Ask a Manager: I couldn’t use sick time after my boyfriend had a stroke because we’re not married

[minoanmiss]

I have a pre-COVID question about something that is still bothering me after more than a year. I am a single person and I do not have immediate plans to marry or start a domestic partnership. Last October, my then-boyfriend of a year had a stroke at only 30 years old. I received the call from the ER on my way to the office and let my supervisor know that I needed to go to the hospital and that I would be late to work. I’m employed at a large research university which is a perennial “Best Places to Work” list winner and espouses values about supporting employees, mental health, etc. I have hundreds of sick time hours and extremely little vacation time.


After my boyfriend stabilized, I went to my office to collect my computer and some work I needed and spoke with my supervisor about my boyfriend’s condition and that I needed to be in the hospital because he didn’t have any family in the area and I was his emergency contact. I was gobsmacked when I was told I could not use my sick time to be in the hospital with him. Our HR portal allows employees to use sick time for 22 types of relationships (children, stepchildren, in-laws, grandparents-in-law, etc.) and my manager said that my boyfriend did not qualify for any of them because he wasn’t my spouse and we did not live together. I pretty much had a breakdown in her office because I was under so much pressure and stress. It felt, and still feels, like my organization (and my manager) let me down, treated me as “less than,” and failed to live up to the values the organization uses as a recruiting tool. Effectively, it communicated to me that my relationships do not matter and afterwards, out of bitterness and anger, I actively disengaged in any work that was not directly assigned to me and withdrew from volunteer projects. I’m really happy to now be leaving the organization, but I can’t help but feel like I may have missed an important memo — are single people supposed to just constantly lie to their managers in order to have the same privileges and compassion as married people?

No, your organization just sucks. I’m sorry.

A decent manager would have said, “We don’t have a formal category for this but obviously he is like family to you and you should take the time you need. I’ll handle it with HR.”

It’s true that society as a whole — not just employers — treats marriages and domestic partnerships differently than it does people in relationships living separately. It’s a weird thing. If you and your boyfriend shared a house, I suspect you might have gotten a different response even without being married. People see not cohabitating as indicating something about the seriousness of the relationship … which is problematic, because you can have a serious and long-term relationship living apart and you can have a marriage that’s little more than hostile roommates. Part of that is about the legal ties of marriage, of course, but you usually see cohabiting unmarried relationships get taken more seriously than non-cohabiting ones.

Anyway, it’s understandable that employers need to put some limits on benefits usage, but they need to be flexible when a situation comes up that’s still within the spirit of their policy, if not the letter.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

The comments are an infuriating intriguing mix of "them's the rules, suck it up" and "what an inhumane cruel policy". It's an interesting example of lawful vs chaotic: what's more important, rules or people?

I should probably stop reading the discussion though because I have an Opinion on this and I may end up flaming somebody

[heavenscalyx]

The secret is that many of those "Best Place to Work" companies are actually horrific, but they're horrific in ways that mirror emotionally abusive relationships and families that do things in plausibly deniable ways after isolating employees so that they cannot seek emotional support from any of their coworkers. The companies do it by having strict rules that their management hews to and managers soothe their consciences by telling themselves they're great team players for adhering to the generous rules supplied by the organization ("We support 22 types of relationships!")

And in my experience "large research universities" are the WORST offenders. The worst of corporate life and the worst of academia bundled up together.

[heavenscalyx]

Gold star for me for going and adding my comment to the post and NOT looking at more than a couple other comments. :P

[minoanmiss]

My icon has a silver star for you, but it shines!

[xenacryst]

"We have a clear set of policies and procedures supporting a wide variety of situations" ... if you are bold enough, self-assured enough, sufficiently anxiety-free, emotionally supported, financially secure enough, and sufficiently secure in your profession to walk in like you own the place and demand that these policies and procedures be at your disposal. They're painstakingly detailed where anyone can find them in a disused lavatory in the basement*, and we even went to the trouble of removing the imposing sign from the door mentioning tigers - aren't we welcoming?

* A PDF of a Word document in the corporate wiki that has bad indexing and limited search capabilities.

[ambyr]

The US government lists 7 categories of family relationships for bereavement and medical leave purposes for federal employees; the 7th is "Any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship." I am immensely grateful that everyone I've worked for has been willing to interpret that with the broad spirit that the people who drafted it intended. It sucks that I have to be grateful for that, and that everyone can't just expect to receive that consideration as a matter of course.

[green_grrl]

This makes so much more sense. How could that university enumerate 22 different relationships and not come up with this?

[mirlacca]

I used to work in HR for a defense contractor, and I'm pretty gobsmacked to read that federal employees get that much leeway. (of course, I retired 13 years ago--good grief how did that happen?--so clearly things have changed) Perhaps someone ought to write a letter to the head of HR quoting that policy, since universities get a ton of money from federal research grants.

[ambyr]

It's been part of the OPM regulations for funeral leave since the 1970s; I believe it was added to the regulations for sick leave in the 1990s. (More sweeping changes were made in 2010 to explicitly note that same sex domestic partners were family members, but the original intent of the "any individual related by blood or affinity" language, as far as I can tell from reading Requests for Comment and other documents, was more, "look, some of you have never even met your aunts and some of you have been raised by your aunt since you were two years old, we cannot be expected to possibly define exactly who counts as family and have it work in all cases, you know it when you see it."

[mirlacca]

I was in HR policies in the late 80s/early 90s, and I still remember one call I got about compassionate leave for one employee who wanted to go to her clan father's funeral. "Clan father" was not a recognized category at that time (which iirc was limited to parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren). I said "Screw that, you're Indian, go for it." Never got any flack for it. Would have raised holy hell if I had.

[shirou]

I'm (mostly) with Alison. It is indeed understandable that employers put limits on benefit usage, but the policy is unreasonable if it doesn't allow for a flexible interpretation. Employers should include language like "or a comparable relationship" to explicitly give managers and HR that flexibility.

I diverge from Alison in her characterization of what constitutes a "decent manager." I find it dishonest to suggest a first-line supervisor has the authority to simply "handle it with HR" in the manner Alison indicates. If the leave policy does not include language allowing for flexibility and the organization rigidly enforces the policy as written, there's not likely much LW's manager can do about it. I don't agree with all my company's policies, but I don't blame my boss for policies set far above his pay grade.

LW's manager should have helped in other ways—reduced work expectations, tasks that could be completed remotely—but LW doesn't say anything about that. It's unclear whether that's because the manager didn't try or because LW wasn't open to or interested in other accommodations after learning about the leave policy. I'm not a manager but have a senior technical role and mentor junior employees, and it can be very difficult to reach folks who are actively disengaging out of bitterness and anger.

[heavenscalyx]

I mean, it sounded like it was a flat refusal without any accommodations offered, especially given the breakdown in the manager’s office. There are ways and ways to wrangle these things, and unless the office was *bugged*, the manager could have said something like, “I totally understand that you need some time and accommodations because you are ill. It’s frustrating that you are ill but I’d like to help you out in the ways that I can. Let’s just make sure to document that you’re using your sick time and need flexibility because you are sick.”

[feldman]

Bingo.

[shirou]

That's a good approach if the manager feels comfortable with it, but especially in a rigid and punitive work environment, I can see managers feeling uncomfortable with such wrangling. The university sucks for making it necessary.

[lemonsharks]

Part of what makes a manager good, rather than simply efficient, is understanding that it's part of their job to go to bat for their subordinates against policy made over their paygrade, or to find a solution that adheres to the letter of policy while accommodating the subordinate's real needs.

If they're uncomfortable with finding and executing those solutions, they're not, by my reckoning, good managers.

[green_grrl]

“Oh dear, you are obviously ill with stress. You need to take some of your sick days to regain your mental health.” Like, seriously, not hard to figure out.

[torachan]

Unless this company required some sort of proof of relationship like submitting hospital records plus birth certificate or marriage certificate, which I highly doubt is the case, then it's simply a matter of the supervisor saying yes, this falls under acceptable leave.

[cereta]

Shit like this is why (a) people lie about why they're taking time off, which leads to (b) employers asking for verification, which has the unintended* consequence of (c) people with chronic health conditions not taking needed time off, because you don't go to a doctor's office for a bad migraine.

*Unintended by the employees. I suspect it's not entirely unintended by the employers.

[harpers_child]

There is something that is pinging my queer radar and I can't put my finger on it.

[minoanmiss]

The dismissiveness towards unmarried couples was (and often still is) applied to dismiss same-sex couples? At least that was one thing this made me think of.

[harpers_child]

It may be something about un-gendered LW, the phrase "domestic partnership", boyfriend in the hospital, and the closing question all combining.

It may just be I born in the early 80s and absorbed a certain amount of background radiation (as it were) from news reports on the AIDS crisis. Someone not being able to spend time with a significant other in the hospital jabs me in my tender places.

[minoanmiss]

I hear you. I'm only a few years older than you and I remember those news reports and felt those jabs too.

[lilysea]

The dismissiveness towards unmarried couples was (and often still is) applied to dismiss same-sex couples? At least that was one thing this made me think of.

Also people who are on government financial support because they are too Disabled/too chronically ill to work

cannot marry without losing their benefits

so a "unmarried couples don't count" attitude

means people cannot take leave to eg attend medical appointments with a partner [many Drs take women's serious health issues more seriously if they bring a male partner to a medical appt; also partners can drive the patient to the appt; take notes; etc]

or provide hands on medical care

to partners who are too Disabled/chronically ill to work

who are the people who most NEED their partner to be able to access paid leave

[minoanmiss]

Absolutely. People also discussed both in comment.s