Doctor Teaches Patient's Boss a Lesson for Threatening to Fire Sick Employee

A good manager makes employees feel supported, heard, and valued. A good manager knows that an empowered employee will do better work than a disgruntled one. A bad manager doesn't care about any of this. A bad manager will unnecessarily flex their power just because they can, even if it means hurting the business.

When u/kathjoy called in terribly sick with the flu, her boss gave her an ultimatum: either come into work, get a doctor's note, or get fired. Nearly passing out from her fever, she struggled her way to the hospital to get her boss the note. The doctor was furious, and decided to teach OP's boss a lesson.

Posted by Mel Dawn

“Manager forces me to get a doctor's note despite it being illegal to do so. Doctor writes him the most passive aggressive note signing me off for 2 weeks instead of 2 days to teach him a lesson.” —u/kathjoy

“Come in or bring a doctor's note, or you're fired!”

“I couldn't afford to lose my job.”

“My doctor turned her anger towards my manager.”

“Okay. I'll give him a sick note.”

“I was now signed off for a full two weeks”

“It was clear Steve wanted to argue”

“I ended up getting a nice two week paid vacation”

The comment section

“I know it's not the point of the story,” said u/SeaworthinessOld2390, “but respect to the duty manager for backing the employees claim that Steve threatened to fire him. Often managers stick together. It's rare a manager will openly go against another during a disciplinary.”

“Yeah, definitely wondering what kind of consequences there will be for the duty manager.” Added u/nohearin. “It’s possible this was a pattern and the duty manager wanted the manager gone as well so it would stop being a problem with the union, but whew, that’s a lucky break for OP.”

“In Canada, some doctors started billing the companies directly who demanded doctor's notes for routine illness.” Said u/Karmaze

“Man, Steve is a dick.” Added u/DarthGayAgenda. “I don't know if it's the same in UK, but any employee that works around food self reporting diarrhea or vomiting is not supposed to work.”

OP replied, “Same laws in the UK, and I split my work hours between working in the bakery and the deli, so I would 100% have been handling food if he'd had his way. Thing is most managers ignore that rule (or at least the ones I had did) so even though if you have anything like tha [sic] you're supposed to call in sick, you're often discouraged from doing so.”