I got injured at work in 2019 where I was a mid-level retail manager. The injury left a scar that was gonna need minor cosmetic surgery, but I needed to wait a year for the scar to fully develop and stabilize before the surgery, which made sense.
In 2020 I left the job because one of the upper-level managers was toxic and I was tired of losing my staff because of her. But I was still covered for the injury and was gonna get my surgery a few weeks after leaving, even though the scar ended up being very minor and was hidden by my mustache anyway.
Then Covid hit right before my surgery and lockdowns closed the cosmetic surgery offices the insurance company used for a year. The thing is - the insurance required the operation to be done within 2 years of the injury, and that wasn’t going to be possible.
Since the insurance wasn’t gonna pay out, the company offered me a pretty generous settlement to make the issue go away. The scar was mostly healed, so I took it.
Then the store opened back up following lockdowns, and they begged me to come back because my department was floundering. Before I took over the department, it had the 3rd worst performance in the corporation for thay department (out of about 200 locations), and within 18 months of me taking over we’d jumped to number 2 in the company. When I left they dropped down to dead-last.
I pointed out that the corporation only agreed to the settlement if it had a condition that I could never work with the corporation again.
Within a few months the entire department was dissolved in that store.









I didn’t fully understand the glory of working from home until I did it on a snow day.
Removing the commute was an obvious, expected benefit. But turning off the camera and doing laundry or cooking lunch while in one of my multiple daily conference calls was amazing. I just had the meeting in my headphones and chimed in when needed. And it annoys me that can’t be my regular routine.
I drive 3-4 hours a day in traffic to sit in a (very nice) office where 95% of my work is remote work using cloud-based software and attending Teams meetings.
But because once a week or so someone may walk into city hall and ask for me instead of sending an email or making a phone call I’m expected to be in the office. Which is doubly annoying since most of the time they get turned away because I’m already in a separate online meeting when they show up.
I do legitimately have to attend public meetings a few evenings a month. I’d be so happy to compromise and go into the office on days with public hearings or when I need to visit a site, but work remote the remaining 80-90% of the time. Hell - I’d even trade working an extra hour a day while remote to do it. It’ll still save me time versus driving.