Fake flu is better than burning out

Necessary lies at work when you don’t agree with the culture

It’s better to lie at work and stay home saying you got a flu than go to the office and hate what you do, what you have to do.

I probably overlied: I was planning to stay home for two or three days, but my boss was worried about my health and told me to stay home until I was sure I was feeling well. So I only went to work on Friday, spending Monday—Thursday being a vegetable with a guilty conscience.

Then I thought that wasn’t right. My attitude wasn’t right, but my actions were. I tend to carry the weight of responsibility not only for my scope of work, but for the whole company, for the general good, for the success of all. Which might be a good thing, but turns out to be a bad thing, because by worrying too much I burn out too soon.

Company culture that puts pressure on employees rather than creates a bigger aim is wrong — wrong for me. The real question is not the morality of lying to your employer, it’s doing the job that you don’t believe in.

This was written as a draft a long time ago — my previous employees will never be sure if it’s about them or someone else. I am happy to say that now I work in a company with a different culture and general ambiance. I always felt this one thing true: if someone doesn’t want to do the work, there’s no way of forcing it. It was right for me to quit when I felt I wasn’t being valuable — not for employer’s sake, but for my own. Hire those who bring sense to their work: for them work will bring happiness, and in turn, they will bring value to the company and its products.

There are office hours at my current work, but if you’d rather work from home, you can. Come in late — you can. If you come to the office and spend time on something else rather than work, who cares, your problem, you could have stayed at home.

The truth of the matter is, that in most companies, corporate culture sucks. And it’s thought of as a default, a necessary evil. Right now, I work in a place that values results over discipline — and while one might argue that discipline is a necessary prerequisite for achieving things, it should exist in a different dimension. You can work around discipline and office hours, but you deteriorate as a professional, if you’re like me, when you’re doing the wrong thing and accumulating guilt and the sense of valuelessness.

Working here now in the first months was like healing for me, getting back on track feeling good about working on something without artificial constraints. I never want to take a fake sick leave — I can work from home, or from another country even, the work gets done. With occasional stress, but without extra stress imposed by office hours and the so-called discipline.