Few things are more annoying than new policies that don’t exactly make sense.

So, what would you do if your job updated its attendance policy and reset your record to show more unexcused absences than ever before? Would you just do better moving forward? Or would you dig through the records and see what was going on?

In the following story, one employee deals with this exact scenario and tries to get to the bottom of it. Here’s what happened.

Attendance tracker went from 2 unscheduled absences to 7

A couple of weeks ago, my job updated our attendance policy. We are now allowed 6 unexcused absences in a 9-month period (2-5 consecutive days only count as 1 absence).

I was emailed my updated attendance tracker. I went from 5 unscheduled absences to 2. I have intermittent FMLA for chronic illness, so despite being out a few times per month, my official attendance record looked pretty great.

My cat was sick, so I decided to take him to the vet and take a day off. I didn’t want to use my FMLA, despite my manager encouraging me to, because I wanted to make it very clear that I only use it when I really need it.

She found out she had more unexcused absences than she thought.

Then, a few days later, I had a ******** meeting about “not working” when the phones are off.

When in reality I DO work that final hour of the day. We are just so overloaded with tasks that I cannot get every single thing done by myself in an hour.

So if there were 15 tasks and I was able to finish 10, then the next day, it looked like 5 tasks were just sitting there at the end of the day, and I didn’t care.

After that meeting, I got a Teams message saying that I actually had 7 unexcused absences. I was very confused. She said I needed to get it sorted out with Lincoln Financial because they aren’t entering it in.

Frustrated, she took a look at the online time card.

I looked at the newest tracker, and my reasons were “using leave.” But what caught my eye was that, allegedly, I was off for a day because I had a “sick pet.”

Besides a random tarantula die-out around that time (which was devastating but not worthy of taking a day off), all my pets have been happy and healthy until last week.

So I checked my online time card myself, and I was either working on the days I was accused of missing, or it was entered in as leave, which is how the days appear if LF approved it.

Now, she’s forced to work while in pain.

Surprise, surprise, only 3 days counted as unexcused. So my manager is straight-up lying about the days that were unexcused.

So here I am today, with severe pain and exhaustion, waiting in my car to go in for another grueling day when I should be at home taking care of myself.

I would quit or risk my job by using FMLA if I could, but I have no plan to fall back on. This job market sucks, and my search for a new job has yielded no results.

Yikes! This whole situation sounds like a mess.

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit think about what happened.

She should consider this.

Generally, yes.

It sure is.

Here’s someone who knows about the process.

She needs to contact her admin because if she’s eligible for FMLA, she needs to use it.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.