Dr. Summeroff, Meet Dr. Winteroff and Dr. Deer (Readers Respond)

‘We Get Dr. Winteroff’

Steve, we often get Dr. Summeroff’s cousin, Dr. Winteroff to deal with. We have a sales group who often take leave immediately following a month when they have not met their sales goal because they know they will be placed on a performance plan when they have fallen short of their annual sales target. Our processes have adjusted sales goals when an employee is placed on leave, so taking leave at that time will change their annual goal and allow them to get a bonus when they meet the adjusted goal.

During the most recent holiday season, an employee made a comment to a coworker that she was stressed because she had a large sales goal and she was planning for her wedding. Subsequently, she filed for FML and was out for three months. Upon her return, a coworker saw her new wedding ring and commented about it. The employee told her that she had gotten married and taken a cruise over the holidays. There did not seem to be much we could do about the situation after the fact since her doctor had authorized her “mental health” leave.

Compensation.BLR.com, now thoroughly reved with easier navigation and more complete compensation information, will tell you what’s being paid right in your state—or even metropolitan area—for hundreds of jobs. Try it at no cost and get a complimentary special report. Read more.

Wins Tournament While on Leave

Another situation involved an employee filing for medical leave stating mental health issues. We were successful in terminating his employment upon his return to work because a coworker shared a picture of him winning a martial arts tournament out of state while he was on leave.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Meet Dr. Deer and the Dreaded Deer Fever

We have issues with what we call deer fever. Doctor Deer is happy to give us notes requesting days off for Johnny and half of the other team, who are too sick to come to work for at least a week. For some reason, it always coincides with hunting season. Hmm … guess that picture on Facebook was Johnny’s new bedspread, since he was too sick to get out of bed. Neat that it still had the antlers attached!

Cleared for Work, but Only Flat on His Back

I had a doctor’s note that read no sitting, standing, walking, or laying at any angle other than flat for 6 months. Luckily, we had a position where the person could lay in a hospital bed as part of research. The doctor then wrote that it was unsafe for the person to get in the car because it would require a period of sitting, so she couldn’t come to work at all.

 ‘No, I’m Saving My FMLA’

I had an employee who told me upon returning from FMLA/Maternity leave that she needed 4 hours here and 3 hours there and then another 4 hours the next week. I asked for a doctor’s excuse and told her that these hours would be added to her FMLA leave. She refused to call the time off FMLA, stating that she was saving that for when the baby got sick, etc. When I told her that it wasn’t her choice, she quit. Ok by me!

PTO System Works Well

Except for holidays we have a paid time off (PTO) bucket for vacation, sick, and personal time. There is a cap for carryover. Once the individual hits the limit, he or she stops accruing vacation until he or she is below the cap. It is up to the employee to manage his or her own PTO time. We give very few exceptions to going over the limit, and they need to be almost an act of congress.

Empathy, Counseling, Shame May Work

Great article! This situation definitely stresses out every HR manager and his or her colleagues.

The best advice I can give to an HR Manager encountering this situation is to use empathy. Generally an employee using the fake sick note route is crying out for help. It’s rare that you’ll find something that will be the ‘smoking gun’ to prove that the employee is faking his or her notes—and it’s legally dangerous. The best method is to sit down with the employee and say that you’ve noticed that he or she obviously haven’t been feeling well and is there anything you can do. This does a few things. If handled right, it may get the employee to open up at the real situation. Is something happening at home? Is something wrong at the office? You can occasionally use this information to counsel an employee out of the business. “Your health and well-being are our top concerns.” More importantly, having this conversation will make it clear to the employee that they are on HR’s radar, and they may at least be shamed to not do it in the future. Bottom line: It starts with recruiting. Try to hire stars.

Harley Rider on a Regular Schedule for Back Injury

We have an employee who works as a laborer. He also rides a Harley (nothing wrong with that), but he seemed to get hurt every summer about Harley-season. When I looked back at his file (I’m the newbie), I discovered that every summer he had the EXACT SAME BACK INJURY. In fact, when he was reporting his injury, he used the EXACT SAME WORDING on the forms every year and he needed to be off the EXACT SAME WEEKS. He had a doctor who would take him off work for this period of time—I guess he never actually looked at the dates but at the report of repetitive injury. I sent him for an IME—and he was fine!

But when I did a little digging, I discovered that he was riding his Harley up to a festival called Hogg Rock (very rural Southern Illinois) and staying there during that period of time. Then he had to rest up—he did a lot of 12 ounce curls there—before he could come back to work. We did confront him, and he said he didn’t feel his back injury would get worse by riding his Harley (a common misconception here), so he thought he would be fine to go. Now, every year, we start joking with him about going to this festival, just so he knows we’re watching him.

Needless to say, this did not make me popular with the Laborer’s Union, but it’s a great story!

Unlimited Vacation Policy to the Rescue

We are working to create an empowered, trusting environment and feel we will be rewarded with engaged, loyal, and committed employees. We are considering subscribing to the philosophy described in the article “Unlimited Vacation Time: The Ultimate Work Benefit” by Lisa Scherzer (see link) . We anticipate minimal risk as time off requests still need to be approved, and employees who might take advantage would be few and dealt with through normal performance management measures. We need to get “buy in” from the board and all the executive team before we make the final decision. However, currently we do have a casual and flexible attendance policy and PTO plan that is working for us. We just hope to improve to add a benefit that will help our recruiting and retention efforts.

‘We Were Had’

A few years ago at a different company an employee went on a stress-related FMLA leave. (The stress appeared to be mostly because the employee was not hitting sales goals.) Though this person had medical documentation, we were suspicious, i.e., was the EE seeing “Dr. Summeroff?” After consulting outside counsel, we decided to let the EE take the leave. We later found out that the “stressed out” EE went to Europe for several weeks to “tend to family matters.” It seems like we were had by a crafty EE and a Dr. Summeroff. But, when the EE returned we merely prorated sales goals to account for the leave and sent the person back out into the field to (unsuccessfully) pursue them. The EE later resigned after not getting a bonus.

Engage with the Doctor

We had a Dr. Summeroff whom everyone went to in order to get FMLA, ADA, or worker’s compensation. With some of the more outrageous requests, I attempted to engage with the good doctor on why that particular accommodation was the only one necessary. We sent some cases to the university doctor. Only one had to go to a third doctor.

Let’s Turn the Tables on Dr. Summeroff

Dear Dr. Summeroff—Thank you for your report on Mr. Finagler. If you don’t mind, may I ask you whether your opinion and conclusion would be different if Mr. Finagler was in your employ? Thank you in advance for your response.

Is This Doctor for Real?

We received several notes from one particular pain management clinic, so we never really questioned them. An employee had missed work due to follow-ups and was on a lifting restriction. The employee then sent one from that clinic releasing him on Friday to return to work all of a sudden with no restrictions on Monday. We also received a second note from the ER that the employee had been seen on Saturday and could return to work with no restrictions on Monday. However, on Monday morning, we received a note from the clinic advising us that the employee would not be back to work that day or that week pending results of an MRI.

So we began looking over the notes we had been receiving just from the pain management clinic. We actually had notes from 5 different doctors, but there was always one doctor who provided the note for time off or for the restrictions. We did a simple Google search on this doctor and discovered that he had been banned in that state from practicing at a pain management facility or dispensing prescriptions through any type of pain management program. We notified our employee that this doctor was a fake and we were honoring the notes we had received over the weekend and expected him at work on Tuesday. Needless to say, he didn’t show up and we terminated him.

A Long Investigation Finally Yields Fruit

We had an employee who had notes from the hospital stating he had had a seizure as a reaction to medication and that the hospital was running tests to confirm he would be able to drive and  work. Eventually, he received clearance to return to work, but the hospital was still monitoring a benign tumor in his brain. On a Wednesday he called a fellow employee (not his supervisor) and told him that he just called 911 because he was having the presymptoms that he had experienced with his seizure. That employee notified their supervisor and around 3 p.m. the supervisor called me saying that he had not heard back from him and was wondering if he needed to go pick up the company vehicle as he was under the impression that the employee was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The supervisor asked if I would contact his wife just in case he was not in a position to speak with someone. So, I called his wife and left her a brief message about the situation and that I would appreciate a call back with an update.

When she called back she was unaware that anything had happened. So that kind of set her in a panic. So I began trying to track the employee down.

• We pulled our gas card records, but they are typically a couple days behind, and there was no record of his gas card being used.
• We called our credit card company and were told that his card had been used that morning an hour away from home and again that afternoon 3 hours from his home.
• We called hospitals in both locations to see if he had been admitted in either location, but no one had a record of a 911 call or a hospital admission.
• We called his wife and informed her about the credit card being used. We told her that we would let her know if we heard anything and asked that she do the same.

At 7:15 p.m. I received a call from her that he had just walked in the door. I asked him if he was okay and informed him that we would need a note for him to be able to return to work. He produced a note from the hospital with two doctors listed on the note claiming he had been seen in the ER and sent to the neurology department.

Findings were that the cyst had burst but that he didn’t actually have a seizure and could return to work on Friday (so he only had Thursday off). It also stated that he had a follow-up appointment with the neurology department on Monday at 9 a.m. I called the employee back and informed him that we didn’t want him returning to work until after his follow-up appointment on Monday. On Thursday I called the hospital as there was not a signature on the note from either of the two doctors listed. I inquired if he had been seen there the day before and the comment I received was that they hold ER records for three days and he was not in their records as being seen in the ER. So I asked if he had been seen by the doctors on the list. The one doctor was the ER doctor exclusively and they didn’t have a doctor by the name of the second doctor on the note. She said if he had been seen in the neurology department that he would have had to have been admitted and there was no record of admission and the last time he had been there was July 31st.

So, we informed the manager that we would be terminating this employee and in order to get our company equipment we would set up a meeting on Monday after his appointment with the neurologist at 9 a.m. By 2 p.m. we still hadn’t heard from the employee, so his manager told him we needed a copy of his doctor’s recommendation from that day’s appointment.

I eventually received an e-mail excuse that had the ER doctor’s name on it. I called to confirm he had been seen that day in the ER and not by someone in the neurology department and informed them that I needed to get confirmation from the doctor who saw him. I informed the person to whom I spoke,  that I needed to know if he had been seen, and she said she could neither confirm nor deny that he had been seen. When I asked to speak to the doctor to confirm that he was to be off work with no driving for at least the next 2 weeks she asked why I needed additional confirmation. I told her the note we received was not signed. She said, “Our doctors sign all of their notes.” I told her that the one I had wasn’t signed, and she again repeated, “Our doctors sign ALL of their notes.” I caught on and thanked her for her time. We terminated the employee for falsification of medical documentation.

Whew!

Thanks to all readers who responded with their Dr. Summeroff stories!