“Dear Dr. Kim:
“I’m a manager, and I try to be a good one. I struggle, however, when people ask for days off when they’re trying to get over the death of a dog or a cat.
“Should this really be considered in the same way as the death of a close family member?
“What’s making the issue more difficult for me is that I have never had a pet myself, which means that I probably have little idea of the attachment people can have to one of these creatures. I am probably coming over as a bit unsympathetic.
“I would speak to HR to see if the rules on compassionate leave should be tweaked, but frankly, they’re too nervous to give a firm line on almost anything.
“Dr. Kim, what should I do?”
Dear Sorta-Boss:
You could start by acting like an actual boss.
Fire the whole HR department, for starters. Or if you want to go all wussy, ask the entire department, individually, to give some cogent, business-oriented reasons why you should give time off for the death of a pet. If they can’t, then fire the HR manager anyway, because she’s clearly incompetent and shouldn’t be a manager. (I say “she” because that’s the world we live in nowadays.)
Who cares if you’ve never had a pet yourself? That has nothing to do with the actual managing of a business which is nominally responsible for creating profit for its shareholders or owner. It’s purely an economic decision: can your company deal with the loss of productivity, or not? (If it can, you may want to consider retrenching staff anyway, because you’re carrying too much employee fat.)
Finally, your snowflake employees. I can understand needing time off to grieve the death of a family member, especially immediate family: mother, father, grandparents, siblings. I find it more difficult to be sympathetic about grief as the family circle starts to expand to aunts, uncles and cousins, and almost impossible to sympathize when it’s second cousins, distant cousins, nodding kin, and the like.
You may therefore take it as read that when it comes to the death of pet animals, I think that asking for time off is a colossal piece of chutzpah. (If it’s unpaid time off, of course, then by all means give them all the time they think they need, within limits of course. Let’s see how much they really loved Fluffy when it’s an affair of the wallet.)
Lest I be thought a martinet — it can happen — let it be known that I have never been one of those clockwatcher types of boss, myself. If a woman wants to have her hair done and can’t get a weekend appointment, then fine — ditto a man who needs the same — especially if their job involves customer interaction, where grooming is important. And of course time off for real medical appointments should be a given.
Frankly, while I appreciate the fact that society is changing and employees demand more indulgences from employers, I do think that this pet-worship thing is getting out of hand (see: “comfort animals” FFS), and it needs to be curtailed. By the way, where does one draw the line with this: cats, dogs, horses… also snakes, hamsters, and fucking goldfish?
And for the record, I’ve owned pets for almost all my life, I’ve indulged them more than I did my own kids, and my heart has broken at the death of every single one of them.
But as much as there’s been sorrow, I could not think of asking for time off to mourn their death, because while this may have been a factor in my life, I can’t imagine why a business should be forced into this pantomime of shared grief.
And also by the way: you will see from the response to this question in the linked article that “Nicola” (of course) thinks that giving time off for this foolishness makes the workplace more attractive to current and prospective employees. While I’m not advocating a return to Victorian sweatshops and textile factories, I think that today’s work environment — before this time off for pet grief nonsense — is the most congenial and employee-friendly of any generation, ever. But it never seems to be enough now, does it?
Shape up and get your employees (especially those HR weasels) under control before it’s too late.
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