Boss Demands Employee to 'Justify' Sick Time, Redditors Respond With Excellent Advice

In a civilized workplace, an employer trusts the word of their employee (you know, the one whose labor makes the company its profits?) when the employee calls in sick. It's that simple. In other, more toxic work environments, bosses have the tendency to interrogate their workers whenever they request a crumb of time off. It's almost as if upper management thinks that they can bully their employees out of being sick.

When u/LargeThighMeat received an email from their boss requesting their reason for taking sick time, they posted a screenshot of the email exchange to r/antiwork, leaving it up to the subreddit to decide how to reply. My personal favorite suggestion was, "I seem to have come down with a severe case of LIGMA, sir" but OP chose a more appropriate answer.

“Top comment decides how I respond to this email” Posted by u/LargeThighMeat

The comment section

“I work in a factory. We call a automated voicemail system and leave a message which is then translated into an email to our team lead. I've literally never even talked to someone when calling out, and can take my PTO and vacation whenever I want and for whatever reason I want, including scheduled in advance. I'll give you one guess as to whether our shop is unionized or not.” said u/Krynn71.

“Don't be so formal, just ‘being sick’” said u/Sarius2009.

“Be concise ‘Sickness.’” said u/alittlebitdrunk.

“'As per my previous email...' Translation: Can't you read, you dumb fuck?!?” said u/remotetissuepaper.

“This. ‘Per my previous email, this sick time is being taken for illness.'” said u/lavenderbleudilly.

“Sickness, sir” said u/AlarisMystique.

OP updates Reddit with their boss' reply

Taking the advice of many redditors, OP replied to their boss' demand to know the purpose of the sick time with a simple “for being sick." Needless to say, the boss was not satisfied with this answer. In their update, OP mentioned that they lived in New York.