She must go on leave and I won't hear any excuses!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Oncewasaworker on 2023-06-21 23:05:01+00:00.

So this happened a few years ago. I was a union delegate at a large firm. We had a manager called Karen (I've written about her before on this subreddit) who was appointed to her role by a director of the company. Let's call the director her "uncle". Karen wasn't very clever. She hadn't finished high school and previously worked as a receptionist. She once told me 40 was half of 100.

Karen is struggling in her job and basically does nothing. Her desk is a mess of paperwork. She also looks after all the small departments like records, security, stores etc. If anyone takes on Karen, the director steps in and Karen gets a get out of jail card. There were a few occasions when Karen got yelled at by a manger for making costly mistakes and Karen was put on stress leave and manager got a warning.

One of paralegals Sally from records comes to me to say she thinks Shes in trouble. Sally recently had six weeks leave. She was forced on leave due to having too much annual leave. Once you have more than six weeks you are forced to go on leave until you have no more than two weeks. Sally tells me that HR and Karen enforced her on leave and she submitted a paper leave form the same day Karen was put on stress leave. Sally went on leave came back the same day as Karen. Sally's leave wasn't. docked. She just got paid as per regular.

While Karen was away they replaced her with Paula who found Karen hadn't really any work for 7 months. I found Paula and asked casually about what happened. She told me on day one she threw all the paperwork out and started over again.

So I attended a meeting with Sally, Karen and HR knowing there isn't a record of Sally's leave. Karen starts the meeting on a verbal rampage about not doing as she told Sally to do. Sally needs to go on leave now or else and she doesn't want to hear excuses. I interject at this point and point out to HR that Karen behavior is unacceptable, but we agree ( que MC) as Sally has over 8 weeks leave now, she will go on leave effective tomorrow. Sally submits a leave form to Karen, and we leave the meeting. Sally leave is reduced on her pay slip this time. No one questioned a thing.