In what might be the most up-front leave request of the year, a Gen Z employee emailed his boss asking for 10 days off to recover from a breakup.

“I recently had a breakup and haven’t been able to focus on work. I need a short break,” they wrote in an email that was recently screenshotted and posted to X.

Entrepreneur and CEO Jasveer Singh shared the unusually candid request on social media, captioning it: “Got the most honest leave application yesterday. Gen Z doesn’t do filters!” (Singh just so happens to be the cofounder and CEO of Knot Dating, a dating app. Coincidence?) 

Whether the email was genuine or a clever PR stunt, it gained nearly 14 million views since it was posted Tuesday, sparking the debate: should heartbreak qualify as a legitimate reason to take time off work?

Workplaces are generally sympathetic to time off for illness or family emergencies. But when it comes to a messy breakup, that empathy tends to dry up quickly.

Across the U.S.,........

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