Toxic work culture is one of the toughest things an employee can face. Many offices pressure workers when it comes to overtime or taking leave. Now, an incident has emerged where an employee was reportedly
barred from the office premises after he took an unapproved leave. A Reddit post claimed that the boss asked the IT and Work Force Management (WFM) departments to revoke the floor access of the employee. The authenticity of the post could not be independently verified by News18.
In a post on the subreddit r/Indian workplace, a user said that one person in their team had applied for leave almost a week in advance, but it was not approved. The employee did not show up for work due to personal reasons. The user said that such absences were normal in corporate India and are unplanned leaves or LOP. The incident reportedly happened a day after the user came back from their own month-long medical leave.
Employee Barred From Entering Office
The Redditor explained that after the employee’s absence, the team lead “went into full power trip mode” and asked WFM and IT to revoke the worker’s floor access. “Then WFM literally walked around the floor telling everyone that if X comes to the office and taps on the glass door of the floor, nobody should open it for him. Instead, they should immediately call the TL or SME,” the post read.
The user highlighted that the instructions were given verbally since writing them down would be “a legal disaster.” Emphasising that the incident happened to a paid employee who was absent for a single day and not a suspended or terminated worker, the user said that the team lead and management were “literally preventing someone from doing their job.”
“If X had come, he would have been ready to work. But management chose to block him so that he could not even log in. So what exactly is this supposed to achieve? If you block someone from working and then mark them absent manually, that is not discipline. That is manufacturing absence. You are creating a situation where the employee is forced into LOP or into being labeled as non-compliant,” the user added.
Calling the incident “constructive termination and harassment rolled into one”, the Redditor asked if anyone else had faced such a toxic work culture.
TL literally blocked an employee from entering the floor because he took leave. Is this even legal.
byu/ImpromptuHotelier inIndianWorkplace
Users Weigh In On Toxic Work Culture
The post sparked a huge discussion. Many users asked if the employee who was barred escalated the matter in any way. Others had advice for the employee. “The employee can go back home.. Email HR to inform him when the office will be available for him to start work. Until then sit at home and get paid,” one user wrote.
Another commented, “I guess at some point in time we will literally have bouncers at the entry gates whose job will be to tAke cAre of such “offenders”. It could have been handled in a much better way, we have no information about official communication to the individual.”
One account asked, “Ask him to send a mail to HR stating the circus created by the TL. Loop in HR head if required.”
However, some users came out in support of the company and said the Redditor might have missed some prior details about the incident due to their absence. One account said that WFM asking others not to let the employee in was “common practice” and added, “To classify an entire work space as toxic based solely on the account of one person who has limited insight into the background isn’t appropriate. If this were a repeating pattern I could conclude that the place was toxic however a single relayed incident lacking proper context is insufficient.”
The post, and the ensuing debate over toxic work culture and which company could have been involved in the matter emphasise how people may feel pressured at work when it comes to dealing with the upper management or taking leave. Many people questioned if there was something more to the incident than meets the eye. Others advised that the worker should loop in the human resources department to ensure action against his team lead.
/images/ppid_a911dc6a-image-17683770269891050.webp)
