Most companies have policies in place when it comes to taking a sick day, which is understandable.

What would you do if your manager didn’t follow that policy, but instead demanded that you have a doctor’s note if you called in for even just one day?

That is what happened to the worker in this story, but this employee wasn’t about to let his boss get away with it.

Let’s read the story.

Sick day

My old company manager would always ask for a sick note from your doctor.

It’s about $50 from my GP.

I was at his office when my boss “Mary” called me to make absolutely sure I had a sick note.

She tried to use a company credit card to pay for the doctor’s visit.

I had a two company credit cards one for internal use (tools etc.) and one for external use (billed to clients).

Neither would work at my doctors office.

I called Mary back:

Me: my company credit cards aren’t working

Mary’s suggestion didn’t work.

Mary: use your own and file an expense report

Me: no I’m not here to lend money to a multi million dollar company.

Mary: fine use mine.

Medical secretary: we can’t take credit cards over the phone.

She gets it in writing.

Mary: them you won’t be paid for today.

Me: send that by email right away please.

Mary: sends it.

Me: replies to email I’ll need a union day to file a grievance as you refusing to pay me is against our collective agreement. There is NOTHING in our collective agreement stating that I need a note for one day, it’s for three consecutive days. I’ll also need a second union rep as I can’t represent myself.

Oh, she can’t back out now.

Union days for grievance can’t be refused for any reason unless there’s a catastrophic event.

Mary: (calls me back) fine I’ll pay you.

Me: no, the violation has already occurred and the grievance demand filed, we are proceeding with this.

Mary: but

She wasn’t about to back down.

Me: my union rep will be in touch.

For 8 hours pay, and want of a sick note

Me plus other union rep 4 hours to prepare plus 2 hours travel each. 12 hours unpaid. 4 hours each to present the grievance.

Grievance was won at the first stage.

What a waste of time and money.

So, I got paid my 8 hours, but the company had to pay 20 man hours out of pocket (unbillable to client) because Mary was enforcing her own rules outside the collective agreement, as a “management right”.

I was maliciously complying with our grievance process which I brought up during the presentation.

Bonus content: Mary stated that what was written in the collective agreement was open to interpretation and she was correct and I was wrong. I asked her to flip to the last page of the PDF, she did.

Oh, I bet he didn’t like that.

Me: who had signed the contract?

Mary: VP of HR, National Union Rep, VP operations, Matthew, and… YOU the VP of your union accreditation.

Me: so what you’re saying is you, who wasn’t at all present during the negotiations knows more about the contract I’ve negotiated for the last three renewals?

Mary: this meeting is over I’ll have my answer emailed to you within 7 days.

Me: you have 3 business days as per our collective agreement which you know so well, I’d hate to file yet another grievance for non compliance.

Some managers just can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit say about this story.

Hey, they asked for it.

I loved this line.

Great job informing the new supervisor.

This HR Rep loves the story.

This is a genius move.

Just let the guy take a sick day.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.