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Antiwork

For the first time, my partner has a job where he can actually take time off without guilt — it’s amazing!

Going to preface this by saying this should be the bare minimum in a workplace, but it's such a marked change that it's drastically improved his quality of life. My partner started a new job last month and he gets 4 weeks of vacation a year and 2.5 weeks of sick leave. His boss told him that if he has a doctor's appointment, and he'll be missing less than half a day of work, he shouldn't even log it as sick leave, just to let her know. When my partner asked his boss if he could amend his schedule to come in later and leave later every 2nd Tuesday, because he has to take our dog to physical therapy. She told him not to even worry about it, and that as long as he was caught up on his work, to leave on time. In the past month of working…


Going to preface this by saying this should be the bare minimum in a workplace, but it's such a marked change that it's drastically improved his quality of life.

My partner started a new job last month and he gets 4 weeks of vacation a year and 2.5 weeks of sick leave. His boss told him that if he has a doctor's appointment, and he'll be missing less than half a day of work, he shouldn't even log it as sick leave, just to let her know. When my partner asked his boss if he could amend his schedule to come in later and leave later every 2nd Tuesday, because he has to take our dog to physical therapy. She told him not to even worry about it, and that as long as he was caught up on his work, to leave on time.

In the past month of working there, he's seen a coworker leave early because his roommate was having a really bad day. He's seen a colleague go on a 2-week-long vacation with only 4 days notice. And it's totally fine – nobody snipes at anyone else or gossips about other people taking time off. Since they are not understaffed, no one is worried about how this will affect their patrons. As long as he and his coworkers are chipping away at their long term projects, management really doesn't seem to care when they come in late, leave early, etc.

We've been together for seven years and, usually, every time he has to take off work, even for a few hours, it's been this torturous decision for him. He works in a public services setting, and usually, there's such a big issue w/ understaffing that one person taking off unexpectedly negatively impacts everyone else. At one of his previous workplaces, he got screamed at by a coworker for using 1 hour of his time every few weeks to attend union meetings (he was an officeholder). His coworker even quit their union because he felt like my partner taking one hour of work time to attend to union duties was so disruptive.

Since starting this new job, I've seen him more relaxed than I have ever before. We're planning a longer vacation for the first time in the history of our relationship. We're going to a concert next week and he's taking the day after off, just because he can! It's wild what having a semblance of work/life balance can do.

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