In my final corporate job I asked for and received a sit/stand workspace. It was pretty sweet as far as a cubicle can go, but it wasn’t enough. I kept all surfaces empty except for one framed photograph of a random child that came with the frame. I made sure it stood out.
You might ask why. I noticed pretty early into that job that my manager was sympathetic to giving time off to people with kids and never deducted their pay or vacation time.
Thus I had a photo of a random kid on my desk and milked it. Before the arrival of this random frame, I was working 60 hours a week.
After presenting the stock photo kid – I had to go “pick up my kid”, “she has a doctor appointment” or a “school soccer game” that I can’t miss, etc.
Name anything you can think a kid could experience and me and my imaginary daughter got the time off, without penalty.
My pay remained the same but at around 30 hours per week. Once I traveled overseas for two weeks, but for work purposes my “daughter” had serious “hospital time” and my boss ate up the drama and believed everything.
When I returned I felt guilty about my massive lies about the imaginary kid, put all my files on the desk of my boss, rode the elevator down to the lobby, handed my key card to security and walked out feeling free.
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A friend of mine did a similar thing.
He didn’t turn up for work and they rang him. He didn’t answer. They rang up the second day and when he answered, he was watching some bull shit daytime TV talk show about a man who wanted to see his kids.
So he went with that. Told them he found out he had a 3 year old kid and the mother never let him know and messed with his head. His boss gave him the rest of the week off.
He said it was so exhausting because his boss tried to help and gave him all the information needed to gain access and visitation and would ask him how things have gone.