While some people in the office love Professional Development Day at work where guest speakers are bought in to inspire teams, Hugh Honey will not be one of the lucky ones this year after calling in to notify HR that he could not come into the office. 

Where some might have been docked sick leave, annual leave or put on leave without pay, Honey appears to have found a loophole in the system whereby he cannot come into the office due to misplacing his COVID passport which confirmed his vaccination status. 

As much as Honey would have loved to hear about other people’s success for 8 hours, his inability to present his COVID passport has limited his movement. 

Unable to catch the train and unable to enter his office building, Honey has no other option than to stream Professional Development Day from the comfort of his lounge room this year, on full pay. 

“It’s a real shame that I can’t go into the office today because this is one of my favourite days on the office calendar,” said Honey via email. 

“The worst thing is that my webcam and microphone broke yesterday so I can’t even participate in the icebreaker activities throughout the day but I’ll be listening in for sure, even if they can’t see or hear me.” 

When queried by HR as to how Honey could misplace his COVID passport which is automatically downloaded onto his phone, he claimed not to have a smartphone. 

This will be the fifth consecutive Professional Development Day that Honey has auspiciously missed.