Hauled in by HR - I was off ill!

[iwasoffill]

NC to keep this annonymous

I work in a small 20 people team. Some are acquaintances. Some are actual friends.

I was off ill last week. My husband took my son to see his grandparents as they were visiting a local seaside town and they stayed overnight. I myself went to my Mum's overnight as my anxiety meant I couldn't stay in the house lone, along with being poorly.

A comment was made by my boss when I came back on Monday when I said I had been in bed all week. Something in the way he said it made me think he doubted it.

HR was here for another issue today and I was hauled in.

My boss said a social media post had been brought to his attention during my sick period and he produced 2 A4 printout's of 2 photos of my son on the beach posted by my DH/MIL. I had been tagged in them.

He asked did I have anything to say about this. I said I had been off ill, at home, then went to my parents overnight when DH and DS were away.

He said that he had to ask me about it because people's perception was that they were covering my work as I was ill hen this was seen.

I reiterated the above and he said he hoped I understood why he had to ask. HR said she understood as her mum will tag her in photos of her daughter when they are out and she's not there.

Thing is, I am livid.

I have removed ALL colleagues from facebook. This includes people that ARE my friends.

I am livid I wasn't asked, by whoever has told work about this, what the deal was and they added 2 and 2 together and got 5.

I have had no apology and am sat here, feeling so fucking angry and looking at my colleagues thinking which cunt did this.

Dunno why I'm posting really. Just angry and upset.

I think if you are this enraged and anxious you need to talk to someone. Do you have a therapist you can call?

ODFOD with your faux concern.

anyone would feel shitty if this happened to them.

Agree with PP. Anyone would feel upset if this happened to them. Especially if they had previously considered their team friendly and on their side.

And many posters have tried to shame OP about her anxiety which is shocking really.

You need to find out who did it really OP - it was only one person, the whole team isn’t against you.

I would raise the issue that there have been photos of your child (potentially partially clothed if they are at the beach), circulated on work computers without your consent and what they intend to do with these printed and digital images .

I am sorry that your colleagues are grassing scumbags OP. Trust nobody. Go into work on time, leave bang on time and do the minimum you have to do to get by.

I wouldn't give a shit. Not all reasons for sick leave mean staying indoors 24/7. In fact it's often best to get some fresh air. Also I'm not petty enough to be jealous that someone isn't at work when I am. Fuck, even if they're faking I'm going to assume they really needed to day off for whatever reason.

Bloody hell, some people really do love to lie down and let employers walk all over them. They don't own your entire life you know.

Agree with the comment above made by a previous poster.

I’m confused by the general comments about the photos needing to be tagged so that the OP could see them. If someone who you are friends with uploads photos then they will appear on your timeline surely?

Also everyone saying ‘the people you work with are horrible’ or whatever. It could (and most probably was IMO) just be one individual person remember, the vast majority probably don’t know or care. So I don’t think the OP should go round being unhappy at work or horrible to everyone when most are innocent.

Was it half-term week? Were you off sick the whole week? That would probably cause extra resentment amongst colleagues covering your workload. Especially if they had childcare burdens themselves that week.
How is your attendance generally? Colleagues could be feeling stress if your if you someone with poor attendance.
Just putting possible co-workers views across.
Rather than feel more anxious, at least it was investigated swiftly and you can draw a line under it. You won't feel as close to your colleagues, but you can show the company that you are a model employee with excellent attendance going forward.
This too will pass.

I was at home, ill, wracked with anxiety being alone and worrying if my son was OK.

I thought you went to your parents house?

It's crap isn't it OP

I'd recently returned to work after 2 months off, but I still had hospital appointments.

I left work (at one hospital) and got the transport to the one where my appointment was.

It was a lovely day so the staff had opened the doors and put chairs outside so you could wait outside if you wanted.

The following day at work I said how nice it had been.

The next thing is my manager has been informed that I left work early and then went out somewhere and I'm called in to explain myself.

Something happened to me over ten years ago with work and Facebook. I'd already put work people on limited apart from a handful that I thought were friends. Something was reported back and my manager spoke to me. It was all ok and I'd don't nothing wrong but everyone from work went on a limited restricted profile after that.

I don't add new workmates anymore time be honest rarely use it anyway. I don't tell anyone about my Instagram.

Op I know how rubbish it feels to know there are people willing to go behind your back. Hopefully you'll feel a bit better today after sleep.

As for being off sick. You don't have to stay home unless you can't leave obviously. Sure not cartwheeling in a beach with a back injury. But our HR are clear that they wouldn't expect those on sick to be home all day everyday. I don't think going to your mums for company and looking after is a bad thing!

I can't believe he printed off photos of your child!

@AvonBarksdale99, you can set up FB so that you have to approve tags before a photo will appear on your timeline.

Sorry this happened op.
I would let things lie for a bit before doing anything at all (if you decide to do anything - not sure that would be wise).
I totally understand you are upset and this won’t be helped by your anxiety.
See how you feel about things in a week or so. Sometimes it takes a while to process an event.
God knows it’s taken me a long time to work out that letting things calm down before making decisions or doing things is usually the best way in the long run.
Good luck.

I agree you're over reacting. Of course it doesn't look good that you were tagged and they gave a duty to investigate. but you've explained now and it's all sorted. Just forget about it.

Just to play devils advocate, do you work as hard as you say you do? Because your colleagues were obviously suspicious.

Did you need a whole week in bed? It's a lot unless you had eg flu.

Not what you want to hear but this plus your over reaction (I am sitting here in floods of tears etc) makes me wonder if your colleagues thought you were taking the puss, regardless of whether you were on the beach or not.

Also if you're that good friends with them, surely you'd had a chat and said my husband took DC off so I could have a break.

Also wouldn't you have seen your husbands Fbk anyway without him having to tag you?

20 is a small team and I'm sure you'd have been missed.

I’m not in FB, I came off it years ago...I keep in touch with my family through WhatsApp. How were you at home wracked with guilt and worrying about your son?? You were at your parents and your son was with his father???

Imagining being the kind of sad sack who reports colleagues on social media to win some brownie points. Pathetic.

I don't necessarily see things my husband posts unless he tags me, same for my either friends, I follow a lot of organisations and am in a lot of groups and FB algorithms select what you see on your timeline, or you just miss things if you haven't looked for a while. However I do have to approve tags, I also don't let other people post directly onto my timeline, for exactly the sort of reason that this thread has highlighted.

I'm more worried your anxiety isn't being dealt with well.

I'm so sorry to hear the wait time for help is 12 months in your area.

Please: be kind to yourself.

One way of being kind is to consciously address situations that provoke anxiety (eg this one); give the best interpretation to the actions of others (statistically, it's most accurate and it helps with your MH); consciously disengage with negative thoughts about yourself (in this situation I can practically hear you telling yourself you are a bad person for trusting people and for being ill - none of that is true).

Be kind to yourself.

Your workplace talked to you and believed you. You are supported.

You came into MN and people want to support you.

We sympathise with your anxiety and recognise it as an illness you deserve more support for.

Good luck.

I really hope you get to the bottom of what's triggering the anxiety and can move on and enjoy your life.

💐

the cat i second every word. (Never got the hang of copy paste and ‘this’)

Op was off sick then tagged at the beach on facebook! Of course she was questioned about it

Being tagged in a post about a photograph does not mean you were there. Half the problem here is people not knowing how Facebook works then making assumptions about it. Someone could post a photo of the Niagara Falls and tag me in it whilst I'm sitting at a desk in Taunton. They just do it because they think I might find it interesting, not because I was there.

I’m confused by the general comments about the photos needing to be tagged so that the OP could see them. If someone who you are friends with uploads photos then they will appear on your timeline surely?

Not necessarily. Say you have 300 friends on FB and they post between once a month and ten times a day. Potentially that's scores of posts every day. FB algorithms filter them so you only see posts from people you interact with more often (it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy). Tagging someone is a way to make sure someone sees a post, that's all.

I had a similar issue ten years ago where two colleagues got the wrong end of the stick about one of my FB posts about work. They ended up slagging off the manager on my post!

We were all hauled in as someone had told him and he, too, had screenshots. But I got off lightly and they were hauled over the coals. I got some good advice about not posting about work (I was young and naive) and have never had colleagues on there since, bar one close friend.

OP, just see it as a lesson learned. But I would definitely say to one of my work 'friends' "in confidence" what actually happened so hopefully they'd spread that around and people would know the truth.

Good luck with it all.
Not a solution for this situation but a possible one for the future: Maybe a family what’s app group would allow you to enjoy family photos all together without it being out there on Facebook?

@coconuttelegraph

Oh give over

It’s a sentence. Good god

@Growingboys the devil doesn’t need an advocate. And by the looks of your post, you took that position as a way to be unnecessarily snide and overly suspicious to the OP.

I would raise the issue that there have been photos of your child (potentially partially clothed if they are at the beach), circulated on work computers without your consent and what they intend to do with these printed and digital images .

I agree.

I also agree about logging a grievance against the person who went to the manager about malicious actions and bullying and harassment. I think people need to make clear that they won't put up with this kind of shit-stirring and gossip.