It's a good idea to spare girls a bit of pain caused by strenuous physical activity they'd be otherwise forced to endure, yes. However I don't believe work at GOG involves this and, going back to your school analogy, they would still not be released from the obligation of attending the classes.

In any case, this is not a new topic - there's plenty of companies that attempt to introduce this type of a thing, in almost all cases as a PR measure. What's really interesting is how this ends up resolved on the ground of Polish law when it inevitably lands before the labour court as a violation of article 11 of the labour code (particularly 11.2 - the rule of equal rights of all employees, especially in regards to equal treatment of men and women under employ; and article 11.3 - which prohibits all discrimination, direct or indirect, and specifically mentions sex of the employee as one category you're not allowed to discriminate by).

The way this works "normally" is that a female employee feeling unwell to the point of not being able to work may take L4 medical leave, as issued by a doctor. You know, a person qualified to estimate health of a person. The employer doesn't get to know what's the cause of a medical leave (in fact is not authorised to ask), which I think is more preferable to letting your boss know what's the state of your crotch on a particular day.

I cannot speak of GOG as they are in Poland. However I am going to go there and say that if any US company made such an announcement, it would be 100% PR and nothing else. Don't expect anyone to ever be using menstrual leave here in this country. It's not going to happen.

I have irritable bowel (IBS), which is not a gender-specific health issue. It's super easy to get completely excused from jury duty in my area if you have IBS to the extent that they really do make process is super easy to complete. (They also list IBS as a condition that they will always excuse people for.) On the other hand, it's extremely difficulty to get an accommodation from an employer when all you need is permission to leave your desk outside of your designated break time to use the toilet no matter how much documentation you have. It's like they really would prefer have employees poop in their pants.

I likewise had a co-worker that got diagnosed with diabetes and while they approved her accommodation request, they also made it a constant battle. I'd expect that menstrual leave requests to similarly be met with constant roadblocks.



EDIT -- Not sure why anyone is getting upset over me saying that that in the US at least, this type of thing would be entirely a PR stunt.

If you consider GOG, their support department is extremely behind. I seriously doubt any women in this department will be taking period leave as it will just push them even further behind, especially if employees are being encouraged to work overtime to help deal with the support request backlog.

Don't worry about that, this place has become infested with simps who run bots that down vote anyone who dares to posit even the most milquetoast critiques of GOG.

Genuine question: how do you explain the fact, that EVERY comment got downvoted?
Not just the ones "who dare to post even the most milquetoast critique of GOG"?

I get the feeling that the people running bots have simply started blanket downvoting threads deemed negative towards GOG from the outset, rather than individual users. Sure sounds about right for the kind of pathetic user who would even use a bot to downvote people in the first place.

Ah. So, the possibility of "the other side" (aka: yours, if I understood your comment correctly) doing the same, hasn't crossed your mind, yet?

I knew that's where you were going, of course I've considered that, I just think given the irrational nature of the kind of white knight who is petty enough to run a bot on here in the first place, that it's easier slacktivism to just blanket topics rather than users or individual comments. If it ever comes out that someone on 'my side' is botting too, then I'd condemn them just the same. It's a pathetic tactic that accomplishes nothing, no matter who does it.

That's a rather biased view on things, wouldn't you agree?
I've seen comments coming from 'your side' demanding everyone to upvote the downvoted "anti-woke", "anti-sjw", "anti-feminism", "anti-whatever" comments again, to "even up the score again".

So, irrational behaviour isn't reserved to one side of the spectrum, is what I would say.
Probably not something, that will ever come out.
At least we can agree on that.

----
The thing that I noticed: over time, the downvoting grew more and more.

In the beginning, it were almost exclusive solitary comments that were negative towards GOG, or rude towards other users, that got downvoted.

Which is understandable, since we are here on GOG-forum and so, naturally, most people here are pro GOG, and bad behaviour in an online forum can be quickest "punished" by using the downvote button.

With time, more and more outright negative threads got opened.

Again: understandable in the first place, since people who are (completely) happy, usually don't "waste" their time with saying so.

But now something could be witnessed: the negative comments in those negative threads got downvoted at first (again: totally understandable - reasons see above).
However - that was only the initial reaction.

With time elapsing, one could see the originally downvoted (negative) comments getting upvoted again, while the positive (or rather: anti-negative) comments now got downvoted.

Basically, the ratio of downvoted/upvoted in relation to negative/positive comments had gotten completely reversed after a few hours.
This was the case til last year, maybe the year before that?

I think, in the meantime this "reverse the ratio" mentality has died down.
At the very least, I couldn't witness it for quite some time now.

We now have reached a point, where the two opposing sides will make sure that every comment in certain threads will end up being downrated.

Just another step towards the inevitable death of the GOG forums.

What if it is the entities that are normally against the interests of the middle and lower classes that are the ones pushing these policies?


It wasn't like that before when the posters supporting this were up repped but anyone else was down repped as usual.

I take it the people you work with have strong work ethic. I’ve worked plenty of places where people who had FMLA took days off work on suspicious days. Like every holiday and they would take off on Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years every year without fail. It was always so strange that they had medical flare ups like clockwork like that. If menstrual leave was a thing in the US, you can bet there would be plenty of people taking advantage of it.

I think that whenever workers catch a break, companies tend to be against it.

Progress in this area tends to be driven by:
- The few companies that are owned by their operators
- The state or citizens groups
- Contentions in the workforce to acquire and retain top talent (but unless there is a serious labor shortage, that tends to happen only for people who are in the top tiers of their profession).

In my experience, employee integrity is contingent on two factors:
- How much you can get your workforce to buy into what you are doing
- The right balance in terms of job security

For the first part, it really depends on the company. I think there should be a natural selection where if an employer just can't manage to get its workforce onboard with its mission, perhaps it should fail. Maybe its mission statement is not that inspiring (ex: advertising call centers) or maybe the leadership is so poor that it is simply unable to provide a work environment where the workforce get a sense of belonging.

For the second part, it is delicate, but there should be a balance between unfireable employees and employees that you can fire on a whim. If there is practically no job security, employees won't have a sense of belonging (ie, the employer is in it only for itself and thus, the workforce should similarly be in it only for themselves) and workforce integrity will be low. On the other end of the spectrum, if job security is too high, you might get stuck with some extremely underwelming employees that are not fireable. This is doubly so if in addition to iron-clad job security, upward mobility is rigid (either non-existent or not driven by merit, for example if only seniority dictates who will be in line for a promotion or a raise, which is the case in a lot of unions).

Outrageous! As if women don't have it easy enough already.
When is Gog going to do something for their incel employees instead?

Sure, pal, sure. Keep believing that.

Smell the sarcasm! At least I hope I smelled it, I don't know, my nose is not as good as Gandalf.. :(