My workplace is closed-mouthed to the point of ridiculousness when communicating about illnesses among the staff. We get told (by email) when someone is seriously ill, but the nature of the illness is never mentioned, and we're all sort-of supposed to pretend we don't know about it. Asking someone "do you know what's wrong with C.?" gets you scolded for spreading a rumor that the sick person might be ill.

OTOH, given this ultra-discreet environment, my boss is ridiculously cavalier with our private information. She's actually discussed other team members' evaluations with me, and talked to me about V.'s bipolar disorder and how she didn't like her and didn't know what to do with her. This is yet another reason I'm glad I'm not in the office anymore!

Although to be fair Steph's coworkers know rather more about medical issues than the average layperson, so I can understand the interest.

I know for positively certain that my office would be exactly the same way--all of us, from the division chief straight through the staff list to the lowliest admin, already know too much. Go vague on us and we will spin out and go panic-flappy much faster than if you give us specifics, even scary high-risk specifics.

And, ugh, Suzi. I've done the why-are-you-rejecting-this-thing-I-only-sent-you-because-YOU-SPECIFICALLY-TOLD-ME-TO-DO-IT-EXACTLY-THIS-WAY dance, and it is a dance that sucks. Fingers crossed that the supervisor recognizes the ridiculosity of it and hustles it on through.

Health issues are tricky. Only the ill employee is supposed to give that info. They can tell someone and authorize them to tell the office by proxy, but it is illegal for anyone to share that kind of info without full prior approval of the employee.

My office also tends to be kind of vague, though word tends to get out as to specifics. On the other hand, if I heard that a co-worker would be out for a month, I'd assume the surgery was fairly serious.

Fingers crossed that the supervisor recognizes the ridiculosity of it and hustles it on through.

The guy I talked to, whose name is Guy, recognized that my situation was out of the usual (and a problem not created by ME) and mainly went to the supervisor to make sure that he passed it along to the department with the right key words and everything so it wouldn't get stuck in another loop. I have the ticket number and Guy said he would check on it every couple of days until the issue is resolved. I'm not getting any money from this but trying to prevent them from saying I owe taxes on money they have already reimbursed me.

I'm in the office today, trying to start the new year on a good note, but I'm ready to head home.

Two very Buffista New Yorker cartoons: [link] [link]

You're totally right, Scrappy. At my uni, the person sharing the info always does always ask the employee in question; 99.5% of the time the employee says, "Sure, tell anyone who wants to know," (or, "Tell anyone, just don't tell them what room I'm in") but the sharer still gets an explicit okay first.

Specific means we know more or less what will happen and what the prognosis is, etc. Vague just makes us get all flappy-handed with frustration.

Gah. If I'm having any kind of medical procedure done, How Will This Amount Of Information Make My Co-Workers Feel is pretty much at the bottom of the list of my concerns. I don't give two shits if they're frustrated by not knowing, it's still none of their goddamn business.

I would be absolutely furious if ANY details were provided to colleagues about ANY health condition I might have that required me to miss work. ETA: I mean, duh, excluding being out for a day or two because of a cold or something.

ETA: When I had my surgeries scheduled, I wrote the email that went out to pertinent colleagues. I included the information I felt comfortable sharing. That is MY choice to share. Otherwise it's simply between me, my boss, and HR if necessary.

Gah. If I'm having any kind of medical procedure done, How Will This Amount Of Information Make My Co-Workers Feel is pretty much at the bottom of the list of my concerns. I don't give two shits if they're frustrated by not knowing, it's still none of their goddamn business.

It's totally a work-culture and knowledge-base difference; medical people are weird that way (and, at least where I work, very specifically weird--the heart people have no interest in the details of anyone's dental surgery, and nobody wants to get nosy about urologic or oncologic procedures except the other urologists or oncologists; also, people generally butt out unless specifically invited about details on coworkers' partners or kids).

Also, working where we work, you never know when someone might say, "I have a friend at Stanford doing a clinical trial on that exact thing" or "If you can hold out another couple of months, we'll be approved for a trial of this new device/drug that's been saving lives all over Europe" or "Why are you seeing him? He's only a postdoc. The department chair was my residency advisor. If I ask her to see you personally, she'll see you personally."

But all the non-uni places I've worked, or any of the places most of the people I know have worked? "None of their goddamn business" is an excellent rule.