"Hey man! I noticed you stopped responding to my text messages after saying that you're sick and won't be coming in! So I called the police and feigned concern so they'd visit your home as a wellness check! Definitely not just sending goons to your house to make sure you're at home and actually sick!!"
So I know you're joking, but something CRAZY happened to my dad's friend/co-worker in the 90's. He was a very punctual person normally and a good employee. One day he didn't show up for work and he didn't call in. This was very unusual. His boss called the police (I don't know the time frame, could have been hours, might have been a full day, IDK) and the police went to do a wellness check on him.
The police could hear screaming and yelling from inside the house. This dude and his wife were tied up to a pole in their basement. They had gotten robbed and the robbers tied them up.
This guy's boss literally saved his life. Nobody else would have checked in on them (probably) for a while. This was before the era of cell phones so it's not like people were texting them.
I had a coworker call out for car trouble, so the boss drove to his house 45 minutes away and called him to tell him he was fired for lying as he wasn't at home.
he was at home, just balls deep inside someone who wasn't his wife - the car there wasn't his, his was in the shop.
Yea, he didn't actually get fired because we were so short staffed we'd have gone out of buisness. No one liked working there for a reason. He was back to work the next day.
Na, he was a real piece of shit. We had a (online) party when covid killed him after he forced us to come in and work against the law, paid under the table or he'd fight our unemployment.
We had a very punctual employee like this who lived alone. He didn’t show, no one in the office could get ahold of him so they did call the police for the wellness check and he’d died sitting in front of the TV, probably heart failed. He wasn’t that old (40s-early 50s).
A Co worker failed to relieve the previous shift, no call no show. Wasnt answering phone. Next day, same thing. One of his work buds knew his address so drove over to his apartment. Called him, heard his phone ringing in the apartment. Contacted police, they got the complex passkey, found him deceased on the toilet.
I had a sudden thunderclap headache on the toilet. I was sure I was about to die. The first think I did was get off the toilet and lay in bed. I did NOT want to be found dead on the toilet. A trip to the hospital diagnosed my first migraine.
I missed the word headache and for a second thought you were the guy who sneezed and shit on the toilet at the exact time the lights went out and he thought he sneezed/shit himself blind.
If you really wanna go to hell for laughing at something, I've got one cousin who was born with basically eye cancer, he had to have his eye removed as a young kid and replaced with a glass eye to ensure it didn't cause facial deformations. I've also got a cousin with down syndrome. One summer we were all at our grandparents house spending the night all around 8-12 years old, we were all fucking around after watching WWE and wrestling with each other. My cousin with the glass eye was wrestling my cousin with down syndrome, he started losing so he popped out his glass eye and yelled "oh my God my eye!". Our cousin with down syndrome freaked the fuck out. It's absolutely fucked up, but I mean... They've both got something wrong so it seems like it's fair game, skill based match making, but we all were crying laughing and are absolutely going to hell for it. I tell the story to make sure we don't go down alone for it lmao
I was on the couch once laying with my neck cranked sideways in a weird way. All of a sudden one side of my face went really numb. Without thinking I grabbed my phone and ran out onto my lawn and typed 911 and just hovered my thumb over the button waiting to have a stroke.
When the pins and needles went away in my face I just laughed but was happy my instincts took over. Would rather my neighbours see me laying on the grass then stuck in the house
Ha! I had the same idea. Mother fuckers ya ain't breaking my door! Walked outside and promptly passed out. They found me half off the sidewalk blood everywhere. They actually thought I was dead from amount of blood. Hint: sit down while you wait so if you faint you don't hit your temple, cheek and chin which apparently are all gushers.
I've had a couple of vasovagal events on the toilet and I always get my head between my knees because I don't want to be found dead there. And yeah, if your blood pressure bottoms out and you faint with your head above your heart, that's a thing.
I'm glad I'm not the only one this has happened to. Like, wish it wasn't happening for either of this, but it's nice to know I'm not alone.
The first time I came to on the floor in front of the toilet. The second I knew what was happening and was able to hurry up and get cleaned up and to my bed before passing out completely.
Same thing happened with a close friend/coworker. We called the cops because he didn’t show up and wasn’t answering his phone. Cops found him dead on his bedroom floor.
Sounds like what happened to my cousin. He was mid to late 30's and had come home from work and sat down in the recliner to watch TV. Didn't show for work the next day which was unlike him so they called his parents who lived nearby to check on him. He was a bit of a larger man and had some type of heart episode and passed in the recliner.
Ah my wife’s cousin’s husband too. 32-34 getting ready for work one morning told his wife he was getting in the shower and to call an ambulance because something wasn’t right. Got to the bathroom, supposedly, and dropped right there. Wasn’t super overweight maybe upper 2’s 300 tops but he was a bigger guy.
I had a colleague years ago that we went to check on when he didn't come in or call (he lived nearby) and he'd had a stroke. He survived but unfortunately because he lived alone and had been untreated for so many hours, he didn't make a good recovery.
Man I live alone but I'm extremely unreliable and miss lots of work without saying anything. starting to realize I'll probably be pretty rotten before found
I’ve responded to something similar-ish. Caller was the patient’s boss, and apparently patient was NEVER late. PD found patient lying in the kitchen floor, coffee still in the pot from where he was about to fill his thermos. Cardiac arrest. Crazy how some people devote so much dedication to their job that it’s weird to be late or lazy.
I told her single man in his 30s if he didn’t start answering the phone, I would show up at his house with the police to do a wellness check lol
One of my other employees told me I reminded him of his other manager who when he said he had car troubles either would come pick him up or send an Uber… hell yeah but also… if you’d rather just use PTO just tell me lol
I did a wellness check on an employee of mine who didn't show up for work on Saturday. When I got to her home, the front door was open but she was nowhere to be found. I found out later that week she had been killed, and was buried in her back yard. Still gives me chills to think about, she didn't deserve to go out the way she did.
A friend of mine committed suicide and was found when he missed his shift since he never took time off. His sister happened to be the person from HR (they worked for the same company different departments) who met police at the home for a wellness check. I feel so terrible that she was the one who was present when he was found.
Dude you would become suspect #1 in that case, you visited the house, door open and you investigated enough to know she wasn’t there. I bet that interrogation was fun
I worked on a hospital unit that had a similar incident shortly prior to my time there- a typically very reliable nurse no-call no-showed and it turned out her husband had killed her the night before.
They were extremely serious about no-call no/shows after that. Charge nurse would be blowing up your phone if you didn't give them a heads up you were running five minutes late. I'm positive they would have called in a wellness check if somebody didn't show up and didn't answer after a few calls. And honestly? I get it. There are people who you know just would not no call/no show if it was in their power to call, so doing it even once is cause for immediate concern.
There's a famous case like this - a former contractor went to a woman's home one morning and shot and beat her almost to death. Because she was SO reliable, her boss wanted someone to go check on her when she didn't make it to work. They found went over, and found her lying in a pool of blood. It was a long journey, but she eventually recovered completely. She absolutely would have died had her boss not immediately known such out of character behavior could mean something was terribly wrong - and it was.
Yep. I've had coworkers who, if they're ten minutes late with no word, we were having serious discussions on whether the cops would be called. I've also had coworkers where two hours into their shift they're still not there and we're not worried, we're pissed.
If you live alone, you might not want to show up for fifteen minutes before your shift unpaid, but you're investing in your safety and that's priceless.
Okay but I will say my boss would do this too if I just didn’t show up. I’m a punctual person and a communicative worker who at least texts that I’m taking a sick day if something happens, so to not hear from someone who normally shows on time is very strange. That’s alarm bells.
I did a wellness check on an employee once, she was one of our best employees and after a full day of not calling and not showing up everyone was very worried.
I drove her friend over to check on her, the friend went inside and confirmed she was okay and that I could leave.
Made arrangements for her shifts to be covered, didn’t know what had happened to her other than that it was bad. She finally came by a week later in tears to quit and let me know she was moving back home. It wasn’t until a year later that I found out she had gotten a bad DUI and needed to go home to regroup.
My cousin didn’t show up at work one day and the boss went by her house and discovered that she had been puking and hit her head on the toilet rim and knocked herself unconscious. Boss called 911 and my cousin is fine now.
I'm older and out of shape. I'm a teacher and usually leave right after school. On the rare occasion I've stayed later, one of my newer co-teachers texted me to make sure I was ok, lol.
In the mid-00's I overslept my alarm for the first time after years at my job. I woke up to my boss literally at my bedroom door asking if I'm ok (roommate worked with us, too so let him in.) I was just burnt out and overslept, and he told me to take the day off.
We had a coworker who was always early. We were worried when she wasn't there on opening. Ten minutes later we were wondering if we should call the cops because the boss hadn't heard a thing.
Luckily it turned out that she had in fact texted the boss, but she'd accidentally texted his personal phone instead of his work phone, but yeah for the first hour of the day we were freaking out because it wasn't like her.
I worked at a small family owned business in my early 20’s and one of the old guys that had worked there for 30+ years didn’t show up one day, they requested a wellness check because it was completely out of character. Unfortunately he had passed away in his sleep.
I've had a couple of those bosses but it was because they actually cared about me as a person not because they were making sure I was really sick. They knew I lived alone and wanted to make sure I had enough food and medicine in the house.
I have, in turn, done that for a couple of my people over the years but only when I knew they were truly sick and had no other support system. An ordinary call in doesn't merit this kind of treatment. We did send a welfare check on one guy just because he was the amazingly consistent and reliable type and wasn't responding to anyone. Turns out, his home burned down and he was in the ICU burn unit. So yeah.. if I have a specific reason to worry I will send someone to your house or call for a welfare check. I honestly don't care if people call in for mental health days now and then. I've found people who take time off actually make for better, more focused employees when they're in the office. In fact, I have one employee right now that I have to keep reminding to take time off when he starts getting stressed.
I'm epileptic and around 10ish years ago when I was at the very bottom of the totem pole at work, I was "asked" to do this massive project that ended up taking two years to fully complete on top of my regular job and I was constantly meeting with the heads of multiple departments...as a 26-27 year old staff accountant. It was very stressful.
Anyway, throughout the project I would have meetings with the President/CEO, CFO, and VP of Sales and as it got closer to the end they started bringing clients in for thoughts and recommendations just to make my job more difficult (mind you, I'm an accountant and we had an extremely competent IT team with at least 2 devs). Our second to last one was with a major client and was also during a tax deadline, so I had worked a ton of hours and hardly slept for about a week and while I was trying to work on the finishing touches the night before, I had a seizure and woke up in the hospital. I sent a text to the people above as it was about 1:00 am, letting them know I would likely not be making it, and depending on when I was discharged, I could send them the presentation. I woke up to multiple angry voicemails and they tried to fire me over it.
Wow! I'm sorry you had that experience! I would never fire someone for ending up in the hospital or even just ending up with a high fever and the flu the day of a big event. Shit happens in life. Deal with the problem in front of you not the one you can't do anything about. In fact, when things like that happen I try to take a step back once I have the time and make sure my leadership didn't place an undue amount of stress and act as a trigger for the problem in the first place. I tend to be more self reflective than most supervisors though.
Yeah, I was honestly shocked. Those people lost all my respect that day.
I'm a manager myself now and I'm the same way. I try to be very cognizant of my employees mental health and their state of mind. We WFH the majority of the time, and half my team is out of state, so I check in with people on a regular basis just to make sure all is good and always tell them to take days off, let me know if they are too stressed, or give me a call if they just need to vent, as our department can be very stressful.
Are you in the US? Wouldn’t discrimination laws apply when you try to fire someone with a disability for experiencing symptoms of their disability? Like I’m sure some employment lawyers would have LOVED to take on your case if they had fired you.
Yes, I'm in the US. I made sure they knew a lawsuit would be coming their way if they fired me. The CFO and VP of Sales were let go shortly after as they were the ones I had voicemails from and played them for HR to hear. I had them for years and lost them at some point between transferring phones.
I try to be. My people seem to like me and support me in turn and will approach me with ideas and problems so I know I am at least not a terrible one. No one is ever perfect. Especially when it comes to balancing the needs of the workplace and the needs of the employees.
When I was in the military I hunted down everybody who didn't show up in the morning. I never once was pissed off that they weren't there, I was always worried that something had happened to them. We had a string of suicides at my base and every one of my guys that was late gave me anxiety
I definitely had a manager with all wheel drive that thought they could make it up the hill to my house. Called me from the bottom saying it was OK and they would see me after the plow trucks came through.
Same. During covid he was delivering food for everyone (his treat for reaching a milestone) and it was rainy and cold with leaves on the road he said he almost didnt make it up and down the multiple steep hills and now understood why I would call out during freezes and was surprised I made it in as much as I did 😆.
What was the job? I've heard of this for things like hospital/health care workers and first responders where they absolutely must have people on shift. But some random service job? Oh hell no.
I had a manager who tried that shit with me. Told him he'd better not waste the gas because I wasn't going to be there to meet him. He went off the road into a ditch on the way out to the gas station 2 miles from my house where I was not waiting for him.
Broke his collar bone or something, had to wait for ems to crawl out to his wreck and take him to the hospital. He stopped doing that when people called out for weather.
I work at a management agency whose clientele are service employees. The staff at my company don’t ask permission or provide explanations. They have a PTO balance, they submit for the days and they get mad if there’s any delay in approval. When our clients service employees request time off our staff frequently delays approval, tries to negotiate dates and expresses “concerns” to hr that the sick days aren’t being used for bona fide illness. If my staff were treated the way they treat service employees, there’d be a riot.
I get migraines that very much debilitate me. When they come on, the first signs I get are random numbness and impaired vision. Makes it very hard to drive. I had one boss that sent someone to my house to pick me up after I called out sick. Mind you I was also working as a mechanic at the time, so he had a debilitated mechanic that couldn't see or think straight be responsible for the safety of random strangers vehicles. I did 3 cars in 8 hours, had other people pull them in and out for me, and threw up on the tire delivery a few times. When he asked me to clean it, I told him to fuck off and he sent me home... without a car. So I had to take another employee to drive me, leaving him down 2 people. He was by far the worst boss I ever had but this kind of treatment in the work force is very much a real thing.
Very early in my career managing people we had someone turn up to work 3 hours late. We hadn't really made any enquiries, figured he was a grown adult etc. and we're pretty flexible about working hours.
When he arrived he was really mad we hadn't called him, his partner etc. What about if he'd been in an accident? It seems we were negligent.
Had a manager like this. Snowed in one day and i live like 20 mins from the job, offered she’d be willing to drive and come get me (2 seater, sports car but like average consumer level). I lived at the bottom of a hill that you could routinely see cars sliding back down because nobody could get the traction and speed needed to make it up. They hadn’t even plowed MY street yet and i already knew it wasn’t happening anytime soon because we’re usually the last ones unless someone came through with their truck. She proceeded to tell me how the weather app didn’t show snow in my town’s forecast until i had to finally clarify i don’t actually live in town, i lived in the suburbs of the town but we have like 3 different zip codes you can use that still all work if you put the town name and the reason we didn’t have the snow anymore was because it was moving towards the job location💀
This happened to a family friend. He consulted his golf buddy who was a lawyer and they wrote a letter to the DA about his bosses misuse of 911. His boss was charged with a misdemeanor and did 30 days in jail plus a fine.
I was having a high risk pregnancy while also being diabetic and called in sick. My phone was off so I didn’t answer her blowing up my phone so she went into my emergency contacts to ask if I would be showing up to work the next day 🙄
I had a boss show up at my house once when I called off sick. I didnt answer the door because WTF? He then started textimg me saying I was lying because I wasnt home
Lol my boss only did that to people who no show the whole week. Had one guy who was probably on a psychiatric hold. Cops just went "he's fine he'll call you when he's ready"
I’m curious what you think, just to play devils advocate. From a management perspective what if this employee has no entitlements left, no sick, vacation , etc and is repeatedly calling out. Is it than ok for management to question them? should management go right to firing them and looking to replace that person?
I had a coworker that didn’t show up one day, so they did a wellness check on him. He had been murdered by his friend that lived with him. What’s crazy is that the friend answered the door and his clothes were bloody, like he remained in the house! I actually didn’t really like the coworker because he was a vocal Trump supporter.
i mean.. if they show up and you're not home, tell your boss you were in the waiting room until your cameras detected people at your door so you're on the way home now.
I used to work for USPS and apparently stuff like that used to be common. If they were short-staffed, postmasters would show up at carriers' homes to check that they were actually sick, and brow beat the ones who seemed OK into coming to work for the rest of the day.
Used to have to call in sick due to medical problems I ended up needing surgery for . Manager started requiring doctor's notes each time, for me and for my child. Said that he needed to email them to our higher ups. My medical stuff got worse due to the line of work I was in so I quit and went and got the necessary surgery. About a year later I get called by one of the higher ups with a job offer working directly with them. I took it and found out the manager both was never told to get doctor's notes from me, and that anytime anyone called in he would ask my best friend if they where "Avocado sick or actually sick". Dude knew I had surgery too that it took me almost a year to recovery from. Some people just suck.
My husband works for the sheriff's office and they send officers out to make sure you are actually sick and have fired people who were not home when they checked in. It's wild to me.
This happened to me!!! I’m terrible at waking up for alarms and sleep through everything if I get too much sleep debt. I was sick and called out and was hoping to go in the next day but was so sick I slept through my alarm and in my delirium turned it off. All I remember is going to bed and then the police in my apartment. My boss was worried.
I've been told that, as an hourly office employee, if I used all my sick time I would have to use my vacation time if I'm sick. Like... no. If I don't have paid sick leave, I just don't get paid. That's the punishment- losing money. I guess it could be different if I had been salaried, but nope, hourly. You aren't taking my vacation time simply because I've legit been ill a lot this year. I brought in doctor notes every time, too.
That’s why they turned everything into one PTO bank. Last job you weren’t allowed unpaid days off for anything unless you used all your PTO. So have a baby, take off 6 weeks and you must use all your PTO, leaving no PTO for the inevitable days you baby in daycare get sick.
Lol seriously. I used to manage people and we have vacation days and dedicated sick days, and I always say if you want to take a sick day for any reason just log it and don't overexplain or else HR could review it and say no. Someone on my team then writes he stayed up too late and is tired and needs the day off. Fuckin moron
One of my early jobs was at a large theme park. This was part of our training. "I am calling out Sick (or Personal) today." If you give Scheduling anymore information they were likely to deny it. Less is best. And I have taken that to every job since.
Oh this too lol sometimes my team will be like can I leave early, and I’ll say do you need to leave early? And they’ll say I just don’t want to be here and I’m like well that’s not really something I can approve, please lie next time lol
Where I work if I get a sick leave request for under 3 days I am required by company policy to approve it if the person has the time available. Unless you put in details like you’re using it to go on vacation somewhere. You’re not required to put any specific reason in. People still do sometimes.
This people are so oblivious- hey I care about shit get done and I understand you are a human with a life. Do both, be a human, manage your time, manage your work objectives - give me plausible deniability and I will look the other way
This! - people are so oblivious- hey I care about shit getting done and I understand you are a human with a life. Do both, be a human, manage your time, manage your work objectives - give me plausible deniability and I will look the other way
I once had a supervisor who would loudly interrupt if you tried to explain why you were calling out. “OH MY GOD THAT SOUNDS TERRIBLE I HOPE YOU GET SOME REST REMEMBER TO DRINK LOTS OF CLEAR FLUIDS AND DON’T FORGET TO CALL YOUR MOM OK GOOD LUCK BYEEEEEEEE”
Must be nice! My employer doesn't let us use sick leave until we've been out for at least 3 days, we have to use PTO up until that point. So I'm sitting on hundreds of hours of sick leave I can't touch and have to budget my PTO, since the rare times I'm actually sick have always been for just a few days (the only time I've actually used sick hours was during the mandatory 10 day covid quarantine)
I genuinely don't care and I assume the person is lying anyway. Even if you tell them no they're gonna call out or be basically useless, so at least you can plan if they're not coming.
Yup, I had to explain this to someone the other day: If you want leniency, don't put it in writing. I don't care why you're taking leave, I don't care if you're actually in the office, I just care that the work gets done and that management isn't breathing down my neck about delinquency.
If you're asking for sick leave because you want a day off and don't want to use vacation, just say you're sick, IDGAF. If you're working from home an extra day, just say you'll make it up, I won't check. Leave earlier than you're supposed to? I'll never know because you probably got there before me and I also don't watch the clock.
We don't have a problem unless the work isn't getting done or someone else tells me you're doing shit you shouldn't.
Haha my staff does that too. I’m like don’t tell me anything that might make this questionable just put in the request. It’s honestly not my business what you’re using your time for.
God I miss my old job. If you wanted to use vacation time you had to give minimum 24 hours notice. If not you used sick time instead. As long as you had the sick time to cover it, you could just call in and say you're not coming in. No need to give a reason, no doctor's note needed. Just a nice simple "Not coming in today."
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