Trust me, this doesn't have anything to do with me wanting to be an awesome little worker bee, and everything to do with me not wanting to dump a bunch of work on my team at the last minute when I can quite easily do the job from home (we have the staff to handle it too, so it's not like it's that big of a deal, but it's just so very dumb).
So the place I work, like so many others, recently ordered all of us back to the office after two very clearly successful years of telework (only two days a week, so it's not terrible, but anyway). It's been alright so far despite the return of the various clock watchers who like to monitor how often people use the bathroom (I know, a different rant entirely, but seriously, what the hell?). Anyway, onward to the cavalcade of inanity.
Friday night a friend of mine wound up in the hospital and needed his geriatric, three legged, half chihuahua / half demon hate spawn walked. I know, not even the most strung out Hollywood script writer would dare attempt a cliché like this, but I swear it's true. I had dog sat for this little (mostly) toothless (did I mention incontinent?) ball of anger before, but she clearly woke up that morning, and chose violence, because when I went to put her slip leash on, well, the one actually functional tooth found itself most of the way into my thumb.
Much cursing, bleeding, a possible seizure, and one infinitely patient dog whisperer of a girlfriend later, the snarling murder machine was back in her lair to await my friend's wife who wouldn't get home until somewhat past midnight (we also left her some chocolate, because it sucks to have to leave your partner at the ER). Meanwhile, we opted that since my thumb was still bleeding, and largely looked like it was mangled by a mostly toothless chihuahua, for our own little ER visit. This misadventure turned into a four hour wait for what ultimately turned out to be a professional hand wash (as opposed to my own amateur one), a few cheap band aids, and a prescription for ten days of doxycycline. Huzzah. We were finally in bed by like 01:30 or so.
The rest of the weekend came and went without much fanfare, just a bunch of swelling and grumbling on my part. Last night however, I guess my body finally decided that the antibiotics were going to be a thing, and kept me awake the whole night with various weird ass dreams, sweating, and a number of bathroom visits. I texted my supervisor (around 05:30) to ask if it was alright if I worked from home today (because I'm feeling fine enough, just not sure I want to make the hour or so commute to the office when there isn't a bathroom on the metro), even though it was my scheduled day to come into the office. She's also a pretty early riser, so she said she would have to talk to her own supervisor to make sure it was cool, but otherwise to take care of myself and we'll figure it out.
Hours later, management finally is awake and answering their phones and apparently have made the decision that if one can't come in on the day one is supposed to be in the office, one must take a sick day. Doesn't matter that we already work from home three of the five days a week anyway, nor that we just did two years of working from home, nope, if you can't put your ass in your seat at the office, you're on sick leave. My supervisor and I try and fight it, because I'm supposed to be the lead on four interviews today, but management hears nothing of it.
So here I am, having dumped these interviews on my teammates at the last minute for no other reason than an absurdly misguided adherence to a return to work policy that makes no practical sense (apart from justifying continued ownership I guess of an office building downtown?). I don't mind taking the mental health day, and my team is awesome and can easily handle it, but it just seems like such an obscene waste of time, and effort. Also, it's because my team is awesome and can handle it that I don't want to dump my work on them. Anyway, I'm going to go play with our dogs now.
tl;dr – I'm being forced to take sick leave, inconveniencing my team, even though I work from home 60% of the time anyway. O, and I'm not sick, I just have the runs because of anti-biotics.