While I would love if the world could work like this, the reason HR and their arcane rules exist in the first place...is because people tend to take advantage o

While I would love if the world could work like this, the reason HR and their arcane rules exist in the first place...is because people tend to take advantage of things. And you might think, hey but 99% of people are decent and would not take advantage of the company. That's probably true! But there's always the 1% that ruins it for everybody else (just like the outlier sociopath HR person in this article). If you say stuff like, "take as much time as you need," 99% of employees would not abuse this situation. But there's always the 1%...and if it's a big company, that 1% could be 1,000 people. The rate of stillbirth is 1 in 100 births. So it's not exactly uncommon. So you can see how a company might end up paying a salary to 3 people who haven't showed up to work in over 2 years because you were just trying to be a decent human. You might think that's an insane scenario that would never happen. You'd be surprised. Crazy things like that are the reason HR policies exist in the first place.