When COVID was just starting to spread, companies had to figure out how to keep working while also keeping everyone safe.

Some companies did a good job, but others fought the idea of letting people work from home for no good reason.

That was the situation the employee in this story was in, so she said she would either work from home or take her 26+ weeks of paid sick time, whichever the company preferred.

Read on to see what they did.

Can’t work remotely? Guess it’s vacation or sick leave, then.

This took place in 2020 or 2021.

As you can imagine, a lot of companies were figuring out how to manage remote staff ever since COVID19 began.

I am a social media manager for a large university, and am considered “essential staff” for some instances (if there’s a snow day, I can work from home but need to monitor social channels for questions, problems etc).

Weeks before the virus got as widespread as it did, I asked my supervisor to consider remote options as my husband and I had been keeping a close look at its progression abroad, and he has an autoimmune disease, but I was literally laughed at and told it would never happen.

That was certainly a crazy time.

Last week, our university announced that they’d be shifting to online learning for three weeks.

I again asked if we’d be given remote options at this time as well to help flatten the curve, and given that my job can be done literally anywhere, it shouldn’t be a problem.

I again was told nope, as “essential staff” I’d absolutely have to come in, and more details would be given in an HR email later that day.

So classes are remote, but staff still has to come in? Why?

HR email comes in and affirms that ALL staff were expected to come in as normal (about 4,000 employees) and if you wanted to take time at home, you’d need to take personal, vacation or sick time.

Staff could call/email HR and make individual cases to request remote work, but I’m in the state with the fourth-highest cases of COVID19 right now, and we all know college campuses are cesspools for disease, so staff is livid.

The next day, I emailed my supervisor again and told them that I called/emailed HR saying that if I don’t get approval for remote work, I’m going to follow email protocol and take sick leave for the foreseeable future.

Luckily, I am in a union and can request up to 26 weeks of 100% paid sick leave for myself or caring for family, and I knew it would get approved.

I bet they weren’t happy about that.

I said the ball was in their court, and they could either have me at home actually working, or have me at home and be down an essential staff member.

Silence.

Good job, teachers and other staff! Standing up for your health is important.

In the meantime, I got a phone call back from HR from a frantic employee who said they received literally thousands of emails/phone calls similar to the one I sent and I could expect an update by end of day.

Turned out I was not the only one threatening their bosses with time off.

At 5 pm, we got an email that all staff and classes are remote until further notice.

I know it’s likely they would have eventually made this call anyway, but I’d like to think the THOUSANDS of employees threatening malicious compliance made it happen sooner.

Companies were handling the whole COVID thing so stupidly at the time.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this story.

Yup, profits above all.

This is a great position to be in.

Oh how their attitude changed.

Yeah, this really didn’t make sense.

Yeah, she should always work from home.

COVID exposed a lot of companies as hypocrites.

They never cared about health or employee well-being, but only their profits.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.