Sometimes the fastest way to prove a rule doesn’t make sense is to follow it perfectly.

So when one IT employee working remotely during an illness was told by HR that he must return to the office or take leave, he quickly chose the leave option.

But when unfinished work began piling up, HR was soon forced to be a little more flexible with their policy.

Keep reading for the full story!

Took 5 Days Vacation While HR and Team Lead squabbled over company policy.

I (24M) work for an IT MNC providing services to an Oil and Gas corporation.

My team consists of 10 people, and all of us are scattered across the country, so all of our work and calls are done on Teams and can 100% be handled remotely.

My organization has a policy where it’s mandatory to WFO three days a week.

But when this employee fell ill, HR wasn’t very flexible.

Around four weeks ago, I fell sick and decided to go to my hometown to get better.

I worked from home for two weeks, and HR got to know about it and called me regarding the issue.

I explained the situation to her, but she was adamant about enforcing company policy.

She basically asked me to take leave if I couldn’t come to the office.

So that’s exactly what he did, and luckily, his boss was a lot more chill.

I took the whole third week off.

My team lead is an amazing guy.

He doesn’t care about remote work as long as the work is getting done, and I am critical to some tasks like QA checks before we hand over any deliverable.

So when I applied for a whole week of holiday, he called me.

Now without me and the QA checks, nothing can be handed over to the client, so he got worried.

So they met with HR again, and HR still wouldn’t budge.

I explained to him about the chat I had with HR.

The next day, he, HR, and I got together on a call.

HR was still adamant about the policy.

I left the call midway, saying that they should text me if they reached some conclusion, and proceeded to take the week off.

Finally, HR surrendered and the employee got his way.

Eventually, at the start of the fourth week, which again I was planning to take off, HR called me.

She said that she was “allowing” me to continue working from home until the end of the month (around 10 days).

Turns out, when you’re important enough, you get to bend the rules a little.

What did Reddit think?

At the end of the day, everyone is only looking out for themselves.

In Europe, there seems to be much better worker protections in place regarding sick time.

It’s always important to build a paper trail.

This compliance could have been a lot more malicious by this commenter’s standards.

Micromanaging almost never equals good managing.

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.