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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why do you have to drug yourself up to go to the office? Are you well enough to be working at all? Does your employer offer LTD?[/quote]

Op here. I can work from home no problem, but I have to take breaks.

I wasn’t really well enough to go to the office but felt backed into a corner.[/quote]

OP, this is difficult to understand.  What do you do during your "Breaks" at home that you could not do in the office?[/quote]

It is not difficult to understand for anyone with a serious chronic health problem.

All travel consumes energy. Healthy people have that energy to spend; many people with disabilities do not because we are using substantial amounts of it on surviving. (In OP’s case, on healing from sepsis, FFS.)

Commuting spends energy in particular ways—the repetition, the alteration to sleep/wake patterns, either having to drive (which is a substantial cognitive burden) or having to use transit (which means a lot of time “in public”—sometimes a problem for those of us with socially problematic symptoms like needing to lie down or quickly find a bathroom. Metro has none BTW.)

A workspace in a home can be set up to meet the priority of getting the work done while also fully accommodating the body of the person doing the work. Shared workspaces aren’t like this; they are designed for default humans who don’t need to do things like lie down intermittently or have immediate access to bathrooms, food, drink and medications.

People here spouting off about getting “welfare” or “going on disability” have no idea how difficult any of the programs implied by those terms are to access.

OP, I am sorry—it all sucks.[/quote]

I’m a PP who suggested OP go on LTD. I’ve had a debilitating autoimmune disease for 25 years, so yes I understand chronic illness. I’ve had sepsis…twice! And cancer! And MRSA! And I have several artificial joints. So yes, I get it. And I know how draining commuting can be (and don’t get me started on business travel).

And I believe OP: she is sick and cannot commute to the office because of her illness.

The thing is, OP’s job, as her boss sees it, requires her to be in the office several days a week. Is this a dumb requirement? Sure. But a lot of job requirements are dumb. OP can’t fulfill the in-office part of her job, due to her illness. This is exactly what long term disability insurance is for—to protect her income if she can’t do her job due to extended illness. Which it sounds like she can’t, because part of her job is being in the office, which OP can’t do.

I’ve been there: commuting (and travel) was exhausting to the point of illness. But it was also part of my job. And sure, during covid I could do things remotely, but people want to meet in person now. And conferences aren’t really virtual anymore. I had to accept that my job was no longer the job for me. But until I found a replacement job, I either had to do the existing job—commuting, travel and all—or go out on disability because I was too sick to do my job.

Long term disability is not the same as social security disability. Yes, SS is difficult to access. Employer-based LTD is much easier: you have to prove you can’t do YOUR job (instead of SS, where you have to prove you can’t do ANY job). If OP’s employer is going to say HER job requires being in office, and she can’t be in office, she qualifies. And if she doesn’t, that’s a pretty valuable thing to take back to her employer in her telework appeal.

So OP, have your doctor fill out the LTD paperwork and take the insurance money. Get better, or at least get stable, and start looking for a job you can do. Because once they fire you, you no longer have access to that benefit. And yes, you could try to sue under ADA, but you would need to pay a lawyer, and this case doesn’t seem as cut and dry as some want it to be.[/quote]

This is a great post. 
It's just really sad that it comes down to this, though, isn't it? OP is probably a great contributor, SME, institutional knowledge. And we can't figure out how to make these things work. Mostly because of uncreative and rigid execs. Horrible "what about me" coworkers and just capitalism in general. Sheesh. [/quote]

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