How Sick Is Sick Enough to Stay Home
A Berlin engineer who takes sick days without guilt meets a Lagos bank teller who has never taken one. Bea referees a conversation about illness, trust and who really pays for presenteeism.
Can You Leave Before Your Boss Does
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Show notes
The politics of going home
In Manila, Bea's teams left at exactly six and nobody blinked. In Tokyo, co-host Kenji says the first person to stand up is noticed, quietly, for years. A straight comparison of two cities and the rules around the end of the working day, with listener detours to Lagos, Berlin and Dubai.
- The Tokyo goodbye: what you say, to whom, and in what order
- Why Manila's BPO culture produced an unusually strict clock-off
- Paid overtime, expected overtime and invisible overtime
- The person who leaves early and what happens to their reputation
- Listener messages from Lagos, Berlin and Dubai
Send your own city's rules through the Witspeak voice feed and we will play the best.
Transcript
Hi, I am Bea Santiago and this is Clocking In Across Time Zones, the show where we compare what a working day actually feels like in different countries, not what the HR handbook says. I ran night-shift teams in Manila for six years, and I thought I understood office life until I started talking to people in other cities. This week my co-host is Kenji, a marketing manager in Tokyo, and our topic is deceptively simple: can you leave before your boss does. In Manila, my people walked out at six on the dot. In Tokyo, Kenji says the first person to stand up is remembered for years. We get into the Tokyo goodbye, the three kinds of overtime, and what really happens to the person who breaks the rule. We also have voice messages from Lagos, Berlin and Dubai. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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