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Antiwork

Boss Told Me to Work From Home with COVID (Is This Legal?)

I work for a Fortune 100, so this is not a small company boss who doesn't know better. I was out of country on vacation for a week and I caught COVID-19. I texted my boss on Sunday with a picture of my positive at-home test results and his response was “please work from home tomorrow, I will let HR know and they will contact you if they need anything”. No direction about the rest of the week–just Monday. The next morning during our daily meeting, he told our entire team that I'm working from home sick and if they couldn't get ahold of me, they should text me. I worked from home on and off during the week until I couldn't take it anymore on Wednesday when I told him that I needed the rest of the week off and to let me know if HR needed a doctor's…


I work for a Fortune 100, so this is not a small company boss who doesn't know better. I was out of country on vacation for a week and I caught COVID-19. I texted my boss on Sunday with a picture of my positive at-home test results and his response was “please work from home tomorrow, I will let HR know and they will contact you if they need anything”. No direction about the rest of the week–just Monday. The next morning during our daily meeting, he told our entire team that I'm working from home sick and if they couldn't get ahold of me, they should text me. I worked from home on and off during the week until I couldn't take it anymore on Wednesday when I told him that I needed the rest of the week off and to let me know if HR needed a doctor's note. He called me and said that he was expecting me to be back soon, but that he would notify HR that I had COVID (wasn't he going to do this on Monday?). Why was he expecting me to be back soon? There's still a mandatory quarantining period of 5 days from the CDC, which would still put me out of office the whole week. He also asked if I was going to get a “real” test because “those over-the-counter tests are only 70% effective” but insisted that he wasn't telling me to do it, he was just wondering. I know this man could hear over the phone that I was sick, and could hear it in our daily meetings all week. I did end up getting an official test from a quick care clinic to have in my back pocket, because he is acting so shady (obviously it came up positive). I reviewed the employee handbook and couldn't find any mention of sick days. When I asked about sick days upon hiring, HR told me that we don't have official sick days, and that you just “work it out with your manager” instead. Does this give them free reign to make people work from home with COVID?

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