Chimera is talking about his terrible sick days policy and others in the thread still say he should stay home so he doesn’t get others sick.
So, what do you think? Should you always stay home if you are sick and possibly contagious? Do you always stay home? What are your office policies about such?
I think it is a fine idea that people stay out while they are ill. However, if I were to do so, you would only see me about three days a week from October to February (I get colds very easily). I try to be very aware of my germs, constantly wash my hands and keep others out of my cube. I seem to keep them (mostly) to myself. I only call in sick when I can’t get to work because of my condition. (Special mention to calling in sick because my kids are too sick for school.)
We don’t have a sick day policy per se but if I were out that much, I am pretty sure I would be looking for a new job.
I appreciate that you’re conscientious about washing your hands, etc. when you come in sick, but IME you’re in the minority. Most people who go out and about while sick will maybe wave vaguely at you and say, “Don’t come too close! I’m sick!” and then sneeze in your direction. Damn disease vectors.
Very, very few people are so damn important that things at work can’t wait a day or two.
People should stay home, but only to an extent. I’ve come in to work every day this week. I took three days off last week. I’m pretty sure that the contagious phase is over.
I choose to work when I’m sick. If I take time off, I have employees who are not needed and who loose money as a result. Added to that is the fact that I like to take occasional time off to kayak/horseback ride/etc. By working through illnesses I can take healthy days off for fun.
It’s not so much that those of us who come in when sick are so important, it’s that our jobs are more important to us than your health is. If I called off every time I was “sick” (meaning having a cold or just nasty sinuses), I would (as the OP noted) be looking for a new job pretty quickly. I need my job. Therefore, I come in unless I absolutely can’t.
I get no sick pay so unless I’m totally miserable I go in. Fortunately we don’t have that bullshit point thing that Chimera has. A lot of the time just getting out of the apartment and getting my head out of being sick helps a little. I can’t remember the last time I took a day off because I was sick. I’ll take a few hours here and there to go to the doctor but that’s about it.
Usually when I am getting a cold there is that one day where I just can’t move, I ache all over and just need to stay in bed and sleep. That’s the day I stay home. The rest of the time, if I have symptoms, I medicate myself into functionality and go to work. Since I’m medicated I’m not sneezing (much) and my tissue box is always close to hand; also I don’t interact that closely with other people most of the time. So I think the risk of infecting anyone else is small.
We used to get 10 days of sick time per year, which accumulated when not used; seven years or so ago, it went down to 5 days per year. In recent years, at least, I only use one or two days per year, and I now have 122+ days of accumulated sick time.
(I am truly one of the lucky few: a decent medical insurance plan, paid sick time and vacation time, and a very decent pension when I retire. This may not be the most challenging or interesting job all the time, but all that stuff pretty much makes up for it.)
Roddy
We actually have a pretty good system where I work. If you have a doctor’s note or if the company nurse checks you out and clears you for sick time then you get the day off with half pay. Generally speaking, the benchmark for the nurse clearing you is a 100F degree fever although in one case a worker failed spectacularly to get to the restroom during a stomach cramp/diarrhea attack.
As far as going in or staying home when I’m sick, If I can, I’m going in. It does depend on the illness though. Any kind of sinus/lung crud almost certainly won’t stop me while high fever (over 103F), nausea or lower GI issues will keep me home
The vast majority of our employees are hourly and make a paltry wage. I can definitely understand why they would choose to come in even if they were sick. Plus, sick day policies here are militant if you’re hourly. And this is the absolute busiest season for my group in particular. We do well over half our business from now 'til the end of the year. We have very few employees well enough trained to do what they do, and most of them feel compelled to come in, sick or not.
Personally, I wish there were some way to give them some perks for having such crappy jobs. Let them work from home (most of the work can be completed anywhere), take comp time when things slow down - anything to avoid burning them out. Shockingly, they come in day after day and year after year. This company is definitely one of those “lifer” companies, though. You know - one of those places where you start working and plan to be there forever. Because our hourly employees work so hard, I definitely feel compelled to come in, sick or not. And my boss doesn’t usually care whether or not I’m ill.
Making work colleagues sick is only really a problem if they are going to call in sick. If everyone soldiers on and can still work somewhat effectively then it doesn’t really matter if you make people sick does it? In an ideal world you would have a sick policy that allows you to have an adequate number of sick days per year and you’d have enough staff to cover anyone who can’t work due to sickness, but this isn’t an ideal world. In the end you have to use your best judgement. In my company I call in sick when I need to, but I work in something close to the ideal world.
I also accumulate sick days and have something like 70. I prefer people stay home when they are sick, but some places, like my SO’s office, severely penalize you in many, many ways while you are gone, up to and including stealing stuff right off your desk!
Myself I work in a good environment so generally the one cold I get a year I stay home. I have allergies lots of the year but those are just allergies and I just let people know they are not going to get sick from me.
But I hate people who come in, hacking their germs all over, when they don’t have to.
I would say, definitely don’t go to work if you’re sick. If you don’t get rest you’ll just get continually sicker. A small cold probably isn’t enough of a big deal to merit taking the day off, but anything else should. I think this also applies to something like clinical depression, when sometimes one ‘mental health day’ can stave off a week of days when you can’t get out of bed.
And keep in mind that food service workers (along with retail in general) are among the least likely have sick pay or health insurance. I worked a company that didn’t provide either for store-level employees (other than managers), and still sent out notices trying to guilt trip people into staying home if they were sick “out of consideration for our customers & your coworkers”. :rolleyes: Store managment even got instructions on how to deal with sick workers and “stongly encourage” them to go home for the day. The one thing we were absolutely forbidden to do was to actually force someone to go home, no matter how sick they were or how many compliants we got. The matter had to be “refered to the corporate VP of HR for further action” (ie forgotten).
One place I worked at for many years, while it was owned by a large corporation, offered 10 paid sick days per year (salaried employees). But if you were healthy and didn’t use them you got nothing. So it created a policy where you got 10 extra paid days off per year if you took advantage of the company but nothing if you were healthier or just had a better work ethic.
We had a woman who had dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, etc. and allergies to go with them who used all 10 of her’s each year. And caused much grumbling among the people who had to pick up the work.
Later a couple of the managers bought the company and instituted a new policy. We still got 10 paid sick days per year, but whatever days remained unused at the end of the year were cashed out as a wellness bonus. Morale improved greatly, and if you were sick you took a couple days off and only got 8 days wellness pay at the end of the year, so what.
Having worked in the fast food industry in my youth, and therefore knowing how well the idea of calling in sick goes down with management, I tend to completely avoid fast food places during cold and flu season, if possible.
Yeah, no sick time, don’t get paid for not working, get “points” that accumulate and can get you fired. The only small light in this is that if you have a doctor’s note, you don’t get the points. Oh, you still don’t get paid, but at least you’re not adding points. So like today, I had to plop down the $35 co-pay to go to urgent care to be told what I already knew - that I had a stomach virus and I should stay home and rest. But at least now I have the doctor’s note and won’t be hit with 2 points for missing yesterday and most of today. But still, two days unpaid AND $35 out of pocket because I have a viral gastro-intestinal something or other.
3 points in a rolling 3 month period = Verbal Warning. Which means your points freeze (ie, they no longer roll off until the end of the warning) for 3 month. Which makes it much easier to accumulate to…
5 points = Written Warning. This one lasts SIX months. It also prevents you from getting a raise for that year, or from applying for any other internal jobs or promotions.
7 points = FINAL Warning. This one lasts one full year, which pretty much means that once you’re on it, you’re going to be fired, because for one year, your points do not roll off, and once you reach…
9 points = Termination.
I used to work much better jobs with much better policies. But the bottom line here for all the arrogant (read: ignorant) “well just stay home!” types is that no everyone can do this and there are a lot of companies out there that screw you raw if you don’t show up every single day, healthy or not.
Assuming of course they are trust fund babies who work only for self-actualization, that is true.
I’m a manager and I’m privileged to be able to work from home from time to time, so I don’t go in sick. But I am required by company policy to fire people who exhaust their sick days and accrue more than a certain number of additional absences. And my team knows it.
There’s ways around it. If I know a person is chronically ill, I try to find a way to accommodate them without breaking the rules. But I know plenty of managers who don’t.