During my time as a middle manager, I saw how much actual work is needed by management to make this happen. You can’t just passively say “take care of yourself :)” and leave it at that. There will always be people who push themselves stupidly like coming in sick or answering work phone calls at funerals. Either due to some imagined pressure to visibly perform, or caring too much about their work.
A manager who truly believes that people need to take care of themselves need to actively prevent people from doing stupid shit.
At one point one of my team members came in clearly half unconscious from cold. I had to urge him to go home and only half jokingly threaten to take his laptop away if I saw him in the office tomorrow.
For some people I had to straight out tell them that if I saw them stepping in to answer support questions while on vacation, there would be stern words. We handle support, and if it is urgent and we need you, we’ll reach out.
I think too many managers know this is a real problem, but just passively exploit it.
It’s because you’re fighting against a lifetime of conditioning. Older people have been conditioned since childhood to show up, regardless of the situation. It’s less of a problem with younger people. But people of all generations are used to the doublespeak you see in this comic, and you have to firmly establish that you’re not contributing to it.
It also sends mixed messages when your manager tells you to take time off for vacation and not check email, but then is often found on calls during their own PTO. Which is what my boss tends to do.
Yup… I straight up had to tell a report that if I caught wind of them doing anything even close to work related, I’d have IT shut off their access until their leave was over.
“Make sure you take a day off when sick”
“Does that mean we get sick days?”
“No, that’s what vacation days are for.”
“What if I don’t have any vacation days?”
“Ask your co-workers to donate theirs!”
🤮
Two jobs ago, I worked at a place that did exactly this…while also being fantastically stingy with PTO (I think I got 8 days per year, total, use it or lose it).
Anytime I got sick, I still came in. Don’t want me to spread the plague in the office? Give me sick days.
I legit had to close a deal in the delivery room while my wife was squeezing out my spawn. It was pretty great and I wasn’t bitter about it at all.
Award to be handed out by that middle manager who proudly and loudly never “needs” a sick day. cough Don’t worry sneeze I tested and it’s cough-cough-cough not COVID. I feel fine. I go crazy if I just stay home and don’t work, you know?
It’s like everyone forgot that other illnesses other than covid, yknow, exist
Stay home for those too, nobody wants to get sick because you feel the need to be seen at work. We see you and we all think you’re an asshole for coming in sick.
What’s wild is that even from a purely business perspective that’s the right choice. Missing someone entirely for a day or three is so much better than half the office operating at half capacity because they’re all sick.
Sometimes it feels more reasonable to think of a corporation as a pure power structure with some apparent productive output as alibi.
That’s a nice idea and all but largely companies that are too ineffective tend to go bust. Like yeah they get away with some stuff, but there is a limit. It’s competition that determines that limit. The more competition in an industry the more efficient you have to be and the less returns the owners will get. It’s one of the better aspects of capitalism - for the most part. It could lead to companies cutting costs that cause issues down the road.
Oh absolutely. But the bigger or more monopolistic the company, the higher the limit. Some can get away with running in circles for years while people play career ladder games in successive restructurings.
Same middle manager who actually wants to come back to the office instead of remote working and always suggests ridiculous “positives” of it, but you know they just hate their home life is what it is.
"Here at X Corp, we’re a family!
The kind of family that will throw you away like garbage and forget your name in a week if any life event makes your productivity decline.
Also we have Little Caesars Pizza every last Thursday of the month!"
True story
I was in the hospital for a couple weeks years ago, and toward the end, my manager called me and asked me to do something for work.
Should have called in dead.
I’m probably in line for a promotion to management, and this is something on my radar. The GM genuinely doesn’t believe in people coming in sick and will herself be the extra work or hands needed to replace them. I’m the same way. But the example she sets is having Lupus and being some kind of unwell too often to never be sick at work. The other manager, recently promoted, is frustrated by the fact that we legitimately have people who don’t take care of themselves and take advantage of our relatively lax on time and attendance policy. But she’s a good friend of mine who I think can be inspired to grow and move past that, especially if we could manage to filter out a few problem employees. The advent of rec market realities has shaken out several people already, including three out of four members of the management team. It’s just not the job it was a year ago.
They should be bothered by people who take advantage of lax systems. The system can only be lax when everyone is trustworthy. The entire culture of being chill is at risk if a few people start abusing it. Use, and abuse, are not the same thing. Being able to roll in an hour late without issues because you were fighting insomnia, or your kid had a problem in the middle of the night is a luxury. It’s a really nice benefit. Rolling in an hour late every single day because it’s a lax system, is abuse, and should be dealt with.
Yeah, and it’s being monitored and addressed. I just don’t think we should have people working while genuinely sick to cover for people who just aren’t reliable. We’d be able to get rid of some of them, but we keep having people quit. The changes in the industry and the workplace from rec legalization have caused high turnover at a lot of dispensaries. It’s so much busier and more challenging than before, and not everyone from the med only times can handle it. We just hired some newbies, but we lost some management and are expecting to lose a budtender or two. It’ll even itself back out in time, once we’ve fully sorted the old crew and everyone left can handle it or came into it like this.
Any good manager should easily be able to tell the difference, and step both if someone is abusing the “lax system” and if team members aren’t using it when they should.
