure out the field of work on title alone.

      5. Annie2*

        Yeah, I read those questions as “what is your job” rather than “what is your title”. I’m a lawyer, not Senior Legal Counsel Level II.

      6. Wayward Sun*

        I find on forms where it’s actually important to be more precise, they usually have a series of categories you drill down through and then pick the closest one.

    5. Mockingjay*

      Having two titles is common in government contracting. I have a corporate title, but on the project I support I am known by the government labor category that my company bills to.

      My resume uses the corporate title, since the company will be contacted for a reference. My email signature uses the government title, since most interactions are with my government customer. The core of the title is the same – Technical Writer – so people know what I do.

    1. Tacky Halloween Decor*

      Meanwhile I’m adding Apropos to my list of “internet abbreviations that are words in another language with a different meaning and confuse me for a second” ^^’

      (This isn’t a complaint by the way, I genuinely love this kind of thing, but it always confuses my brain for a moment)

      2. londonedit*

        Apropos isn’t an abbreviation, it’s a word in its own right, and it’s been a word for quite a while!

        2. Tacky Halloween Decor*

          I know, that’s what confuses me! I’m not used to seeing it used in English (and as someone who speaks both French and Flemish Dutch I’m not sure I’d even use it like this) so that’s why I thought it was an abbreviation for appropriate.

          English internet slang has a tendency to form words that are words in other languages so my radar on this is going completely off (the first time I saw “lol” in English threw me off completely because that is also a Dutch word, as are its derivatives “lel” en “lul” though those mean very different things in Dutch)

          1. Tacky Halloween Decor*

            Oh hang on, I’m lying, I have heard this before in English, though usually in the phrase “apropos of nothing” which is a usage I would actually use in both French and Flemish.

            I think it’s this specific usage that’s throwing me for a loop (not saying it’s wrong in any way! Just confusing to me as a non-native speaker of English)

            1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

              I am a native speaker of English and have never encountered this usage. I would usually see “appropriate” here, and it’s possible the commenter considers them interchangeable.

              1. Lexi Vipond*

                It might just be autocorrect from ‘approp’ or some other shortening of ‘appropriate’ – I agree that apropos means something more like ‘with regard to’

                2. londonedit*

                  I’d have been more likely to use the word ‘apt’, but apropos didn’t strike me as the wrong choice.

              2. SarahKay*

                Also a native speaker of English, and I have definitely seen this usage. In fact I was surprised that anyone else was surprised or taken aback by Ann’s usage.

                1. Elle*

                  Yeah, this use of apropos is quite commonplace in American English. I’m wondering if those who are unfamiliar with it have simply misheard it in the past, or assumed the person using it was incorrect?

                  Reminds me of the time I was in a (chat) discussion about languages for document translations and commented that a certain detail was not germane to the discussion and someone corrected me, implying I’d made an autocorrect- based mistake.

              3. Emmy Noether*

                I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that usage before in English, on paper too. The original French means something like “on the subject of…”, but words tend to drift meanings when they jump languages.

                1. JustaTech*

                  Ah English. The language is like the British museum: “Oh, that looks nice, we’ll have that!”

                  I read somewhere that English has the largest vocabulary of any language, presumably because of all the “loan” words that have migrated in over the centuries.

                2. allathian*

                  @JustaTech
                  Some English words derive from Old Norse, typical examples include dialectal words that remain in fairly common use in the northern parts of the UK, like kirk (church, “kyrka” in modern Swedish), bairn (child, “barn” in modern Swedish), ken (to know or to feel, “känna” = to feel in Swedish, but we say that “I feel you” when we mean “I know you”), -by (Kirby = church town).

                  Others have Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) roots, still others are derived from Norman French, like the words for different kinds of meat: mutton, pork, beef, while the names for the animals: sheep, pig/swine, cow/cattle have Anglo-Saxon or Norse roots because the farmers spoke one language while the upper classes who ate the meat spoke another.

                  Never mind the more modern scientific and medical terms that are derived from Latin and Greek or some combination of the two, but they don’t really count in my book because they’re usually intentionally created neologisms (!).

  8. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP4 (interview timing strategy) – as an interviewer, I don’t think the order in which I’ve spoken to people has had any impact or significance in itself – once the interviews are scheduled, generally we will see them through rather than get a candidate earlier who is so obviously right for us that we just cancel the rest of the interviews (although I guess it can happen)

    As an interviewee – if you’re a much stronger candidate than you think most other people will be, I think it would be an advantage to go later – because the interviewers would have already spoken to other people, thought “hmm none of these really seem like the right choice” and then they have something to compare you to!

    2. ferrina*

      I think the most important thing to think about is when you will be able to present your best self. If you are not a morning person and will be your best in the afternoon, grab an afternoon slot. If you know you’ll get increasingly anxious waiting for the interview, grab an early time; if you have a busy schedule and want extra time to prepare, grab a late time.

      The interviewer’s preference is a distant secondary consideration, to the point of irrelevancy. That’s simply because you don’t have the data to make an informed decision. Is the interviewer or morning person, or do they do better in the afternoon? Are they more excited by early interviews then fizzle out, or do they need the early interviews to warm up then are more excited by later interviews? Or maybe it just doesn’t matter and they have a stellar memory for all candidates (I fall into this category; I hyperfocus when hiring, and can tell you minute details from each interview)

      Then there’s other factors you have no way of knowing, like Wednesday will be a stressful day for the interviewer, or the interviewer is totally checked out on Fridays, or they take a long lunch on Tuesday and don’t want to be back at the office until 2, so the 1:00 slot will make them cranky while the 2:30 slot will see them in a good mood. You simply can’t control for variables like this. It would be really, really nice if we could, but it’s unrealistic.

    3. EvilQueenRegina*

      My ex-boss always used to try and schedule hers where those she felt were the stronger candidates based on their applications would be scheduled towards the end of the day, while those she felt were the weaker candidates and would have to work harder to impress her were scheduled first.

      It was surprising how often the so-called weaker candidates actually ended up being the ones offered the job.

    4. Tony Howard*

      I also interviewed dozens of people in my 30+ year career as a hospital CFO and I never considered “timing” as a factor in my decision. Taking copious concurrent notes on the resume during the interview process was all I needed to narrow down a field of candidates to my top two or three for the second interview and site visit. Then there were multiple parties involved in the interviews and a consensus candidate nearly always emerged by the end of the visits.

  9. Thepuppiesareok*

    OP #1 simplist solution is you have a fever the entire week. If you’ve never had a fever last that long let me assure you it happens. The correct response to this is concern on how you’re doing. After you’re well enough I’d circle back to HR or your manager (whoever would be more receptive) and say you were concerned you were advised to go against medical advice despite being able to work from home and avoid an office break out. Can we clarify the policy on in office days when you have a note saying to stay home? I have no patience for employers that prioritize butts in seats over people’s health after COVID. Both myself and one person I live with are in high risk groups. The other person is immunocompromised and will be recovering for 3-4 weeks if she gets something like the flu or COVID. No job is worth risking my and my family’s health for.

    1. 2 Cents*

      Yep, fevers can last that long, especially now with all the viruses floating around! My son had a 5-day fever (true, he’s 6, but it could be for an adult…).

    2. I Have RBF*

      No job is worth risking my and my family’s health for.

      Louder for the tone deaf executives that prioritize their gut, need for control/dominance and commercial real estate investments over their employee’s health and well being.

      Yes, I’ve had five days fevers. I was miserable, and all I wanted to do was sleeeeeeeep!

  10. Bilateralrope*

    #1 I’d advise you to keep that doctors note. That way you can show it to whoever you complain to should your performance review suffer from you following doctors orders.

    Also, start job hunting. Your boss will try the same thing on your coworkers and one of them will probably come into the office to infect everyone.

    1. Bird names*

      Oof, I hadn’t considered your last point. Let’s hope that at least one person up the chain sees sense. Otherwise I wish LW a successful and short job-hunt, should they decide to go that route.

    2. Anonymous Canadian Govt employee*

      There is a very good chance that LW 1 is a Canadian federal government employee. Sick leave accrues at a rate of 9 hours a month so if the LW is a relatively new employee they may not have enough banked to use it when they’re not actually too sick to work. The current return-to-office plan is being ridiculously stringently applied and many managers are not being reasonable about it.
      The LW could reach out to the union, but this is happening to a LOT of folks.

      1. 2 Cents*

        Publicis Groupe just fired employees with no notice who weren’t RTO compliant, regardless of performance. It’s these corporations that have expensive real estate, and don’t know how to manage remotely effectively.

        1. JustaTech*

          When Amazon started their RTO they didn’t think things through very well and someone I know got dinged for not coming in – because he was on vacation (it got fixed).
          They also didn’t have a plan for how to count in-office days if, say, there was a snowstorm at the end of the week and people couldn’t make all of their in-office days.

          I think they have since cleared up a lot of the confusion, but it was still a lot of stress for folks that could have been prevented with some clarity.

    3. Dek*

      I’m wondering if the boss maybe just doesn’t like OP. For me, if my boss can find a reason in the letter of the law to deny my leave, they will. But afaik not the rest of their reports.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Let’s not jump on boss here. According to the letter, this is company policy. Which means higher ups decided how things were going to be done. Boss’ own review could be on the line if she has too many reports gettings strikes for not meeting the policy. Unless Boss is the ultimate boss, she probably has little say in policy or exceptions to it.

        I doubt anyone thought about someone having a sick note for WFH for an entire week. This would be thing to double check with HR because of possible liability of telling people to ignore doctor’s advice in favor of physically being in the office.

        1. N C Kiddle*

          Yeah, boss could be being petty, could be being squeezed from above, or could simply know what official policy is but not how much flexibility she can offer within that.

    4. ferrina*

      Also let people know what your boss is asking you to do.

      If you have to come to work (hopefully OP can get out of it; I like Thepuppiesareok’s advice that your fever lasts all week), then make sure people know that your hand was forced. The first instinct is to get mad at the person who came to work sick (because usually it is their decision and their fault), so give people the head’s up that you are sick but you are in the office because Boss told you repercussions X and Y would happen. Take precautions- wear a mask, stay away from people, make Teams meetings if you need to talk to the person sitting next to you.

      Popular opinion could sway this. I suspect that the Boss will not like people knowing that she told you to come in while sick. Her reputation will take a deserved hit, and hopefully she’ll think twice about doing this again.

    5. not nice, don't care*

      When badmin in my workplace try to pull stunts like this, I always use my ‘network’ of colleagues to disseminate useful information and encourage their own follow-up. Amazing what a few well-crafted sentences can stop when deployed with care.

  12. Neptunesmoon*

    LW1 – Do you not have sick days? If you’re sick enough to go to the doctor, it seems that warrants at least one or two sick days. Maybe part of the problem is powering through, giving the false impression that you’re not that sick.

    1. Polaris*

      Maybe?

      I get bronchitis every single fall. I feel okay. I don’t typically have a fever if I catch it quick enough. But I have a nasty cough. And at this point in life, I know it isn’t going away without seeing a doctor and getting steroids at least, and possibly antibiotics (because I seem to be prone to tag-along bacterial infections when I get viruses, it’s great!). Will I drag myself into the office? Hard no, and my bosses agreed with this even when we were in individual offices much less the cube farm we moved to. Am I spending my PTO on this when I’m otherwise fine? Absolutely not.

      1. Tech Industry Refugee*

        Thank you for not going to the office. I caught bronchitis from a colleage who came in sick once. I was ill for 3 months and it made my asthma return.

    2. Elbe*

      Agreed. For me, this really hinges on whether or not the company provides sick days to employees. Most jobs that allow a hybrid schedule are white collar jobs that typically come with paid sick days, so I think it’s likely here.

      The LW is framing this as, “My work is demanding that I come into the office when I’m sick” but I think the reality is more like, “My work wants me in the office three days a week, and if I am unable to do that they expect me to take a sick day.”

      I think a lot of companies have gone overboard with their push to be back in-office. Having an employee work from home is vastly more productive for the company than having an employee out for the day. They are 100% shooting themselves in the foot.

      But having a “call in sick when you’re sick” policy isn’t THAT far out there. It’s what everyone did before working from home was a thing. And taking time off work to rest and recover is good for people’s health, even if they could theoretically work. Provided that the LW’s workplace provides sick days, I don’t think that the policy is that out of line.

      The pressure to get people back into the office is getting out-of-hand, but I also think that the pressure to always find some way to work is also getting out-of-hand. People should not be avoiding using their sick days if they have them.

  13. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #1 Crappy job environment with mutual lack of trust.
    Sounds like higher management is clamping down on resistance to RtO and thinks that doctors are too willing to write sick notes to help unwilling employees.
    Your own manager likely has no leeway on enforcing this policy and may be unwilling to risk her own capital on trying to push back.

    I would have taken sick leave until well again. As soon as I EMed that I was unwell, noone would have been allowed to contact me during this time and I would not have been allowed to work at home or in office while ill. Any manager pressuring me would have landed the employer in serious trouble with the Works Council, union and law.
    However, my sick leave (with doctor’s note from day 4) was up to 6 weeks full pay per illness, then 80% pay for 2 years (Germany). If the OP is in the US they probably have a stingy number of days they want to save for something more serious.

    btw, I wonder if the frequent assertion from WFH advocates that WFH allows people to work when ill has helped blur lines and increase expectations from employers, at least in the US. When sick, people need rest, should be obvious,

    1. SickTime*

      It’s been normal to work from home when sick enough not to office but not so sick you can’t work since at least the mid90s in my experience. It’s not a new thing (nor is hybrid or fully remote work). As you note, people do not get enough sick time to do otherwise (or, if they technically have unlimited sick time the expectation is not to use it for days when you can work at home or to go over a “reasonable” number of days).

      1. bamcheeks*

        I think that probably depends very much where you are. I have worked in UK universities since 2001 and most people didn’t have the digital infrastructure to do that until the pandemic. From about 2010, I usually had access to webmail, so I could do things like answer emails and download documents that were already in my sent folder or inbox, but I wouldn’t have been able to access documents on the shared drive, and technically I shouldn’t have worked on anything that would be covered by data protection on my own computer. Full remote access for jobs that weren’t officially remote was a huge change in 2020.

      2. metadata minion*

        What field do you work in? Many people didnt’ even have home computers in the mid-90s, let alone ones where they could access work materials.

        1. ferrina*

          The earliest I remember seeing work from home was in the early 2000s. But even then there were only certain things that you could work on, and you had to know in advance what you were working on so you could make sure you had it on your laptop (or email it to yourself).

          1. londonedit*

            This is what it was like pre-Covid in my job. You could access email via a webmail thing if you were WFH, but you couldn’t access the server/shared folders etc. So most of the time people who were WFH would plan in advance, and make sure they had whatever they needed to work on saved on their desktop beforehand. People would WFH if they were mildly ill, but really all they could do was deal with email (unless they asked their colleagues to email them something they needed to work on).

            I actually don’t mind the fact that we now have the option to properly WFH when we’re a bit ill, but then I’m fortunate because where I work it absolutely isn’t expected, and if you’re ill then you take proper time off and you absolutely do not come to the office. But at the same time it is useful to be able to do things like sending a quick email to someone who’s expecting something from you, to let them know you’re ill and won’t be working that day, or to be able to go through a few things slowly and quietly from the comfort of the sofa if you’re in that ‘too ill to go into the office but not ill enough to just be in bed all day’ situation.

        2. MrsBuddyLee*

          My dad (Software Engineer) started working from home Friday’s c. 1996, then became a full time teleworker c. 2000 after his local office closed and he couldn’t move to the new location.

          In the early days it was some sort of dial up mechanism with his (very large) work laptop. Eventually it evolved to a VPN over our cable internet using various generations of RSA keys (I remember very distinctly how excited he was when he got a new one that added the countdown bars for when the passcode expired).

          To be fair, both my parents are software engineers (they met working at the Bell Labs Network Software center) and we had computers in our house since the 80’s so we were ahead of the curve.

        3. I Have RBF*

          I work in IT. I often had on-call responsibilities that required me to have network connectivity at home so I could answer 3 am pages – in 1999. Back then it was dialup, but if I’d stayed with that company they would have provided a dedicated connection to my home – like a T1.

    2. Tau*

      At the same time, although I’m with you that OP sounds like they ought to be out sick and not WFH, that grey area where you feel OK enough to work but are still probably contagious does exist. I’m in Germany too, but I’ve just come off a long WFH stint thanks to getting two colds in quick succession. I called out one of the days because I was feeling particularly bad, but I’m not going to call out sick for a week because I have a sore throat and some sniffles, you know? At that point, WFH is just the most sensible possible option so I can work but still protect my coworkers – even if as you point out it needs to be handled carefully in order not to create the expectation you ought to be working while sick.

    3. Great Frogs of Literature*

      I don’t think WFH has blurred lines in the US much at all. We just have a really terrible culture around letting people recover from illness, at all, and have for as long as I’ve been alive.

      My first several jobs only offered five days of sick leave — per year. My current job offered five weeks of combined vacation/sick leave until we switched to “unlimited” for both, but there’s very little guidance about it, and I suspect that somewhere between six and eight weeks of leave per year would trigger a “you’re taking too much leave” conversation, but of course I don’t KNOW.

      Before we were remote, people just came into the office sick because they didn’t have enough leave not to. Now people work from home when they’re sick, instead, and I still don’t love it, but I can’t argue that someone should use up the time they were going to spend on a vacation next summer because they have a sniffle. At least they’re not getting ME sick. I agree that it should be obvious that someone should rest when they’re ill, but sick leave is a scarcity economy in the US, and we need to be very careful about how we use it.

      With respect, if you get six weeks of leave per illness, I don’t think you’re really in a place to judge the weird behaviors produced by pressures you’ve never experienced.

      1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        I’m certainly not judging any employees, just the employers.
        I don’t think wfh is an acceptable substitute for sick leave and I was wondering if the higher wfh % in the US was exacerbating this problem.

        btw, the full 6 weeks are rarely necessary – in 30 years at FinalJob I only took 6 weeks on 3 occasions and twice for 2 weeks, all in different years. Sick time is such a small % of working life, even with very generous limits.

        1. ferrina*

          IME wfh didn’t exacerbate anything. It just gave a new way for employers to be crappy. Many employers were stingy about sick leave before wfh was popular; I remember being called into the manager’s office and grilled for 45 minutes about how sick I was before being allowed to go home for the afternoon (they didn’t believe that illness could hit in the middle of the day).

          If anything, wfh has helped. Back before wfh, the expectation (at least at the companies I worked) was that you would call your manager to tell them that you were sick, and then get yelled at for 20 minutes before they would begrudgingly agree that you could be sick. Now, I send an IM or an email, because that has become the standard communication medium. Less yelling about me being sick!
          (though thankfully my current boss is really chill about sick time; if I say I’m sick, she wishes me well and that’s that).

    4. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      FinalJob used to have very occasional wfh for office workers but a lot more has been allowed since the panini (after I retired).

      However, anyone EMing/ phoning to say they had a bad cold etc and wanted to wfh a few days would be told intead to take sick leave and get well soon, no hassle.
      I agreed with this – imo, working while sick, even at home, delays full recovery, risks burnout and might be bad for longterm health. No job is worth this and noone is indispensable. Personally, I’ve noticed since retirement that my annual winter cold has reduced in duration from 5 to 3 days – despite my advancing years! – because I just totally chill out and switch off at the first symptoms.

      Also, we were sufficiently staffed for the work to carry on if a few people were off sick (praise for unions and the Works Council) so there was no work backlog looming over one’s return.

    5. AnonForThis*

      Maybe it has blurred the lines, but I actually had a situation this year where WFH whilst ill was really helpful. At the time I had severe cramps (yay for being female) that had me unable to walk stood up straight, so there was no way I was going to be able handle being on-site, but was perfectly fine to sit and my desk with a hot water bottle processing data and other desk work.

      Given HR triggers reviews for three absences within a twelve month period, you better believe it was so useful to be able to not take a sick day for something like that.

      Basically what I’m saying is that it really is situation/illness dependant, but it does work sometimes.

      1. I Have RBF*

        The first time I had Covid I was useless for about a week, and took sick leave. After that, I could work a few hours a day, then had to rest. My manager was cool about it, let me do what work I could and recover the rest of the time. It still too nearly three weeks to recover from Covid, and a month to recover from recovering. The second time I had Covid it was no worse than a really long cold.

  14. GiantPanda*

    #1
    I’d be seriously tempted to set up an early morning in-office meeting with the boss and HR to clarify the policy. In the smallest and least aired conference room available. And then start coughing.

    (Probably don’t actually do that.)

  15. Melissa*

    #2

    I think there’s a chance your boss is in bed staring at the ceiling right now, thinking “Did I really try to talk to my employee while she was in the bathroom? What was I thinking?”

      1. Carol the happy*

        That sort of clueless doesn’t usually have the ability for deep introspection.

        He probably thinks “That wasn’t successful; I’ll try it again. I wonder if there are any jelly donuts in the break room?”

        1. Booooo!*

          I think most people here, despite generally being thoughtful, could list times when they were completely clueless/insensitive and didn’t realize it until they had a private “OMG” moment later. (Except they wouldn’t list those times, because they are to be stuffed deep down inside except for 3am in bed!) Unless this boss has a history of thoughtlessness, I’d pretend it never happened.

          1. SarahKay*

            One of my favourite poems is a very short one called Things, by Fleur Adcock, talking about how we all do daft things and there are worse things in the world than that. It says “It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed”.
            It’s such a perfect description of how brains seem to work at awful-o’clock-in-the-morning.

  16. Seashell*

    I’m having a similar discussion with my husband to letter #1 as we speak. His work is currently hybrid with 3 days a week in the office. He has a cold and was coughing all last night. I said to take a total sick day with no work at all, and he says he will get reported to management for not being in the office enough this week.

    It doesn’t seem like it would be legal to punish or fire people for not being in the office enough due to actual illness. I can see needing a doctor’s note for prolonged illness, but do they really prefer that my husband go in and cough all day? His work is not of the “life or death” variety either.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      However, it does sound very RTO/Butt-in-seat thinking that you should take sick time for your two remote days before you miss any in-office days.

      Those germs have families to support, and if they don’t get an opportunity to spread, they might go extinct!

    2. Elbe*

      Is he sure that being out sick would affect his in-office requirement?

      A lot of places have in-office guidelines that apply to scheduled PTO (for example, if the company requires three days in office per week and you’re on scheduled PTO for two days, you are expected to be in-office the other three days) but that typically isn’t the case for unscheduled PTO (sick days, bereavement leave, etc.).

      If his company is trying to make those rules for unscheduled PTO, everyone should push back as a group. It’s just not reasonable to apply policies like that to things that are out of a person’s control.

      1. Seashell*

        I thought it seemed suspect, but he insists that’s the case. It’s a huge corporation, so I’m not sure pushing back would do anything.

  17. Emerg Doc*

    #1
    TBH, other than the obvious infection control issues, even in the most remote communities I’ve worked in, it’s better to not turn up when you are so sick that you are cognitively the equivalent of practiting lifesaving while intoxicated. In fact, that’s a potentially reportable offence in my country.

    1. amoeba*

      Yup, and in addition to that – if your job is that important/critical, there *needs* to be a backup solution! I’d say the usual “what if they win the lottery/get run over by a bus tomorrow” would apply triple in that kind of job. So, yeah, I know Alison only used this example for effect, but I’d say that actually shouldn’t be an exception, either.

  18. Bruiser Woods*

    I’ve just caught Covid during my notice period, pretty sure my boss is not happy! I can work from home but there is pressure to be working as much as possible to wrap up my projects. I’m pretty sure I’ve had a fever the whole three days I’ve been off for. I have only been able to work a few hours due to feeling unwell and distractions from my sick housemates. On top of that I have to be on call from 7 to 5:30pm to be available for phone calls for a job apparently only I can field questions on. I have a bank of about 30 days of sick leave but I feel so guilty for taking 3. The bank is so large because I don’t often get sick but because I’ve always worked from home for atleast half the time I’ve been sick. I’m thankful my boss doesn’t make me come in that would be so unproductive making everyone sick but sometimes I wish WFH didn’t exist, it can draw out the illness not being able to rest.

    1. Nonsense*

      You’re already in your notice period, so take the sick days! Get a doctor’s note if you need to justify it to yourself. But trust me, as someone who’s had covid twice, working through it was a huge mistake. I still have issues with brain fog and fatigue, and it’s been a year since I had it last.

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        No kidding, right? I’ve had it twice, most recently last December. Not only did I have a fever that wouldn’t come down, but I had crippling brain fog. My boss called me for input on something urgent she was working on, and I was no help at all. I could barely follow what she was saying. There is absolutely no way I could have worked that week.

    2. bamcheeks*

      sometimes I wish WFH didn’t exist, it can draw out the illness not being able to rest

      take the flipping sick time! What are they going to do, fire you?

      1. Bruiser Woods*

        Good point and thanks to others for the comments above. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I wrote that. I think WFH is great just not bosses who expect people to work sick through it. Also I am lucky to have the opportunity to WFH, in a country with a reasonable amount of sick leave and another job lined up, hopefully with a company is financially stable enough to not freak out every time someone takes a sick day. I will take my sick leave I’m healthy but not arrogant enough to think not resting with Covid could catch up with me. I acknowledge it’s not that easy for everyone but I think I am in a position where I can play a part in pushing against a work culture where working sick is expected. Some of my colleagues have health issues and although I’m leaving soon I don’t want to reinforce an expectation that others they must work while sick too.

    3. Arrietty*

      I spent eight years unable to work because of post-viral fatigue from not resting enough when I was ill. Long Covid is worse. Don’t mess around with recovery.

      1. SarahKay*

        This, this, this! I seem to recall that research shows Long Covid is more likely if you don’t actually rest if you have Covid. Take the sick time and good luck, Bruiser.

      2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        A coworker of my father came into work at a semi physical job despite having a high fever and dropped down dead later. The heart really didn’t appreciate being put under that kind of load when the immune system is busy chewing up all the resources.

        I’m not saying it’s likely but if you have a fever absolutely do NOT push yourself to do something. I ended up with an autoimmune disease after a bout of EBV.

    4. Aggretsuko*

      I had to come in sick because I’m not allowed to use sick or vacation time for the first six months of the job and I couldn’t afford to get pay docked. I masked up, I brought an HVAC filter and nobody caught it off me, but I felt very guilty.

      1. allathian*

        Try to let go of the guilt, you did what you had to do to survive.

        It’s easier in Finland, here you have sick time as soon as you start work. I had to call in sick to my first day at a new job once! I’m lucky in that I was truly sick that time, had a fever of 40 C / 104 F and a sore throat that made me sound even worse than I felt. They did ask me to bring in a doctor’s note, which I did when I started the following week. I fully expected them to dock my first month’s pay and was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t.

    5. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Take the damn sick leave and do NOT feel guilty – you are sick, not skiving

  19. Titles*

    If my title is descriptive of at least some of what I do, I use my official title on my resume and add other tasks in the description. If my official title is generic I use a more descriptive title (ex: official title is senior engineer, actual role is senior data modeler). It would never occur to me this could be problematic and, to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been.

  20. NotBatman*

    LW2 – this made me laugh and also cringe in sympathy. I teach college, and I’ve had a few students do this to me (including one memorable one who followed me into the bathroom to shout questions about her homework through the stall door) but it’s the kind of behavior I expect from sheltered 18-year-olds, not grown adults who definitely should know better.

    1. Silver Robin*

      Sheltered 18 year olds? Were they entirely homeschooled by parents with very loose boundaries?? I know some kids will talk to each other through bathroom stalls at school, but that is solidly among friends. Not with a teacher!

      I will be in a daze about this all day

      1. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

        Yeah my kids were all clear by 6 that I didn’t appreciate them hanging out just past the bathroom door, and they stopped.

        I was in an airport bathroom stall as two doctors on either side of me discussed how poorly they had just done on their boards, so that wasn’t terribly reassuring. “YEAH I FAILED IT FOR REAL BRO”

        1. Silver Robin*

          Well, if they failed then they will have to try again and get better? Though I also have memories of being absolutely certain I bombed a test only to find out that even though I was uncertain about my answers, I had actually responded correctly.

          That said…who has those kinds of conversations with OTHER PEOPLE PRESENT?? Rich tapestry….rich tapestry…

      2. NotBatman*

        Every time I think I’ve encountered the world’s most clueless college student, I get surprised all over again. But yeah, I have no explanation for LW2’s situation.

      3. Wayward Sun*

        I’ve seen people do this too, but they were people who were on the spectrum and just were incapable of understanding boundaries.

  21. Katie*

    Not that interviewing and grading papers are the same, but there was a study that showed that people being graded last had lower scores and generally more negative commentary. It showed on average people graded last had 1% lower grade. As mostly teachers were grading online, it was in alphabetical order so it was consistently negatively effecting the same people.

    All that to say, I say go first!

    1. Devious Planner*

      That’s interesting, I’m a teacher and I feel like I get more generous as I go through… That’s just my gut thought though, and I have never actually tried to measure it.

      1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        I’ve never been a teacher, but when grading as a TA, when I found myself getting frustrated at people making the same stupid mistakes AGAIN I had to remind myself that each person was only making the mistake once, and take a break from grading.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          I can definitely see that! I’d guess whether the general trend is positive (yay my students grasped that, yesss these applicants have what we are looking for) or negative (wtf same mistakes over and over, ugh these applicants are less qualified than I hoped) the last few naturally get filtered through that lens. Maybe middle of the pack is best for interviews

          1. HonorBox*

            Having been on the interviewer side more recently, I can say that sometimes I’ve found myself fatigued by the end of the interview process. Asking the same questions a few times, hearing similar answers, etc. can be a bit draining. But I have been wowed by people who were last, and I like to think that as the candidate, going last might give you an opportunity to “pop” a bit because if you’re good, you’re the most top of mind.

    2. Silver Robin*

      It also makes me think of judges who get harsher the closer they get to lunch and then more generous immediately after they have eaten. The longer someone is working, the more likely they are to be tired/hungry/uncomfortable and the less emotional bandwidth they have to consider things carefully. Which either means they get grouchy and stricter or they stop caring as much and let more things slide. Really seems to underscore the idea that humans can only be productive for so long and we definitely should be taking breaks to refresh ourselves!

    3. Blue Pen*

      Yeah, I tend to agree with this. I know Alison said it doesn’t matter, but IDK that I would say it “doesn’t matter” so much as I would say that you can’t possibly know, and so it’s useless to try to control for it or apply a blanket approach. You can’t know who is in their interview pool, how big that pool is, if the person you’ll be interviewing with is a morning or afternoon person, if they’re having a good or bad day, if they have another appointment they need to rush out for and that’s what’s on their mind, etc.

      There are way too many variables to say for sure if one moment in the hiring period is better than the other. I do like going first/early, though, because a) once I’m done, I can relax a bit without having it hang over my head, and b) I do think there’s at least some power in being able to set the tone (going first) as there is in delivering the closing argument (last). And if enough time has passed during the initial stages, chances are, if you did well, they’ll want you to come back in again to confirm their positive impression.

  22. Grant*

    I was going to write in about the hungry judge effect (in which the likelihood of getting parole dips sharply before lunch) but Wikipedia tells me that it has been weakened by re-examining the data.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      I believe it’s one of the many “So if the sampling is truly random…” “It’s not.”

  23. A Book about Metals*

    #1 seems like it’s missing an important piece of information – namely do you get any actual sick days?

  24. I should really pick a name*

    I usually choose the first interview time available to (1) show I’m excited about the position

    It doesn’t actually show that you’re excited. It shows that you’re available at that date and time.

    1. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

      Also interviews are usually being scheduled by recruiting so as the hiring manager I don’t actually know what times you were offered, just that…I was available at that date and time.

  25. Can’t think of anything clever*

    LW2…I was about to walk into the restroom, moments from embarrassment, and my boss ran up to me, shouting my name. Wouldn’t let me go in the restroom because we had to talk about something “NOW”. I kept trying to get into the restroom and fortunately someone else distracted him for a moment and I made it. He was panicking over a data request because it was allegedly coming from someone who regularly filed nuisance requests for data where requests weren’t even needed. The guy never actually even filed the request and we would have had days to fill it if he had. Glad to hear I wasn’t the only one with that ridiculous a boss.

    1. Madre del becchino*

      Tell him, “If you keep me here any longer, you’re going to need a mop/shovel.” (This is what I tell my teenager when she is taking up our single bathroom for far too long…)

    1. fhqwhgads*

      I think the concern in the question was more that it might be something automated and if what the asker supplied didn’t match the value returned by the employer, it’d be an automatic fail.

  27. Alan*

    For LW #5, title matters for credit card applications? That seems absurd to me. All they should care about is your income. I had no idea anyone really cared what you put for your title. The only people who should care about title are potential employers, and then only if they use similar titles.

    1. honeygrim*

      I was wondering if the concern was whether a credit check would return the same title they listed. And, if not, if that would be a red flag to whoever was making the decision.

      1. Alan*

        Okay, so you got me curious. My Transunion report has only my level but no other job description or title. That is, instead of “Senior llama groomer” it just has “Senior” which seems worthless. My Experian and Equifax credit reports don’t seem to have any job description/title at all.

  28. Helvetica*

    LW#4 – I try to be the first interviewee, i.e. choosing the first morning slot mostly because of my own nerves. I find it more stressful to be waiting 2-3 hours to be interviewed, rather than getting it over with.
    But I was just the interviewer where 7 people were interviewed in succession and where we had to use same questions (government hiring) and I did not find myself leaning towards or remembering better first or last candidates. I did feel that my opinion of first candidates shifted as I interviewed more people – but that is because my mind was forming a comparison, which I think is quite natural.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      UGH learned my lesson to go for the morning slot. I had a lunchtime interview a few weeks ago and I was nervy all morning, performed meh, and then in my head all afternoon about my performance.

  29. HonorBox*

    #1 – Stay home with a fever. And if you’re able, just take a sick day or two. If a doctor is writing a note to excuse you from work, more likely it is to excuse you from all of work, not just from working in the office. A fever = contagious (in most cases) and if you’re contagious, you should be resting up and getting better.

    I think you should also loop HR or higher level management in to help clarify the “in office” days part. If you are feeling up to working at home, but have a fever and have a note from your doctor, I would have to believe that even halfway decent management would accept that as a reason that you’re not in the office for the expected number of days one week.

    1. Tech Industry Refugee*

      Strongly agree. Sometimes fever also = practically hallucinating, can barely focus enough to watch TV. IDK how they expect OP to function as usual.

      1. HonorBox*

        Without knowing all the details – how much sick time is someone allotted, exactly what their job is, etc. – I put this on OP to an extent too. If you went to a doctor and they’re telling you not to go to work, just don’t work. If I have a fever the last thing I want to do is… really anything to be honest. I sure as hell won’t be able to focus well trying to work.

  30. Bumblebee*

    I had situation #3 happen to me for an internal position – and to top it off, my other main reference was serving as a consultant and might have to interview me, and two of the search committee members turned out to be part of my boss’s and my regular “smart women lunch group.” After our initial interviews, my boss and I compared notes and realized we’d answered all the questions pretty much identically. We both progressed and did our in-person, full-day interviews, and they eventually called off the search because they couldn’t decide who to hire. In retrospect it was amazingly dysfunctional and also amazing that we are all still cordial colleagues after all that.

  31. anonymous anteater*

    For LW 3, what you tell the colleague is the one question, but you also need to communicate with the hiring manager. At minimum if you get asked for a reference, you’d disclose the conflict of interest. I’d find that super important to assess the reference that you give.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      For OP#3 – if the hiring company gets to the point that they are going to make an offer to Sansa, they will notice that you are listed as a reference for her.

      You don’t have to tell Sansa that you are a candidate now, if you don’t feel comfortable doing that.

      If you are asked to be a reference by the hiring company, do flag for them that you are also a candidate. That is the ethical thing to do. The hiring company will then decide whether they want to ask Sansa for another reference, skip the reference, or rely on you to give an objective reference. At that point, you can make a decision about whether or not you want to disclose to Sansa that you were a candidate.

    2. Anne of Green Gables*

      Keep in mind that the hiring people may notice it. I’ve had it happen once when a reference was also an applicant, and I noticed it right away. (I also usually look at reference lists because my area is small enough it’s not uncommon that I would know a reference.)

      In my case, one candidate was strong for what we were hiring before but the reference was not. During the interview, I just asked the candidate for an additional reference. He figured out why we wouldn’t want to use the one he gave; he gave us another name, it was all fine and didn’t hurt anyone’s chances.

  32. RVA Cat*

    Any chance #2’s crappy boss is taking that old “boss makes a dollar, I make a dime….” personally?

  33. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

    Re:#2 (lol)
    During my first internship my fellow intern started talking to me about how we had just gotten our first paycheck just as I walked into the bathroom. I mumbled some affirmation of how getting paid was nice as I made my way to the stall. Then he. just. kept. talking. I just pretended it wasn’t happening.

    (He bought a TV. I banked mine.)

  34. Nathan*

    LW4:

    When I was finishing up grad school and doing interviews, I wound up in the very last slot of the day. This was a great boon for my candidacy, because it turns out the interviewer and I had a shared interest in a particularly esoteric area of my field and we spent over an hour (the slot was 30 minutes) discussing, whiteboarding, and brainstorming this shared interest. He gave me an incredibly strong recommendation, and over a decade later I still feel grateful for the serendipity of getting that last interview slot.

    I wouldn’t ASSUME that your interviewer is OK with you going over time, especially if you’re the one standing between them and going home, but I figured this might be a useful data point.

    That said, every other job I’ve gotten since then has been due to solid interview prep, a strong resume and cover letter, and excellent references, so I’m definitely also agreeing with Alison’s response here.

  35. Tech Industry Refugee*

    OP #5 I know your struggle. I work in gov’t contracting, and we have labor category titles that make no sense in relation to our actual work. Plus, my role has an obscure title that I always have to translate for recruiters. Wicked annoying.

    LC: Cloud Dreamer Technician
    Company Role Name: Lead Cumulus Imagination Magician Technician
    Industry Job Title: Lead Accountant

    1. learnedthehardway*

      I’ve seen this SO many times. In financial services, EVERYONE public facing is at least a VP. Their actual job might be “sales person”.

      Recruiters in an industry learn what the job titles actually mean. Ones from outside the industry may need to see the functional title (ie. what you actually DO) on your resume.

      For business contacts, go with whatever is your industry norm.

      Tell your parents that you’re chief cook and bottle washer.

  36. CubeFarmer*

    OMG, I almost wonder if question 5 is from my new employee! Part of the problem is that when I held the position I was never too focused on titles. I shortened the job title as I needed to, and sometimes made it a bit more vague when I thought it would help me. Long story short, the title is different in different places. My employee has already asked me about this and my response was, “Well, it’s officially THIS, but sometimes I shortened it. You should use whichever one makes most sense to you. Honestly? No one is going to question you.”

    1. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

      I do have that conversation a lot with new grads. Yes, your HR title says [incomprehensibly vague] 1 but you don’t need to introduce yourself that way to people because it doesn’t contain any information. To be fair to them, why do we give people meaningless job titles?

  37. MicroManagered*

    (not through the bathroom door, but when you’re in more of a position to talk), “When I’m in the bathroom, I’m indisposed and can’t take calls.”

    Depending on the day and how saucy I was feeling, I WOULD just this through the door. If someone happened to overhear this interaction and my boss was deeply humiliated? Good.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I’d be shameless too:
      “I’m doing a #2. No client really needs to hear me right now”

        1. allathian*

          Ha! Excellent.

          I’ve had unreasonable bosses before, but none of them have been this unreasonable. Sure, my job doesn’t involve taking client calls, but still…

  38. Lucy P*

    #2 Last week I had to use the restroom. While in there, someone showed up early for an appointment with me. My coworker, not seeing me at my desk or anywhere within view decided to call me. The bathroom was the only logical place I could be, yet they felt they had to call my cellphone. Yes, I let it go to voicemail.

    Many years ago, I had to take off a day because my husband had a bad case of a stomach bug. I let everyone at the office know this. Still, 2 of my younger coworkers decided they couldn’t live the day without me and kept calling me every half hour for advice. After about the third or fourth call, my sister-in-law (who was staying with us at the time) picked up the phone and yelled, “What do you want? She’s busy with her husband who’s puking up his guts right now.”. They never called back after that.

  39. Blue Spoon*

    LW3, I was just recently on the opposite side of that situation–a supervisor (not mine) who I worked with since we were on the same level agreed to serve as a reference for a position at another branch that would be a step up for me but a lateral move for her, then informed me that she was looking at applying there too. Personally, I really appreciated that she told me early on in the process and was more than happy to take her off and list another reference, because I felt like leaving her on would have been unfair to both of us. Hopefully your employee feels the same way.

  40. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    in regards to #1 whooping cough is making its way around again. And I just learned that the recommendation is that if anyone has had contact with someone infected, for 1 hour or more, that person has to get antibiotics, even if they are not sick.

    For #4 Just choose what ever time offered is best for you and don’t worry about being first or last. For one thing, there is no way for you to know if you are first or last. I’ve been on a few hiring committees. The times that were given to one person may be different days than another. For example, we might only have 2 hours available on Tuesday and 2 hours on Wednesday. If we have multiple candidates we might only offer Tuesday to a few people and only Wednesday to the other. You have no idea who was seen first, even if you take the very first hour offered.

  41. Oscar the Grouchy Nurse*

    OP #2 (lol), I would have left the door wide open when I got out while they were standing in front of it.

  42. "Molly"*

    Hi, I am Letter Writer Number Two . Thanks for all the advice! He actually apologized later for his “inappropriate” act (his word). I replied in a dignified way, “I accept your apology. Now we must never speak of this again.” My best friend almost fell off her chair laughing when I told her this story.
    Thank you for changing the names, Alison. After my 24-year career, I would not like to be famous for this “event.”
    Have a great day, everyone.

    2. Elbe*

      Great response!

      I’m happy that he acknowledged this to you. I’m genuinely curious if he figured this out on his own or if he mentioned this to someone else and their horrified reaction set him straight.

    4. allathian*

      Regardless of the reason, I’m glad your boss saw the error of his ways and had the sense to apologize.

  43. WeirdWorkCommunications*

    I was once on a fully boarded plane that was about to taxi out/do the phones off announcement with my best friend on the way to a funeral when she got a call from a coworker. Thinking it must be a dire emergency, she answered. She responded “talk fast” when they asked if she had a moment and then proceeded to ask a very benign, easily discoverable by other means question to which she replied “look here, gotta go, bye” and hung up just as a flight attendant was coming to tell at her. We couldn’t believe they called. Some people know no boundaries.

  44. SometimesCharlotte*

    I have a civil service job title and my working title. Working title is in my email signature, on my business cards, and on my department webpage. My civil service title is what I put on resumes and applications because it is the one on the organization’s web directory and the one on my HR paperwork.

  45. Former IT Admin*

    I was the admin supporting an IT department and the head of the department before the days of cell phones. Our corporate leaders were across the country. One day, I saw my boss duck out of his office with a magazine to read and I knew he’d be gone a minute. And the Big Dog across the country called, needing to speak to my boss urgently. I told Big Dog that the boss was not available but I’d find him and have him call him back. I sent a number to his pager and I had the building receptionist page him over the loudspeaker so hopefully he could hurry up. Big Dog kept calling back and point blank asked me, “WHERE IS HE?” And I answered truthfully – in the bathroom. I had no idea what else to say, although I wanted to add, “pooping” but I did not. I do not remember what was so important for Big Dog, he probably needed a report he didn’t know how to run himself.

  46. errrrr, uhhhh, duhhhh*

    for the reference / competitor for the position. I suggest telling your employee that you had also applied for that job, but that you’re still happy to give her an honest/positive reference. and that if you get the job and she doesnt, you’ll recommend her to your current company for your old job.

    1. A Book about Metals*

      Agree LW should tell the employee, but I don’t think it makes sense to still be a reference for that job

  47. Bookworm*

    LW4: Overall I don’t think it does (or should) matter. I once interviewed the day of a World Series parade, and the interviewer specifically asked if I had any interest. I said I was happy, happy for my friends/family who are fans, etc. but this job was more important, although I wasn’t a fan of the traffic (to make small talk, etc.). Later I found out that people actually cancelled to attend the parade and me not doing so was apparently a point in my favor.

    FWIW, I’m in the job hunt now and I’ve found there are definitely hiring people who want to see you ASAP. It’s a luck of the order and they’re taking the first candidate they find adequate. Which is up to them, but I have had some really terrible experiences of interviewers leaving me hanging or giving me the expectation they were still searching.

    So one did not move me forward because I said no to a last minute interview during Thanksgiving week (!) and another asked me to rearrange my schedule to take an 8 hour unpaid (!) exercise towards what was the nearing the end of their hiring round. I debated whether to actually do it but I thought I’d go ahead and at least get the assignment and then decide, etc. Interviewer went radio silent when I said I was ready to take it on and then rejected me a few days later. Would it have helped if I had hustled and gone sooner? I honestly don’t know but I do wonder. Ultimately I accept these probably weren’t good fits, though, even though I actually really liked both.

  48. Tai*

    Re sick leave: I would just ask my doctor to put me on sick days. What kind of nonsense is this, working through illness, even if you are at home? If you are sick you need to just rest.

    1. Expectations*

      This assumes 1-2 short illnesses a year. That’s not reality for most people, and it’s definitely not workable if you have to include time caring for sick family members in the mix.

      I don’t get it as often now, but I used to get bronchitis every October, most Februarys, and many Junes. It lasted 3-6 weeks each time. I wasn’t contagious for most of it and was allowed to go out and about, but I was more-or-less continuously coughing the whole time. I went to school like that all the time because there was no other option, but once I was working I usually worked from home for most of the time period to be less disruptive to my colleagues (depending on how I felt, I might also take a few days off, but if I was capable of being productive I actually did better with the distraction of work). If any employer required a doctor’s note to take sick time I wouldn’t have gotten one and would have worked 100% of the time, mostly in the office, because my doctors had noproblem with my working through it or, for the vast majority of the time while I was symptomatic, being around people.

  50. Fluff*

    Letter # 2

    Your work place needs some serious potty humor used in the most embarrassing way. When your boss starts a meeting on the can, you belt out, “Can this wait? I’m doing a number 3. I might need to take the rest of the day off.” All dramatic.

    That’s from a movie called Home. The aliens do a number 1, number 2 and once a year a number 3 – for which they take the whole week off.

  51. Lincoln*

    In our small office we turn on the faucet when we use the toilet regardless of what we’re doing in there.

  52. Ugh*

    Our office manager talks to me through the bathroom door daily. She can’t stop herself. I’m the GM.

Comments are closed.