In the United Kingdom, Garden leave (or gardening leave) describes the practice of instructing an employee who is leaving an employer (following a resignation, or having been made redundant or otherwise terminated) to stay away from work during their notice period. The practice is often used to prevent employees from working for the employer’s competitors for a period of time.
Today is the first day of my Garden Leave from $BIG_COMPANY and it started with a telephone call from the US-based 24/7 call centre wanting some help due to a failed overnight automatic job on one of the production systems. I had to tell him which team in New York to call because my pass, logins and remote access were all revoked Friday and there’s no-one left in Belfast since my leaving.
I’d only place an employee on Garden Leave if I thought there was a real danger of them getting pissed off during the notice period as anyone who has admin-level access and held a grudge would surely have placed all their time-bombs and stolen their secrets before handing in their notice. So, yeah, it’s kinda stupid. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth however and have settled nicely into not having to get up at 05:30 and there’s a Cocoa book sitting beside me that I should get some time to open.
Nice to see that communication had gone through and the contact wiki pages were all updated. As some of these agents keep their own little contact lists, I’m expecting some more calls over the next few weeks.