Just because a policy sounds good doesn’t mean it’s going to work.

What would you do if your company introduced a new rule forcing employees to either come into the office sick or use up limited time off? Would you just go along with it? Or would you seize the perfect opportunity to show them how dumb it really is?

In today’s story, one employee deals with this exact situation. Here’s what he did.

Using PDT and taking the day off when sick or coming in anyway?

My company has been doing a hybrid schedule where we work 2 days in the office and the rest of the week at home. I go in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

They recently made a policy change where if we call out sick on a day when we would need to go into the office, we either have to go into the office regardless of being sick or use our limited time off and take the day off.

Their reason for this new policy is that we would be less productive if we worked at home while being sick. However, this is not an issue on the day we work from home and are sick.

Lucky for him, a family member actually was sick.

I say we have limited time off because they only offer 2 weeks of vacation (1 week given every 6 months), and our PDT is accrued at 2.5ish hours every pay period (paid semi-monthly)

Anyway, when they dropped this policy, I instantly decided to show them how flawed this new policy is.

On Monday, I woke up with a very dry throat, not uncommon given the cold and dry air where I live. I go about my day not thinking much of it and wake up this morning still very dry throat and very congested i feel like absolute crap but I still feel well enough to work so I go in.

About an hour or so later, my wife texts me and tells me her grandma has tested positive for COVID, and tells me that she has slight signs of COVID pneumonia. We were around her on NYE.

The boss told him to go get tested.

I’m talking to a coworker through the chats that we have, and telling her this, she says I should probably tell my boss.

But I initially don’t want to, so I can stick it to upper management. I waited about 20 minutes and decided to message my boss asking about the policy and telling him my situation.

He asks if I have COVID.

I tell him I haven’t been tested, but it’s likely.

He tells me to go get tested and finish the day at home.

Lines for tests in my area are taking at least an hour, but closer to 2, as I’m sure they are most places, and I tell him that and say I’m not about to lose that much pay, and ask if I can get a home test.

He agrees.

Eventually, the boss gave it up.

So I pack up my stuff, head home, and grab a couple of tests on my way home for my wife and me. We both test negative, and I tell my boss this, and he asks me to get a rapid test.

I tell him no and that I’m not that worried about it since we weren’t around my wife’s grandma that much, and my family all had a cold during Christmas.

He tries to convince me to get a rapid test a few more times with no luck. He eventually drops it.

I get a message about 30 minutes later, and now I’m working from home the whole week.

Yikes! That sick day policy could really backfire!

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit feel about this.

The UK sounds like it has a great policy.

This person doesn’t like his choice.

Here’s someone else who thinks he was selfish.

And another person who was not impressed by what he did.

He was pretty reckless!

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.