Working from home offers flexibility, but it can also introduce surprising obstacles, especially for pet owners.

When one company forbids pets on Zoom calls for remote workers, one employee had to get creative, outsmarting a bizarre rule all while keeping their pet comfortable.

Read on for the full story!

I have to lock my dog in the bathroom when working from home?

I work from home, and my home is a studio apartment.

My workplace has a no pets policy.

The policy was surprisingly strict, even for remote workers.

I thought that it would only apply to bringing pets to their office. I didn’t know that it would also apply on zoom calls when working at home.

One employee found this out the hard way.

I got an official strike for breaching that policy when my dog was in the background of a zoom call. My dog was simply sitting still in the background.

The only place where I could hide my dog out of view was in the bathroom.

But they weren’t going to banish their pet to the bathroom just yet.

No worries Pete. I got a still image of dogs in a dog park, and set it as my zoom virtual background.

My dog was, as usual, sitting behind me, but out of their view this time.

Take that, company that hates dogs!

What did Reddit think?

Talking about pets at work can actually increase morale!

Why a company would want to forbid pets in someone’s private home is beyond this commenter.

The employee should really rub the inconvenience in their employer’s face.

Companies must realize that employees have lives outside of work that can’t always be easily compartmentalized.

The employee learned that while the rules may be unjust, there’s always a workaround.

With a little creativity and the help of a virtual background, this malicious compliance was a howling success.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.