There’s a thread doing the rounds that I’ve been mulling over for a few days now, and it touches on something that genuinely gets under my skin — the intersection of bad management, AI-generated nonsense, and the quiet erosion of worker trust.

Someone posted about receiving a fairly formal email from their manager flagging “patterns” in their sick leave. On the surface, sounds reasonable enough. Twenty-six days in twelve months is above the standard ten-day FTE entitlement, the manager wants medical certificates going forward — fine, that’s within their rights. But then you read the details and the whole thing starts to unravel a bit.

The Fair Work Commission’s recent decision to reinstate a worker who was sacked for accidentally sending an email to all staff has got me thinking about just how backwards our workplace priorities have become. The fact that this happened at Bravus (formerly Adani) somehow makes it even more infuriating, but that’s probably a rant for another day.

What really gets under my skin is how we’ve created this culture where a simple human error – something that happens to literally everyone who’s ever worked in an office – can cost someone their livelihood. Meanwhile, the company that couldn’t be bothered to implement basic email security measures gets to act like the victim.