HR Was Going to Force Her to Return to Work Despite How Contagiously Sick She Was. Furious, Her Physician Wrote Her a Doctor’s Note That Kept Her off Another Week!

A woman was going to have to return to work after only two days despite having an unidentified infectious disease. She needed a doctor’s note, so her physician gave them a piece of his mind!

Company Policy

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OP (Original Poster) loved her job, and she was very grateful to have it. However, she had been sick and working from home for two days.

More Than the Sniffles

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Her symptoms were severe—like the worst cold or flu possible. It wasn’t just the average case of sniffles, and it had only gotten worse.

Razor Blades in the Throat

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OP even had to go to the ER two times in two days because of the pain she was experiencing. Even the “smallest sip of water” had caused her agony as her throat was so sore.

Medical Confusion

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Not only did OP have a problem, the doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing it. They didn’t know if it was a virus, bacteria, or what was making her so sick.

Typhoid Mary

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OP had no intention of returning to work and getting all of her coworkers sick with whatever her illness was. She chose to work from home to help protect herself and her coworkers and let the HR department know it’d be longer than the two days she’d already done.

Proper Procedure

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Even though her job can be done 100% remotely, HR was not satisfied. They told OP, “If you’re going to work from home for two or more days, you’ll have to get a doctor’s note since it’s against policy.”

She Would Show Them

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OP’s first instinct had been to go to work looking and feeling like “death warmed over.” After giving it some thought, she decided she shouldn’t do that.

Wouldn’t Be Right

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OP didn’t want to give her infectious sickness to any of her coworkers. She also didn’t think she would have been able to get into her workplace without passing out since she was so sick.

Conversations With Her Doctor

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Instead of acting like a plague rat, OP spoke to the ER doctor she had just seen on her second visit. She had asked him what he thought and told him that she needed a note.

The Unimpressed Physician

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OP said when she mentioned the note, her doctor looked at her with a distinctly “what the f***” look on his face. He hadn’t liked the thought of her job forcing her to return to work and risk her health and that of everyone else at her job.

Handling the Situation

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The doctor assured her he would handle the problem and write her a note. OP expected to get a note that said something standard like, “Patient needs to work from home until the end of the week.”

Having Her Back

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That’s not the note that the doctor wrote for OP, though. Instead, OP said he “had her back” and wrote a much different letter.

In the note he wrote, he said she would have to be off for another week and concluded the note with, “Infectious disease requires more than two days to improve.”

What Redditors Think

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Redditors were happy to see that the doctor had come through for OP and the scathing tone of his note.

One shared a similar experience with OP, saying, “Ah, I remember my old work. Required a doctor’s note for everything. So when I left early—I have a chronic disease, which happens every one to two months—I had to miss the next day as well in order to go see my doctor. And my doctor, being a funny lady, always extended that note until the next weekend.”

Another Redditor cheered on doctors who care about their patients, saying, “Seriously, doctors who get p***** off for unreasonable requests from your work are the f****** best!”

Stopping a Plague

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Redditors were confident that not spreading an infectious disease to their coworkers was the correct course of action.

One even pointed out that working from home wasn’t good enough, saying, “You are wrong, and your doctor is right. You should be off work while you are sick. Stop kissing the southbound end of a northbound employer who would can your b*** in a heartbeat the moment it would save them 75 cents.”

What do you think about the doctor’s note and situation? Should workers have to come to work or spend money on a doctor’s note to keep everyone they work with safe?

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This post first appeared as HR Was Going to Force Her to Return to Work Despite How Contagiously Sick She Was. Furious, Her Physician Wrote Her a Doctor’s Note That Kept Her off Another Week! on Quote Ambition.

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Karen Danao

Hi, I’m Karen, a content curator and writer for Quote Ambition; I’m also a marketing and advertising professional. Beyond the keyboard and the screen, I’m someone who’s out to enjoy every bit that life has to offer!

Poetry, philosophy, history, and movies are all topics I love writing about! However, my true passion is in traveling, photography, and finding common ground to which everyone from different cultures can relate.

With the many places I’ve been to, I found that love, inspiration, and happiness are some things that bring people together. No matter how different we are on the outside, I’m a true believer that our emotions don’t lie; if you dig deep into our psyche, we’re all the same inside.

This belief was further amplified when I joined Quote Ambition. Through the quotes I’ve read, collected, organized, and written about, I found that humans are resilient, creative, and compassionate.

We take from each others’ hearts and courage, and it’s through our individual experiences that we learn how to rise above our challenges and pain. In so many ways, Quote Ambition is a platform that allows people from all over the world to gain the inspiration they need anytime, anywhere!

You can find me on MuckRack and LinkedIn.