Time off work when your dog passes

[Arabiannights01]

I just think that I love my dog more than most humans and when it is her time to leave, I will be a distraught- mess for a while, I don’t think work will want a sobbing mess in front of customers. There should be a system where you get some kind of compassionate leave imo.

how much leave though?
it takes a while to get over the loss of a pet, better to busy yourself.

If you buy a pet, you will know, unless it's a Galapagos turtle, that you will outlive it. I can understand being upset when your pet dies, but really, it cannot be included as part of statutory leave as per reasons above.
Also, and genuinely, it really does help to get back into the workplace and focus on that, to regulate and normalise your day.

Speaking as a past dog owner and lover, no not really. Keep a day of annual leave.

Where do you work? !!!!

Yeah and many women are single mothers and unfortunately don’t get help with their kids. Single fathers too of course but less common.

I am childfree and I don’t feel I get pressurised to for example cover Christmas or pick up the slack of people looking after sick children here and there.

I’m sure it happens sometimes as I don’t necessarily always know why a colleague is off, but you can get someone taking time off work for anything and it may impact the team.

So not sure why we are singling out people taking a day or two off to look after a kid. I had a friend who when she was childfree was always taking long periods of sickness for absolute nonsense - like her latest idiot boyfriend leaving her .

Not in touch with her now but I know she’s had a child now. She probably isn’t any better/worse but may use the child as an excuse now.

I had a colleague who was autistic and they were obsessed with a certain celebrity. They were always first one in and last one out of work and had to be prompted to use up their annual leave. They didn’t take any time off when their father died. They had never had a day off sick in 10 years, but when that celebrity died they took 2 days. Obviously it seems ridiculous on the face of it, but given the context of the employee and how they weren’t the type to call in sick every other week, it must have been something that really distraught them and who are we to decide what’s upsetting enough.

but it is her annual leave to take however she likes surely @Gagala

I had two days off work last year when my beloved rabbit died. He was a house rabbit and the boss of the house (watching a German Shepherd get “told off” by a Netherland Dwarf rabbit was always entertaining). He died at 14 years old which is a very good age for his breed, but it was still heartbreaking. Pets are very much part of the family here, not just something you look at once in a while and think “awh, cute”.

I was quite embarrassed when I phoned my manager in floods of tears but she was luckily, very understanding.
She reassured me by saying “They’re part of the family! If you were loving and caring for a friend/family member every day for 14 years, and you had to watch them die, you’d be devastated.”
I did take it off with lieu time though.

"who are we to decide what's upsetting?"
You have to in a place of work though.
Decisions have to be made. I think the right decision was made for that person and the celebrity, but you could see how that could be abused.

Yes I suppose. I think my post more in response to the brigade on this thread who think it’s ridiculous because it’s “just a dog” and “it’s better to be in work”.
I also had a colleague who was sent home because his cat had gone missing and he couldn’t focus on work so we said we’d pick up the slack and sent him on his way. He came in the next day with cake for the team because he’d found it 🤣

"Hierarchy of pets".
I'd love to sit in on the HR meeting deciding that.

Well, that's a decision for the workplace. I'm a teacher and that would not be allowed. The school budget can't run to supply teachers for situations other than illness and personal family loss. I understand that my job isn't flexible, so I suppose it's not a problem in other workplaces if someone can just go home and it doesn't have such an impact.

i guess a surgeon would struggle to book unplanned leave
or in fact many jobs
your bus isnt running today for example because of the emergency leave of the driver.

I keep bees. They only live for 6 weeks each - with thousands moving on to bee heaven everyday. I'd never be in work.

I think making it a statutory entitlement is wild though. People will absolutely pull the piss. And you will have crazy situations where people get the same amount of time off for their cat as their mother. Also if you get time off for a cat why not a fish? We used to keep a big tropical fish tank and I'd have been off quite a lot.

Maybe when you apply for the job you can have salary X or salary X - Y% if you are a pet owner. The when the pet dies you can have the prepaid for time off. A bit like insurance.

I think this is another issue. Those with jobs who can’t just go home/stay home easily without it affecting other people will as usual not be able to do it. You see threads on here all the time with people complaining their dentist or hairdressing appointment was cancelled short notice etc and they’re really pissed off because they need it done etc. I mean what if you took a days annual leave and booked a dentist appointment at 9am which was cancelled at 8.45am when you were half way there because the dentists rabbit had died? Or had your wedding hair or make up appointment booked and the hairdressers hamster died and it was cancelled? Or even if you went to drop your child at nursery and you were told they couldn’t take the child because they were too low on staff numbers because one of two staff were off due to a pet death? Meaning the parent then needed to take a day off. Or your bus/train was cancelled and you/a family member missed a vital long awaited hospital appointment and can’t get another one for 2 years etc. I can absolutely guarantee the person would be raging in some of these scenarios and most people would agree it’s ridiculous. So as usual it’s just basic office staff who will be able to enjoy the “perk” of a few days off for a pet death and those in any type of customer facing job will not otherwise people will get angry.

Whilst I can in theory see your point, I think the competitive/comparative grief on this thread has little relevance to reality for a lot of us. I grieved far more for my cat then I did for my mother. She had dementia, I had already lost the person that she was years before she actually died and her death was not unexpected. I was sad, but not traumatised. My cat was my soulmate and my emotional support but he had an aggressive cancer and was gone within two months of diagnosis. I cried for weeks. Same when we lost a young dog. That was devastating.

Nobody has the right to dictate which should be the harder loss between a pet and a parent. Grief for a human is always seen as more "normal" and socially acceptable than grief for an animal, but it's also a very primitive emotion and we cannot predetermine the effect that it will have on us.

Yes, I think that's really the problem.

Wow! I wanna work at your place! 2 weeks paid leave when you're welcoming a new pet into your home!

Most places of work wouldn't do this. I know a woman who was raised by her grandmother, as her birth mother died when she was 18 months old. (She and her grandfather officially adopted her at 2 and a half years old. So she was their daughter in the eyes of the law.) She knew her grandmother as 'mum' and that's what she always called her.

She started a job at a local workplace and quite a few people she knew worked there. 7 years after starting there, her grandmother (who she knew as mum) died. The workplace at the time offered 5 days compassionate leave for the death of a parent, sibling, child, or spouse. (I you had worked there for more than 2 years.)

The manager at the time refused her the compassionate leave time off because the woman was biologically her grandmother. She ended up having to request leave, and he refused it because of the short notice, and said he couldn't cover her, as too many people were off on holiday.

She was devastated. She just didn't come in anyway the next day, and her husband contacted head office to complain about him. She got a message from the area manager (above said dickhead manager) and he said she can have the full week off with pay, and he was sorry for the manager's behaviour, and he will be 'having words.'

Baffling actually, because if it had been her 'birth mother' he would have had to have let her have the time off then, so would still have had the 'staffing issue!'

The manager of the place was such a dickhead to her when she came back, that she ended up finding another job. Vile bastard. I left not long after her - 6 months later.

.

But playing football, mountain climbing, drinking alcohol, smoking and driving too fast are choices and people get sick leave and pay when they damage themselves by making those choices.

People's inability to realise that not everyone experiences and deals with things in the same way is an eye opener.

Yet another good reason to keep bees 😀

😂😂

This has crossed my mind before. My little cat is my world and I would be bereft if she died. I’ma teacher so couldn’t take annual leave. But I don’t know how the hell I’d put on a brave face and stand in front of a class all day if she’d just died. Unbearable to think about.