Snippets from an eyebrow-raising conversation recorded during a Tesla meeting in Germany are making the rounds this week. Allegedly, the Grünheide-based Tesla Gigafactory’s managing director and human resources director chose a random group of 30 employees on sick leave. Then, they went to their houses to “see how they were doing.”

A German newspaper, the Handelsblatt, apparently recorded the conversation during a Giga Berlin-Brandenburg operations meeting. While HR Director Erik Demmler clarified that the visits had “nothing to do with general suspicion,” Managing Director André Thierig has a history of making internally-facing remarks about the operation’s intolerance for factory workers who “couldn’t get out of bed.”

Last year, Tesla announced the Gigafactory would double annual production to 1 million electric cars. As of Q1 2024, the factory reportedly could produce 375,000 Model Y midsize SUVs annually.

In August, the Tesla building’s sick leave rate rose to 17% of the operation’s 12,000 employees, meaning more than 2,000 workers were on sick leave simultaneously. The month prior, in July, the Gigafactory reportedly offered its workforce a bonus if they took little sick time. By the beginning of September, the leave rate had lowered to 11%.

Still, the Gigafactory execs felt home visits were in order. “We simply picked out 30 employees who had the relevant abnormalities, who had been on sick leave for quite a long time, but also to a lot of people who handed in first sick notes,” Demmler allegedly said in the meeting.

Germany allows these “corporate” visits. In any case, the employees didn’t vibe well with them.

“You could just tell by the aggression,” the paper quoted Demmler saying. He recounted employees slamming their doors shut and making threats to involve the police. Others questioned whether the execs needed to schedule the visits ahead of time.

Many Americans might feel shocked to learn that the U.S. also allows home visits by employers. Bosses can “visit” or perform a “welfare check” by knocking on your door. They must respect your privacy and personal space. Culturally, of course, I’d expect such a move would be received similarly to, if not worse than, the German Gigafactory workforce response.