Posted by noa on June 8, 2003, at 10:11:19
Recently, I was ill for 3 days. I called in sick each day, as required, but did not speak directly to my supervisors. Instead, I left a message. During the sick leave, I received some phone messages, as well, from my supervisors. I called back, but did not speak with the supervisors directly. Instead, I left messages. There was nothing to indicate in their messages that direct consultation was required because of any kind of urgent situation.
After I returned, I was summoned to a meeting with the 2 supervisors. They told me they had been uncomfortable with my not having spoken with them directly during my 3 days of absence. One of the supervisors indicated that she had almost called my emergency contact (a sibling) because she had not been able to have direct voice contact with me. I pointed out to her that since I had called in sick each day as required, there would have been no reason to contact my emergency contact. She insisted it was because of her concern, so I thanked her for her concern but pointed out that she is not my personal friend, but is my supervisor, and that contacting my relative would have gone beyond the boundaries of a supervisor-employee relationship.
The supervisors also argued that it is customary business practice for employees to be required to be available for consultation during a sick day. To support the claim that this is usual and reasonable and commonly practiced, one supervisor said she had asked her husband and he said it was a reasonable expectation, based on how he had run his business before he retired. I did not engage in disputing whether the requirement is common business practice because I do not know. But whether her husband says it is or not didn't seem to me to be of much consequence.
(As an aside, I thought her citing her husband as substantiation of whether this is expected universally seemed rather pathetic to me, and I tried to imagine her husband in a parallel situation, defending a policy decision because his wife said so).
They went on to say they wanted to require that if I am out sick that I call at a specific time when the supervisor would be at her desk. This seemed unrealistic to me, as I do not actually know when she will or will not be at her desk, or on the phone for that matter. The main point they were trying to establish is that to them, it is insufficient to communicate via voice mail and that I'd be required to be available directly.
I told them that had there been an urgent situation, they could have left a message indicating this, but had not. And that I understand the need for consultation on urgent matters, but the nature of illness is such that a person might not be able to consult while out sick. I was not refusing to ever be available to consult, but that in my mind there were few situations that fell into the category of truly urgent (I said this because I know that these 2 people have difficulty triaging what is important and not, and what is urgent and not--they tend to operate out of anxiety).
I ended by saying that I beleived I heard what they were requesting and that I needed to think about how to respond so that we can try to resolve this matter.
A couple of days later, I received a memo from the senior supervisor, "summarizing" the meeting. "Summarizing" is in quotes because her recollection was replete with innacuracies. Not to mention that it detailed her review of the messages from the days I was out sick, reading like a list of accusations of failure to meet objectives. Of course, I was angry, and in my mind began to formulate a point-by-point response. But I stopped myself when I realized that I was taking the bait to be on the defensive when I did nothing wrong. In my mind, the meeting was to establish an expectation that they wanted me to meet from here on. It was based on concerns arising from the sick days, but since they hadn't ever articulated the expectation to me before this, it really isn't about what actually did or did not happen on my sick time.
But the major inacuracy was that she wrote that I had agreed to the new policy. I was actually very surprised to read this because I had chosen my words so carefully at the time, to indicate that I needed time to think about it and respond to what they were saying.
I was also angry because I felt that the supervisors were drawing my time, attention, and energy away from things that were of much higher priority.
But I contained my anger, and called the supervisor to say I had gotten her email, and that I wanted to request that we defer further discussion about the matter until after a major time-sensitive project was completed, which is only about a week away. I also told her that I did need at this time to correct one item in her email, which is that she wrote that I had agreed to the policy when I had not said one way or another, but had said I needed time to formulate a response, and was interested in resolving the matter with them.
She argued with me on this. I then said that I did not want to get into a power struggle with her, and could we defer further discussion until the more pressing responsibilities were seen to. She said yes.
So here I still am, trying to formulate how to respond. I am very uncomfortable with their approach, and afraid that my personal boundaries have been and will be violated. I do not trust their judgment about what kind of situation would require consultation. I have never stated that I refuse to consult as needed while out sick, and in fact, I have had direct conversations in the past. I have also had some sick time when there were no conversations.
Just to be sure, I checked our policy manual, and of course, there is no policy requiring a sick employee to have direct conversations with a supervisor. I have also looked at about 25 personnel policy manuals of varied types of workplaces. None have such a requirement.
If such a policy is indeed, standard operating procedure that is practiced without being in policy manuals, I don't know and I don't have the means to survey other businesses about this.
In my mind, consultation with a sick employee is a judgment call--balancing the professional responsibilities of both the employee and the supervisor with the need to respect a very important boundary--when a person is ill enough to stay home from work, I assume they should not be disturbed unless absolutely necessary.
In this case, there was no urgent need expressed. I believe that the supervisors are acting out control issues. I do not trust their sense of boundaries, and therefore feel very protective of my boundaries, which makes it hard to just say OK to their request. But by not agreeing, they are seeing me as uncooperative. I want to avoid being insubordinate, but I also need to feel like my personal boundaries will be respected.
I am writing this at 4:13 am, which reflects how hard it's been for me to shut out my worries about this. I find myself waking up in the middle of the night rehearsing potential responses.
BTW, I think it is important to note that the supervisors have not at all challenged my 3 days of sick leave. I filled out the forms and the leave was granted. They could have, according to our policies, required certification from a doctor, which I can provide. But they did not.
poster:noa
thread:232354
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030604/msgs/232354.html