Man who wrestled shark away from kids fired for missing work

[mongers]

I'm not getting the whole slackers charter vibe from what I've encountered in real world situations; a few of my friends/acquaintances have taken leave from work due to stress, before going back to work.

And if there's an underlying theme, it's their responsible people in highish-mid level to high level corporate jobs, who've gotten into a 'state' often because they're thrown ever increasing responsibilities, accept them and eventually 'burn out'.
To a man, none of them are slackers/on the fiddle and I'd suggest more people here wait till they're in their mid to late 40s with a high pressure job before passing judgement, because some of you could well experience something similar.

At least in America though, it wouldn't do well for said people if they were to reveal the reason they took medical leave. Sort of like how I didn't tell my work was depressed when I took disability. Stress/depression don't engender corporations to look kindly.

Unfortunately that is a problem that shouldn't be and it appears to be the result of differences in national corporate cultures.

In two cases involving two good friends in quite senior jobs, both were dealt with sympathetically by the multi-nationals invovled. Over here there seems to be established practice has to how to proceed, both were given large amounts of time of, months, and went through a programme of CBT etc. 
Seems to work and probably costs the corporation less in the long run.

[garbon]

Seems to work and probably costs the corporation less in the long run.

Quite honestly I'm not sure that's true. Why opt for the executive whom you know to suffer from stress when you can get one that doesn't need to go out on leave?

[mongers]

Seems to work and probably costs the corporation less in the long run.

Quite honestly I'm not sure that's true. Why opt for the executive whom you know to suffer from stress when you can get one that doesn't need to go out on leave?

Take another example, a college friend of mine, a director of a large financial institution, involved in rapidly growing it through M&A, travelling most places by executive jet etc.
They're not suddenly going to say, he's wobbling, bin him and we'll get someone else in to take over, just wouldn't work.

With him they followed basically the same process, just much more compressed and put him back to work.
The cynic in me would say the institution patched him up just enough to get another couple of years out of him and through those important corporate events. 

This guy basically never had a family life, if he was with them, he'd still be working, locking himself away to work even whilst family events were on-going, putting in an appearance for 1/2 an hour before getting back to work at home.

[garbon]

Seems to work and probably costs the corporation less in the long run.

Quite honestly I'm not sure that's true. Why opt for the executive whom you know to suffer from stress when you can get one that doesn't need to go out on leave?

Take another example, a college friend of mine, a director of a large financial institution, involved in rapidly growing it through M&A, travelling most places by executive jet etc.
They're not suddenly going to say, he's wobbling, bin him and we'll get someone else in to take over, just wouldn't work.

With him they followed basically the same process, just much more compressed and put him back to work.
The cynic in me would say the institution patched him up just enough to get another couple of years out of him and through those important corporate events. 

This guy basically never had a family life, if he was with them, he'd still be working, locking himself away to work even whilst family events were on-going, putting in an appearance for 1/2 an hour before getting back to work at home.

Well I think it definitely depends on individual circumstances and how easy or not it might be to transition that individual's duties to someone else (and of course perceived risk of the individual falling into a hole again).

As a lowly analyst, it would have / was very easy for them to transition my job away.