You get punished for being sick? Either you work for a top-secret government facility that’s secretly testing a substance that cures every known illness on its own employees, in which case, if you call in sick, you’re obviously lying, or else your employer simply prefers to drag sick people into the office to make sure everyone stands a decent chance of becoming infected. This policy will be rethought when suddenly, during the course of one week, half the office is hospitalized for the flu.
Also, what on Earth is a “written verbal warning”?
Probably a verbal warning with a note in your file that the verbal was given. It doesn’t carry as much disciplinary weight as a written warning, but still has a written componant so there is a paper trail that the warning was given.
I would ask HR for a written copy of the policy first, before mentioning why you were asking. If the note is not part of the official policy then I would start some trouble from there.
FWIW, at my work there is no differentiation between sick/personal/vacation time. The only thing that would be frowned apon is (as doreen stated earlier) calling in sick when a request for that day off was already denied.
I understand the general idea, but perhaps being warned after calling in sick three times would be reasonable. Getting an actual warning after a single incident seems to cross the boundaries of common sense, at least in my mind.
Tracking the number of illness-related absences makes sense. Being warned for each one does not.
Has she been there the same amount of time as you? I’ve worked for a place that new employees didn’t earn sick time for the first six months. If you didn’t have available sick tie and called out it would be an issue. If you had available sick time and called out it wasn’t an issue.
I think I’d start looking for a new job the moment I found out that I needed to produce a doctor’s note every time I was sick. Or that I’d be written up or given ANY kind of warning for taking a sick day.
Fuck that noise.
Last week I had Oral Surgery. Due to a change in schedules, I had it scheduled for my old day off, which was not a day off on my new schedule. The condition of taking the new schedule (switching with someone else who needed a different schedule in order to take a class) was that I would be off that day, taking it as a sick day. I said I’d have to play it by ear whether or not I’d be in the next day.
Bad idea. That very night, several hours after the surgery, I called in for the next day. (Vicodin and Ibuprofin were not doing the trick. OW!!!)
The third day, lacking a Doctor’s note, I went in to work. One look at my swollen and bruised face and the Supervisor on Duty told me to go home.
I hate that crap in general, and I hope you do go to HR.
My company gives X days off a year. My organization’s opinion (and we all know what those are like) is that if they didn’t want me to take that time off they wouldn’t offer it - that it’s not a benefit if you’re not allowed to take advantage of it.
And “taking advantage of sick leave”? Seriously? If you don’t want someone “taking advantage” of sick leave, don’t offer it in the first place.
Was it Tuesday that you called in sick? A lot of companies have the policy that if you call in the day before or the day after a holiday, you need a doctor’s note when you come back, at least to be able to get holiday pay.
It is possible that first year employees are treated differently than employees with “tenure”.
Auntbeast “Our new policy is that if you call in sick, you get a written verbal warning.” For calling in sick? :dubious: I would be so gone, they’d get a negative two week notice! Fuck that shit.
Fuck that shit.