The Personal Day Secrecy Exception
An application has been submitted to formalize the informal norm in which an employee taking a personal day declines to disclose what the personal day is for, and the organization accepts this without incident.
APPLICATION FOR FORMAL RECOGNITION Re: The Personal Day Secrecy Exception Submitted for the record
The applicant respectfully submits this application to formalize the existing informal norm governing the personal day and its reason field.
Background. The personal day was created to allow employees to take a day off for reasons that do not fit existing leave categories. The leave categories available in most systems cover medical leave, vacation, bereavement, and jury duty. The personal day covers everything else. Everything else is not specified. The personal day is, by design, a category for categories that do not exist yet.
The problem this application addresses. Many HR systems include a reason field in the personal day request. The reason field is required or optional depending on the system. In either case, it exists. In either case, the employee must decide what to write in it.
The three documented consequences. First, the employee writes a vague entry. "Personal matter" is the modal response, which is accurate and contains no information the organization does not already possess from the category name. Second, the manager approves the request without reading the reason field, because the reason field is not a factor in approval decisions for personal days. Third, both parties understand this to be the case and proceed accordingly.
The absurd rule that requires formalization is that a leave category defined by the absence of a required reason contains a field requesting the reason it was defined not to require.
The contradiction is resolved, in practice, by entering text that satisfies the field without satisfying the field's implied purpose.
Disposition. The applicant requests that the reason field on personal day requests be formally acknowledged as a documentation ritual rather than an informational requirement, and that the standard entry of "personal" be recognized as compliant.
Application submitted. Awaiting no particular response.