Reading this story about German workers calling in sick at very high rates reminded me of D, a woman I worked with a long time ago. When I was new to the job, I noticed D was off for a few hours a day frequently. The OOTO message would have a short explanation of her planned absence. Generally it made sense and I thought she was more conscientious than others because no one announced they had to drop off parcels at USPS and pick up prescriptions to give their relative who had a flight to catch and could not do it themselves. The time taken to run the two errands was estimated at 3 hours so she showed that time as OOTO on her calendar. There were also things like severe migraine attack, need to rest so cannot attend meetings but will work whenever possible.
The density of these events in D's case was out of range compared to everyone else and so she stood out. I learned a few months into the job that a lot of these OOTO notices were not backed by any actual time off - she just let people know so there would not be any expectation of work from her but she made sure to exhaust all the sick days she had in a year with her miscellaneous ailments that she reported faithfully and in good amount of detail. D had defined how she would operate in the workplace and established what paid and vacation time off meant for her. It did not matter so much what the employer's actual policies were.
D was diligent about vacations in spring, summer and winter - those days off were properly accounted for. Her manager did not want to make too big of a deal of these frequent OOTOs and sick hours (she rarely took the whole day at once) because D was over-reporting her errands unlike others who did all the same things she did but did not choose to announce it. There was a sense in leaving good enough alone. For the year or so that D and I worked in the same organization, I think her time out office was thrice that of anyone else - she had effectively tripled her vacation days without anyone batting an eye. It was understood that is how D rolled.
No one else wanted to follow in her footsteps because they did not feel comfortable sharing how many times they had to go to the toilet in the last three hours due to diarrhea and how that made it difficult to join any call lasting more than 15 minutes. D was not at bothered by the fact that this bit of information was known to all who worked with her everyday and even those that did not.
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