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Comment by t-writescode | Hacker News Reader

> 45 days a year for pet bereavement? If it includes goldfish, I'm in!

This is a bad read of this.

While 45 days is ... huge, the inclusion of pets and friends is almost certainly a result of companies who refuse to let anyone grieve when their friend dies.

As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.

If some exceptional edge case comes where someone abuses the system for goldfish, that's worth the cost if I can grieve when my dog of 7 years or my best friend of 25 dies.

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Sorry for your losses. On the other hand, if my employer offered 45 days of paid time off under certain conditions, I'd do my best to maximize that benefit.

If you worked for a company that actively treated you well, I imagine, in general, you'd want to treat them well in return and wouldn't exploit their kindness beyond need.

Such companies are few and far between, though. Very few. Very far between.

Does anyone maximize the use of sick days? Family care leave? Parental leave? Who is depraved enough to abuse bereavement time?

There's an argument on either side - many companies/employers offer 6 months paid parental leave after a child is born (for both parents), but I haven't seen many people maximizing that benefit by having a child every 12 months.

lmao (honestly) at the humorous implication that buying a goldfish per year and mourning its demise for 9 weeks in cancun is comparable in effort or commitment to birthing and raising a child.

I am almost certain that pet bereavement will require the pet to be an emotional support animal or require some sort of proof of relationship.

>As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.

The judgement is not that the others are "not worth mourning", but rather that it's not worth having an employee who is going to spend a sufficiently substantial fraction of their overall tenure on bereavement leave, and at some point you have to tell them to either work or quit. Which is of course trivially true, eg. the goldfish case.

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