Employee shares 'asinine' work-from-home policy designed to make sure you're home.
In response to a Reddit post asking people to share the most 'asinine' work-from-home policy their offices had enacted, user STUNTPEN*S shared one that is super crazy. Here's the story.
Today, mine came up with the brilliant idea if you're not at the location where your paycheck is addressed, you're AWOL because you're not 'home'.
Gonna suck ass for those single folks who periodically spend time over their SO's place, or for couples that have more than one home.
I'm not really sure how they plan to enforce this, unless they're going to send the 'WFH Police' over to check your house to see if you're actually there when you're logged in.
Update:
And now, in the words of Paul Harvey, it's time for the Rest Of The Story.
Today, I found out why this policy was enacted.
A few weeks ago in a meeting with HR, the HR rep made a comment about the policy being enacted because people weren't working at their houses but were taking 'vacations' (unapproved) and 'working' while on vacation.
Digging around a little with my friends high up in central IT admin, it seems a senior administration official who never uses a computer was participating in a zoom meeting. In the zoom meeting, one of the participants was apparently at the beach participating in the meeting remotely.
Except, she wasn't.
She had her zoom background set to the 'tropic' theme with the palm trees and ocean in the background.
The moron thought she was participating remotely from Aruba or some shit. He wanted to bring her into HR on disciplinary charges but didn't know her name because zoom has pretty pictures of you and he didn't get her name (or maybe she had edited her setup to just show her first name, who knows).
Based on that, the wheels start grinding where we need a new policy where everyone has to work 'at home' when they work from home or you're considered AWOL.
When someone finally realized what happened, and brought it to his attention, senior IT people got involved (which is how I ended up finding out about it). They explain the zoom background to him.
Rather than admitting his mistake, he doubles down with how the policy is 'necessary' and becomes even more vested in making it a reality (rather than admitting his mistake and looking like a complete moron).
No. I'm not sh*tting you. This is not urban legend territory. I'd laugh if it weren't so stupid.
Edit 1:
I'm wondering if I can use this new policy to my benefit when I am 'on call'. If I can't 'work' from anywhere other than my HR-registered street address or I'm considered AWOL, I guess this means when I am on call and not home I do not have to answer my phone/emails, since I would technically not be working 'at home'.
Then again, dipsh*t administrator may decide this means you can't leave your house when you're on-call...
People had thoughts in the comments:
Obviously, make a background of your workstation at home.
Then go to the beach and use it.
I made my zoom background a video of me sitting in front of my computer looking interested and occasionally nodding.
I would’ve made a mass email to all of my coworkers telling them to use the beach background on zoom for the next meeting. Cue malicious compliance.
So there you have it. What's your worst work-from-home policy story?