Sigh.
As something of a minor incarnation of chaos, I do honestly try to keep it under wraps. I mostly play by the rules, even if I'm somewhat free about where I choose the rules from at any given moment. I go out of my way not to turn people's carefully constructed views of the world into bubbling, dripping insanity. I try and leave them approximately in the condition I found them.
And then there was today.
This quarter, I'm doing database work for a Government agency. Pretty much the epitome of the realm of Law, one might imagine, even if the database itself seems to have been spawned by something that would give Lovecraft nightmares.
For the past three weeks, give or take, I have been sick with a viral infection picked up at work, made worse by the building's air conditioning, and largely left untreated (apart from bed rest and home remedies) for all this time.
Last week, the local doctors realised they couldn't just keep patting me on the head and telling me to wrap up warm, or it would look bad on their stats. So they issued me with a fearsome array of antibiotics and other pills to be taken once a day, three times a day, six times a day, and so on. It would (they told me on the way out the door) possibly also have the gastrointestinal effect of turning me into a human Catherine wheel at both ends.
At this point, I phoned my boss and said it might not be a good idea for me to bring my still-infectious, coughing, potentially-exploding self to the workplace until the pills had run their course.
The boss, being the myopic rule-bound fossil that she is, said that I was being suspended without pay because I'd used up all my sick leave. For catching a virus from her staff member, in her group, on her watch, made worse by the aircon settings in her division.
So today, I walked into the office bright and early in the morning, and had a little talk with said manager. I told her that not being paid did nothing for my rent, and that someone was going to have to make a decision about whether it really was a good idea to force me to infect everyone at HQ, given that by the end of this I'll have spent the better part of a month on the sidelines and I'd be quite happy to pass that on to everyone else.
But you have no sick leave, she insisted. This, in her head, was the end of it.
I am aware of that, I said. How about you go and find someone who is not bound by this restriction and let them make a decision on it?
But... the rules are the rules!
Boss. I am sick. I am infectious. I am coughing. I am cold. I am in various degrees of pain, including a headache, a throat which feels like I gargled with sandpaper, and lungs which have had more muscular exercise in the past month than the previous year. I am TRYING not to have to turn your ego into a pretzel, but if you continue to argue with me about who knows more about how Federal Government personnel systems really work under the hood, I will leave large bootprints on your sense of self-worth as I bodyslam your preconceptions into the mat. Either you go talk to the Boss Above All Bosses right now, or by the pretty red marker pen you hold so dear, I WILL.
(Forty minutes later...)
"So the B.A.A.B. says that your sick leave is approved and fully paid to date, and you can take the next week off on full pay too, and you don't need a medical certificate."
Well, that's probably because the B.A.A.B. has fractionally more sense than a lemming.
And so, eighty minutes after I walked into the office, I walked out again. Having, of course, used the time to catch up on all the agency news bulletins, clear out my overflowing email inbox (because of course there is no policy about putting an out-of-office message on people's email when they're sick), make sure data requesters who needed looking after would be, and so forth. Because, after all, who else is going to do it?
I must be getting a bit better, I think. I didn't even use my favorite "Few things irritate me like having to do your job for you" line.
And then there was today.
This quarter, I'm doing database work for a Government agency. Pretty much the epitome of the realm of Law, one might imagine, even if the database itself seems to have been spawned by something that would give Lovecraft nightmares.
For the past three weeks, give or take, I have been sick with a viral infection picked up at work, made worse by the building's air conditioning, and largely left untreated (apart from bed rest and home remedies) for all this time.
Last week, the local doctors realised they couldn't just keep patting me on the head and telling me to wrap up warm, or it would look bad on their stats. So they issued me with a fearsome array of antibiotics and other pills to be taken once a day, three times a day, six times a day, and so on. It would (they told me on the way out the door) possibly also have the gastrointestinal effect of turning me into a human Catherine wheel at both ends.
At this point, I phoned my boss and said it might not be a good idea for me to bring my still-infectious, coughing, potentially-exploding self to the workplace until the pills had run their course.
The boss, being the myopic rule-bound fossil that she is, said that I was being suspended without pay because I'd used up all my sick leave. For catching a virus from her staff member, in her group, on her watch, made worse by the aircon settings in her division.
So today, I walked into the office bright and early in the morning, and had a little talk with said manager. I told her that not being paid did nothing for my rent, and that someone was going to have to make a decision about whether it really was a good idea to force me to infect everyone at HQ, given that by the end of this I'll have spent the better part of a month on the sidelines and I'd be quite happy to pass that on to everyone else.
But you have no sick leave, she insisted. This, in her head, was the end of it.
I am aware of that, I said. How about you go and find someone who is not bound by this restriction and let them make a decision on it?
But... the rules are the rules!
Boss. I am sick. I am infectious. I am coughing. I am cold. I am in various degrees of pain, including a headache, a throat which feels like I gargled with sandpaper, and lungs which have had more muscular exercise in the past month than the previous year. I am TRYING not to have to turn your ego into a pretzel, but if you continue to argue with me about who knows more about how Federal Government personnel systems really work under the hood, I will leave large bootprints on your sense of self-worth as I bodyslam your preconceptions into the mat. Either you go talk to the Boss Above All Bosses right now, or by the pretty red marker pen you hold so dear, I WILL.
(Forty minutes later...)
"So the B.A.A.B. says that your sick leave is approved and fully paid to date, and you can take the next week off on full pay too, and you don't need a medical certificate."
Well, that's probably because the B.A.A.B. has fractionally more sense than a lemming.
And so, eighty minutes after I walked into the office, I walked out again. Having, of course, used the time to catch up on all the agency news bulletins, clear out my overflowing email inbox (because of course there is no policy about putting an out-of-office message on people's email when they're sick), make sure data requesters who needed looking after would be, and so forth. Because, after all, who else is going to do it?
I must be getting a bit better, I think. I didn't even use my favorite "Few things irritate me like having to do your job for you" line.