Disclosure

Today I told my boss that I would be having a gastrointestinal surgery in September and would be out for around 6 weeks. I informed him that the surgery is scheduled for September 16^th and we should talk about who will be filling in on my accounts while I’m out.  He did not ask any questions and deferred any questions concerning backup. I did not bring up cancer and he did not seem to care about the purpose of the surgery. That was fine with me.   I asked him about the probability that I could get terminated while out on disability due to a reduction in force (RIF – see my last post).  He said that he would not do that because it would be “dickish” and he’s not like that.  Nonetheless, I told him that I was concerned about my long term viability at the company. I did not want to come back from surgery only to be RIF’d a few months later.  He said that if he thought that would happen, he would likely tell me to go ahead and stay out for long-term disability.   I asked who I could talk to about insurance/medical issues should I have to go out on long-term disability and he gave me the name of a contact in Human Resources. That person referred me to our employee service center.  I called the service center for “leave management” and got a recording stating that no one was there and to leave my information.  ‘Someone” would call back!  So much for customer service – they did not even allow me to stay on hold for 30 minutes!  No one has called me back yet – maybe tomorrow….

Overall, this meeting went better than expected – not sure what I was so nervous about.