Ah, Corporate America

Gotta love my job. Typical CYA mindset from HR.

So this is the tone for omigawd:

"If you have reason to suspect you have been exposed, especially to someone showing symptoms, stay home and alert HR."

They would instruct us to stay home for 5 days and would not let us come back without a clean test at the end of that time frame. The same applied if we had symptoms for any reason. One of the gals in my area had sinus symptoms due to a deviated septum, and they did it to her even though she had the surgical consult appointment to show she did not have COVID and the negative test.

"We do this because we are concerned for your health and safety."

Now today we have a nasty winter storm bearing down on us. When I get up tomorrow, I will likely be able to make it to work because conditions will just be starting to deteriorate, but things will be coming right off the rails quickly. I commute 34 miles. We're facing some freezing rain, sleet, and heavy snow with 25 to 30mph sustained wind and gusts up to 40 to 45mph all day. They don't project it tapering off and moving out until between 4 and 5 - when I would leave work.

So while I might be able to get down to work without much trouble, I suspect that getting home might be very difficult to impossible. Certainly it would be much harder than going down and dangerous.

Occasionally, they have closed the office for weather, but we got the HR email this afternoon:

"We have clients all over the country who are not having a winter storm, and they rely on us. Please take steps to make sure you arrive on time tomorrow ..."

Concerned about our health and safety my butt. How quickly things change.

a reply to: ketsuko

Yeah, there are many companies which believe you have to be in an office to be productive.

I expect high employee churn in many of them.


Sounds like you should use a Sick Day.


Use them when you need them. Most companies will not pay out sick time if you leave or are severanced out.

a reply to: infolurker

I rather suspect I will end up doing that. Husband agrees with me that I can probably get there all right judging by the forecast, but it's getting home that we're not sure about after the bulk of the storm has rolled through. I highly doubt they will pay to put me up in a hotel overnight.

After having spent years with a chronic condition, I have a paranoia about using PTO unless I'm forced to because I'm used to having that chronic health condition burn through all my time, but I don't really have that problem anymore. At any rate, husband plans to break my toe/hide my keys/park my car on the lower part of the drive/otherwise sabotage my efforts to get out tomorrow. He's not letting me out.

And actually in the position I hold, we work with medical data, so working from home is a little more difficult due to HIPAA considerations. However, most of what we do could wait 12 to 24 hours too.

So long as I got up this morning and the roads were relatively passable, I was going to have a hard time justifying not trying to get in, but I woke up to over an inch of sleet over ice with snow pouring down and strong north winds.

We've already had about 3 to 4 inches and it's projected to go on into this afternoon.

There are already at least 2 major traffic jams across my normal route of travel and one area where the semis cannot negotiate the hills, and these are interstate level roadways receiving the best treatments road crews can dish out.

That all makes it much, much easier to just call it in.

a reply to: ketsuko

This has come up twice recently with my work. 1st time they gave up early upon all employees saying "not happening"
The second time they thought people would show up despite use storm. They were wrong. However after another ice storm we got the option to use a vacation day if we wanted two.

The gist of most employees concerns was :
I can get there but not home.
More important was the overall agreement in the fact the company wasn't going to replace your car after trying to force you to drive in during insane & impossible conditions. No one was willing to blow the $500 deductible on their insurance policy either.

Two people did show up, idiots, there was no work to do cause everyone took off. Still in the past we all came in no matter how dire the weather. This year was a massive turning point.