Chronic health issues, mental health issues, taking care of a dependent with health issues, disabilities, unsustainable work practices, etc.
Have something you can wrap up in a week? Great, we’d love to support you. Anything ongoing or that requires more than 40 hours of time to “get your shit together” (much less try to find and arrange ongoing, in-network, competent care), and you’re an absolute asshole to everyone else and a liability for even mentioning it.
They will IMMEDIATELY start trying to build a case against you, and refer you to the textbook HR policy and you better be ready to move on, and have weeks of documented proof that you’re actually suffering from the issues you claim, bc if you’re not bleeding from the head at all times, you must be lying/exaggerating.
They’ll admit that they’re having “hiring issues” and that they’re understaffed on an ongoing basis, but does that translate into giving employees additional time off to manage work obligations and stress? Absolutely not.
Cutting costs means cutting into healthcare options, which means higher premiums and shitty coverage, but do companies become advocates for their employees to the insurance companies where we all are clients? Of course not.
If your main sole responsibility is your job, and when you get home, your partner hands you a sandwich and otherwise handles the logistics of life, you’re the ideal candidate. Anything else, how dare you allow life to happen to you, you absolutely pathetic inconvenience of a human.
I’ve seen this happen to great employees, great people, just dismissed bc they dare ask for me by social accommodations or a flexible schedule, or more than one week of sick leave. No matter how much of their personal time they’ve already spent trying to adapt and overcome. Then the stress of trying to balance their own health (and/or that of a loved one) hits, along with stress over maintaining their livelihood, just trying to do the right thing to friggin LIVE a mediocre life.
So what’s the alternative? Forcing their hand? Forcing them to follow their own “work-life” policies? Then they look at you like someone trying to work the “system”. So yea, work the system. If they want to advertise that they give the most basic do shuts about employees, make THEM prove it. Document it. Show 7 kinds of “evidence”. They expect it from us, so expect it from them. Quit letting them put out articles of how much they help the “community” and help non-profits, when they don’t even support their own employees that those non-profits try to help.
Glad to see the CEO did a 10k for Lupus, when they ask their employees with Lupus to submit years of blood tests and documented issues where they couldn’t walk, just to get some weeks working remotely. Glad they have an HR team whose job it is to put out daily articles about mental health during “awareness” month, yet when employees are struggling, they are treated like waste and whispered about behind their backs. Glad they brand everything with Pride flags and historic images for Black History month, yet their exec team and Board has as much diversity as an episode of Friends.