The Challenges of Taking Leave from Work
A recent social media post highlighted one of the differences between working for a company in India versus one in the West. Posting on Reddit, an Indian working for a European firm shared a screenshot of a Teams conversation in which an employee wrote: “Good morning! Heads up on my schedule next week. I am off Monday, then WFH/personal time the rest of the week. I have my 3 kids, as my wife is out of town. I’ll keep the team posted if I cannot attend individual meetings.” The Reddit user asked: “Can we Indians post like this in Teams?”
The responses indicated that many employees in India do enjoy similar privileges to their European counterparts, while others find it more challenging to take leave from work, whether for illness or personal reasons. “Here, you have to give a prescription as soon as you fall ill and even after that your manager will ask you to pop a pill and show up,” one person responded.
Another responder said that toxic culture in the Indian workplace exists because a lot of people are “enablers” and “people pleasers.” A third responder agreed with the “enablers” label and wrote, “I remember in my first workplace, (when) I just asked for a leave for ‘personal reasons’ and my manager just said yes, a lot of the old guard was flabbergasted. They hadn’t even tried it. Subservience was programmed into them from their previous experiences.”
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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