The Mandatory Call-In Protocol: A Field Guide to Managerial Self-Sabotage

The modern telecommunications industry, a supposed bastion of advanced connectivity, appears to be running on an internal logic best described as dial-up. Case in point: a recent Reddit dispatch from r/MaliciousCompliance details a TeleCo employee’s two-year tenure under a management regime that invents “policy” like an enthusiastic, if slightly unhinged, dungeon master. The core grievance? The expectation that calling in sick isn’t just a phone call, but an intricate, live-action negotiation for your own absence.

Apparently, the simple act of leaving a voicemail is insufficient for these digital-age overlords. As one commenter, mistdaemon, astutely observed, if the policy is to call, then calling and leaving a message should technically satisfy the requirement. Yet, the consensus seems to be that only a “real” response counts, morphing a basic HR formality into a game of telephonic hide-and-seek. This culminates in Honest-Pepper8229’s entirely logical, if existentially horrifying, proposal: “Just call continously the instant you wake up until they answer. 3am and sick? Call again and again and again and again until they answer.” One can almost hear the faint, desperate ringtones echoing through the pre-dawn hours, a symphony of forced administrative engagement.

This isn’t merely a policy; it’s a low-fidelity tutorial boss designed to waste everyone’s time, especially when you’re indisposed. The implied objective is not efficient communication, but rather a performative display of managerial control, a digital leash tugged simply because it can be. As Ok-Lunch3448 pointed out, this strategy also conveniently ensures that flu-ridden employees are either infecting doctor’s offices or simply spreading their contagion at work because getting an appointment is a Herculean task on short notice anyway. The whole system is a remarkably effective way to turn employee well-being into an elaborate, unsolicited phone tree.

Ultimately, these arcane call-in rituals reduce a professional courtesy to an arbitrary test of endurance, where the only clear winner is the manager’s ego. It’s less about robust company procedure and more about an unwritten directive: “Continue to provide free, unwanted labor in the form of repeated phone calls until a superior deems your suffering sufficiently inconvenient to acknowledge.”