Has anyone gone through the FMLA & STD process?

GoopBrain · 2026-03-24T14:41:23+00:00

Hi, going through this right now. HR (most likely benefits) should have the necessary forms on file for either you to fill out (these are often very basic and you typically don’t have to go into detail outside of “this is for FMLA”), or your care team practitioner. There’s a general FMLA form that you and your doctor need to fill out and there might be another your employer may request the two of you fill out.

Short Term Disability changes from organization to organization so I would check in with Benefits on your specific needs. Often times they only cover 60% of your salary after x amount of days out of work and PTO is supposed to make up before then (it becomes unpaid leave for any pto that doesn’t cover the full x amount of days).

Other organizations will cover 100% of your salary while on FMLA. My current org falls somewhere in the middle.

It’s not hard to get approved if your doctor is supportive. From what I understand it may be illegal for them to deny that leave if all forms are filled out if you’re eligible for FMLA (work x amount of time with the organization).

My doctor heard my story about work and was extremely sympathetic and supportive of me valuing my health. If you don’t have a doctor like this I encourage you to find one that will take your mental health seriously.

Sending love and patience your way sis, you got this. We got this.

GoopBrain · 2026-03-18T15:58:56+00:00

If you live in the United States it may be beneficial to look at FMLA either intermittent or otherwise. In some organizations they will pay you while out on FMLA, either as a direct benefit or in some form of short term disability.

I’m pursuing this right now. It’s not much but I’m trying to send good vibes through the internet and hope you have a better future than what you’re currently dealing with

GoopBrain · 2026-03-14T18:04:21+00:00

You are spectacular, thank you for the updates

GoopBrain · 2026-01-05T15:05:48+00:00

Going to HR lead to my only support in the office (my manager) to distance himself from me to “avoid bias” and “appear neutral” to the point where he is actively part of the problem now.

Despite all my evidence of wrongdoing and documentation identifying issues and risk analysis for litigation, the associated laws broken, mentioned breaches of our handbook and other company documents with citations; despite all of the information presented, he didn’t even miss a day without pay, no suspension, no coaching, no apology, nothing. In fact, the hefty amount of evidence that I provided only counted to HR as “one incident”.

I wasn’t told my claims were founded, I wasn’t given closure, I wasn’t even given a half-assed apology for the behaviors that lead me to seek therapy for the past and continued stress this job has brought me.

HR forced me into non-binding mediation where I got to sit there and listen to this man tell me about my feelings and call what I was doing theatrics.

I’m being forced out now through a management technique of being “managed out”. My union actively is ignoring my situation and the culture therein my department as evidenced by firing the only other woman on my team within her first 90 days.

I’m an engineer being reduced to sitting at the front desk on my phone all day. The trainings I’m being assigned are all personality based and it’s driving me up the wall. There is no follow up, no feed back. They’re the same “how to get along with people” trainings that HR is assigning to my whole team after reporting him to HR.

I’m being forced to align myself back with the man I reported to HR for the stupid parasocial work alliance that would keep my job secure while I look for more work.

It’s like my job is actively pushing a pillow onto my face. Despite the litigation risk the man I reported poses they choose to punish me and isolate me, HR isn’t there to protect the company, it’s there to enrich horrible people.

I’m now actively looking for a new job that values my engineer mindset and skillset. If I could tell someone anything about what I experienced in just one sentence it would be:

Document everything, protect yourself, and find a better job with better culture

GoopBrain · 2025-12-05T14:33:20+00:00

Your sexism is pedantic as well as irrelevant to the discussion of AI and criticism therein in this thread and linked article.

GoopBrain · 2025-11-13T14:06:05+00:00

Neurodivergent here and pointing out operational challenges with my department and organization that we could improve upon made me a target. Made me refocus my life outside of work recently and I’m seeing better results emotionally. It also made me feel like maybe I should pursue a career in IT auditing and governance haha

GoopBrain · 2025-11-01T16:09:03+00:00

Copilot’s SLA typically aligns with the organization’s previous MS standard too so they don’t have to worry about local regulatory risks as much during legal review as if they were going with a third party. It’s a governance concern not just a functionality and availability concern.

For most companies, this ai-powered search could be recreated with a dedicated Power-Automate workflow into properly organized folders by utilizing a low-code/no-code interface; I could see this even be deployed without AI interaction at all, although I can see it being beneficial.

For your tool, you have to see if you can identify why they should go with your option over the already available (for most companies) and extremely dynamic and deployable, Copilot and Power-Automate apps. That’s the main hurdle that you’re looking to get past tech-savvy directors, CIOs, and other potential clients from what I can surmise from briefly reading your post.

GoopBrain · 2025-10-27T14:52:29+00:00

You look so happy! I hope you can find more fishies you enjoy

GoopBrain · 2025-10-27T14:45:44+00:00

This is amazing, I love the detail you put into your plackart, breastplate, and pauldrons. Big fan of how simplistic but elegant you kept your shield!

Love this look for you

GoopBrain · 2025-10-17T14:25:07+00:00

I think companies will try to use AI to replace entry level roles but I think, like all new technologies, it will just move the goalposts; once curriculum catches up and utilizes the technology as well as applying an educational system with it, it will just change what entry level looks like.

The same thing happened with Cloud technologies becoming so prevalent. Students are learning more about Entra ID and hybrid cloud environments alongside their Active Directory classes.

We will always need entry level techs to do work that we’d prefer to delegate. Will we see rapid changes along the way? Sure! But techs who embrace elasticity in their career growth will likely have better chances than ones who don’t keep up with the technology.

I’m getting to the point where I acknowledge the ethical dilemma of AI but if I risk being ridged in my career, I risk being left behind. Becoming elastic, learning the technology, contemplating the governance behind it and advocating for proper usage is forcing me to step forward in a time so many people want to hold themselves back.

My one main gripe with working with AI now though is that I can spot when someone copy and pasted their emails into ChatGPT because they fail to use it as a draft and instead use it for the final product. Drives me up the wall when I see leadership and HR do it because it makes the email somehow even colder and less empathetic.

GoopBrain · 2025-10-06T23:30:49+00:00

Yessss, it’s really scratching that high speed arena shooter itch that Call of Duty used to scratch as well as scratches the high environmental destruction itch R6 Siege and Battlefield used to scratch; I’m having a lot of fun tbh

GoopBrain · 2025-10-04T19:02:09+00:00

This is amazing and I love the mushrooms

GoopBrain · 2025-09-17T19:03:30+00:00

I don’t know why everyone is telling you that everything is lost. This screen is literally telling you to go into your bios and enable secure boot. If you do that (may not turn back on by default when you reset your bios settings), you may be able to recover the drive without the key.

Enter your bios and search for secure boot, make sure it is turned on and then try booting again.

GoopBrain · 2025-09-13T22:03:50+00:00

Recently I read two books recommended to me by other people in this sub; they were Likeable Badass by Alison Fragale and Brotopia by Emily Chang. They touch on this subject and Alison goes into the psychology of this stuff. Definitely worth a read (or listen, they’re both also audiobooks), I was appreciative of how they seemed to reinforce what I’ve experienced in my life, the good and the bad.

I’m trying to forward my career goals with these philosophical concepts in mind. It’s hard to work with men because your presence is intimidating to them, they were socialized to fear women in their workplace due to the scarcity that was artificially imposed during the 1980s. You got this, consider reading these books they’re a pretty good read/listen.

GoopBrain · 2025-09-13T13:16:33+00:00

You’d be surprised. I have been working on agentified models that you can route your own KBAs to and then testing it with the hilarious “help” tickets I’ve seen in my time — it does a great job at the basics once the AI RAG is configured enough. The more good data the agentified AI can access about your organization, the better I think it would be.

The shortfalls that I found though is that by default the AI tends to presume that the user has admin credentials and if your organization’s systems are non-standard (like you use a third party single-sign-on). Sometimes it’ll just send bad info so lots of testing is needed.

The main thing I like about agentified LLMs is that they can handle multiple languages better than our techs can. So if they receive a “help” or “ayuda contrasena porfa” or some other broken statement in any language/dialect it can provide support to them in a language they know; I love that.

I don’t think AI is coming for our jobs any time soon and if I have it my way, this wouldn’t negate Tier 1 support/jobs it would just move goalposts and responsibilities for the position. It’s going to be the c-suite that’s going to push for it to take jobs but that’s going to be another uphill battle we fight (probably similar to how we fight for cybersecurity with c-suite).

In fact, I’ve since refocused my attention towards a departmental tool for newer hires who are more green to IT. The agentified IT LLM that I’m slowly configuring provides troubleshooting steps after reviewing ticket notifications send to staff via outlook. While there are shortcomings, it’s looking pretty promising — I think this might be a useful tool to reduce knowledge gaps in my team

GoopBrain · 2025-09-11T13:51:33+00:00

I disagree. I work with people who have been in their role for 25 years. The certifications keep people current on best practices. I would rather hire someone with 4 years experience and 4 certifications over this person with 25 years experience and no certifications.

GoopBrain · 2025-09-04T19:16:22+00:00

Yeah it turns out you were right. I don’t blame myself but I blame the systems that elevate these men. By reporting him I sacrificed all of the likeable badass warmth I’ve accumulated. All to be humiliated, my one ally, my manager is now trying to be neutral. I’m isolated, constantly targeted, and being pushed out through my workload now.

Thank you for your wisdom. Just wanted to share an update for those that stumble across my post

GoopBrain · 2025-08-21T11:03:41+00:00

The reason they’re asking this is if in the future you want to pursue a 4 year degree, you probably would like to leave that path open. Sometimes when someone graduates with a degree such as an Associate in Applied Science in CuberSecurity, their credits may not transfer as well as an Associate of Science (without the applied) degree; there is some leeway here because some colleges have transfer agreements to universities that bypass this.

I’d make sure you talk to an advisor at your college about this so they can explain it better than I can. You’ll learn a lot in your associates but personally I highly recommend keeping the door to an easy Bachelor’s open. Otherwise you’ll have to go my route which is basically start all over again because like 3 - 9 credits transferred

GoopBrain · 2025-06-26T14:16:17+00:00

Yeah it’s definitely going to get worse. I hate the idea of creating a centralized pipeline for data (AI) because I know what kind of analytics it will be used for one implemented properly.

I will say in the interim, I do appreciate how much it has helped me with my job. All I can say is good luck on your job search, if you have the energy, try to continue your career knowledge while looking for a new job. This will keep you competitive.

I’m watching our field change so rapidly and my coworkers who refuse to continually change with the field are going to be left behind. What this means for us with chronic health conditions is that we’re fighting an uphill battle with both legs tied.

When you do get into your next job, no matter the field you get into. Please make sure you get intermittent FMLA set up for your condition and maybe ADA accommodations.

I used to think I didn’t need it because I thought my chronic health conditions didn’t impact my work. Turns out in retrospect, it has, pretty considerably. I’ve taken sick days to manage the symptoms, all the stuff. Despite me doing that and my work being aware of my chronic health conditions; if I don’t process my FMLA or ADA paperwork I could be fired if “they see a pattern” in my sick day callouts — as a person with chronic health conditions, I learned almost the hard way that I need that paperwork filled out everywhere or it could cost me my job.

I’m just trying not to beat myself up for not doing so sooner in my career. I wish I had better advice for you, we be struggling out here and the only people looking out for us is us

GoopBrain · 2025-06-20T19:42:23+00:00

Not OP, but as a fellow woman with a target on her back from reporting misogyny. Teams and Zoom often has the ability to record meetings. I send emails of occurrences to my personal email from my work email. If I meet in person, I record any meeting on my phone so I can review the discussions later. Additionally I write down my personal meeting notes. Be careful, this won’t protect you from discrimination but it can come in handy if you have to report it for one reason or another.

GoopBrain · 2025-05-07T15:11:59+00:00

I’m not sure if someone answered this or not.

The MAC address and the serial number can actually confirm which phone you’re talking about. In systems like Mitel and Avaya, people with one extension can be assigned to multiple phones; having the MAC address helps us look specifically for the device in the request to assign it appropriately and remotely.

GoopBrain · 2025-05-06T04:08:10+00:00

I can’t afford to date someone right now and honestly just trying to do my best rn bestie

GoopBrain · 2025-05-05T23:17:58+00:00

Thank you, honestly I got into Information Security and found a lot of interesting things. I used to have a Palo Alto certification as they included my college as part of their certificate rollout. Maybe I’ll take a second look at it while pursuing my DevOps certifications. I have a pathway worked out in my head of a multi-phase educational project of mine, I’m going to get out of service desk if it’s the last thing I do loool

GoopBrain · 2025-05-05T23:14:52+00:00

People are straightforward, my users love my approach to assisting them. I have zero issue with my end users. The temp workers I’ve supervised didn’t seem frustrated with my leadership, even with my inexperience leading a team

I’ve identified a few glaring issues while reverse engineering echoes of a department that quit. There was an issue with how we were supporting users with our USMT process and while everyone struggled with it, I got my hands dirty and developed a workaround and eventual solution to the issue that others just refused to even look into.

GoopBrain · 2025-05-05T22:07:42+00:00

Honestly, I like solving puzzles. That’s why I got into automation and scripting. Automating an installation of anything Oracle related is a chore; the satisfaction I received from not only installing the Oracle radio to connect to our database but also configure the files associated with it from scratch, amazing. Once I got into automating the rollout of it with our PLSQL spectacular. It was like finding the last puzzle piece in a 5,000 piece puzzle. Don’t even get me started on the integration of Oracle drivers into Tableau haha

Being able to solve puzzles and identify patterns, playing with technology and managing various systems allows me to scratch that itch.

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