&gt; If you tell your boss &quot;I am going to take tomorrow off&quot;, and they say, &quot;Actually, you&#x27;re scheduled for an interview, can you please come in? But take Thursday or Friday off by all means&quot;, you&#x27;re going to still go to work, right? Informing, in practice, is identical to requesting ...<p>In my experience, &quot;you must ask for permission&quot; is substantially different from &quot;you don&#x27;t have to ask, but your decision may be overruled&quot;. It sounds like your experience is different.<p>Perhaps the differences I see can be put into another context. Think about the action &quot;eating off someone else&#x27;s plate&quot;, rather than &quot;working from home&quot;. Do you see the gap between informing and requesting in that circumstance? The difference seems huge to me.