Assuming the mother should be the one to stay home when a child is sick is an assumption that’s outdated at best and just plain rude at worst.

So when a father was ordered by HR to stop the alternating sick day system he and his wife had carefully set up and just have one parent handle childcare, he agreed — and became that parent for every illness that followed.

His manager wasn’t too happy when deadlines started slipping.

Keep reading for the full story!

HR doesn’t want to deal with too many “child sick pay” requests … no problems!

My wife and I are both working, and meanwhile our two kids are in daycare — if they are not sick.

The couple always had an arrangement for covering childcare when the kids were sick.

Our agreement was that if a child is sick, one of us stays home the first day, the other the next day, and so on until the child is fit again or one of us catches it too.

That way, care work is split evenly between us, and nobody suddenly misses work for an extended period of time.

They further explain the policy.

We are entitled to 30 days of “child sick pay” per child, per parent.

It doesn’t cover everything, but if I recall correctly, it covers about 85–90%.

This soon created a bit of a problem for the HR department.

Because we alternate each day, we get one doctor’s notice per day and split them accordingly between us — instead of one notice for a week, we would have five, which we submit to our employers and health insurance to deal with each other and get paid.

HR — coincidentally the wife of my manager — told me that it was too much hassle to deal with a few papers instead of a single one.

This couple wasn’t happy with this response, but they still did their best.

She said that one of us should stay home, implying it should be my wife, as it’s sadly still pretty normal for the mother to deal with care work.

We did comply — but I will take my paid child sick days until I run out, and then my wife will start to cover it.

So when management took notice, he was quick to blame HR.

Since then, our children were sick twice and I stayed home the whole time — once for 3 days and once for a week.

My manager asked why I wasn’t coming in as I used to and that some orders had nearly missed their deadlines.

I said HR — his wife 😇 — wanted it that way, and I still have around 50 days of child sick pay left.

I really enjoyed the look on his face.

Of course HR had to go and screw everything up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a bus driver who is sick and tired of covering everyone else’s weekend shifts.

What did Reddit have to say?

Quite a few gender biases still exist in the workplace.

Another commenter laments about the unfair expectations put on working women.

This HR lady was clearly not a girl’s girl.

This commenter can’t help but be a little envious about this policy, despite its flaws.

If there’s one thing HR hates, it’s having to actually do the job they were hired for.