My parents always drilled into my head that unless you’re puking all over the place, physically unable to get out of bed or highly contagious you suck it up and go to work.
I’ve got an annoying cold and got little sleep last night. I feel like junk. I got that slow-moving molasses brain going. But I still feel guilty about calling in. I mean, I just got up to have something to eat and I feel guilty about being able to stick toast in the toaster.
Anyone else feel bad about calling in short of having oozing pustules bursting forth?
It’s interesting that you posted this today. I also called in sick today after being up sick all night, and I also feel guilty about it even though it’s totally justified.
One thing in my case, I can still check and answer emails and communicate with my boss so I’m still slightly productive. Even so, sick days always make me feel guilty. I could probably be lying in a hospital bed and I’d still feel a little guilty.
Nope. If I’m sick, I’m sick. Working when ill is a good way to make so many mistakes that you’ll spend twice as long correcting them, and to pass on your illness to the rest of your co-workers.
When I work in a conventional office I actually prefer to stay home if I am contagious. I’m not convinced that I do, 'cause I don’t really know when the contagious zone is…
Most of my jobs in the past 10 years allowed me the flexibility to work from home, so when I felt sick, I stayed home.
Now, I work from home. And I put in enough hours that I don’t care if I go lay down when I’m feeling low.
Times are different. We understand germ communication better, and there’s some compelling evidence that we’ve actually got weaker immune systems than our grandparents, because our homes and offices are too clean. Go in sick, and you may very well be responsible for getting your office mates sick. That would suck for the company productivity, but may also suck more for one of them: you don’t know who may have an immunocompromised infant or grandmother at home. You don’t know who really needs to save his sick days to be available for his son who gets pneumonia once a winter. You don’t know who might be 7 weeks pregnant and just at the time when getting a viral illness could cause a miscarriage or even schizophrenia in her unborn child.
Stay home, for the love of your fellow workers. You’re doing the right thing.
Oh God, always, and for the same reason - in my family, you basically had to be dying before a day off was acceptable, and even then, you’d probably be sent off to school/work anyway with the sentiment: “just go in and see how you get on, you’ll probably feel better once you’re there.” Used to annoy my school no end, as an hour later they’d be calling my mum to say “yep, she really is sick. Please come and take her home”.
As an adult, it makes me one of those annoying (and hypocritical, as I don’t hestitate to send my staff home if I think they’re too ill to be there) people who will come into work when they’re clearly unwell, and have to forcibly removed.
It was also drummed into me that you don’t “bother” the doctor unless you’re at death’s door meaning I recently had a chest infection for 5 weeks before I gave in and saw my GP, much to the annoyance of my colleagues who’d had to listen to my hacking coughs.
I am not advocating any of this, btw, I know it’s not a good way behave, it’s an ingrained habit I find hard to break.
I never call off when sick, unless I’m hospitalized. I am the owner of the business, and if I take off then everyone else has a day off (without pay). I make it up by taking a handful of “mental health” days off when I am feeling great so that I can go kayaking, but they are planned days where I can have a skeleton crew working on paperwork, etc.
I’ll go as far as to say that taking a sick day even when you just need a mental break and aren’t on death’s door is not something you should feel guilty about. Sure, it’s deceptive, but the foundation of our society is deception (how many times do you smile at coworkers you hate because “you have to”?)*
In my case, I’ve been dealing with suicidal-ideation-level depression that no one seems to be able to fix. Since I tell people I’m too scared to actually kill myself, there seems to be little they can do. I’m on meds, but three psychiatrists and three therapists have suggested that there isn’t medication for what I have. What I have found is somewhat helpful is taking a day off here and there. Since I"m a doctoral student, I don’t really have to “call in sick,” but if I have a meeting, for example, I have on occasion told the people that care about that sort of thing that I was sick and couldn’t make it to the meeting. I was sick, mentally, but rather than go into that and face the stigma, I just made something up like a stomach virus.
Unethical? Maybe, since I lied about what was causing my illness. But, again, lies are an integral part of a functioning society. We lie to ourselves and to others daily.* Besides, if you are so valuable that they can’t go one day without your presence, it’s time to ask for a raise.
*I’m at a pretty low point right now, so this is genuinely how I see life.
I’m also not big-headed enough to think that my presence is so unfuckingbelievably crucial that they won’t be able to get by without me for a day. They can. And will.
My problem is that I’m the IT guy in a small office for a big business. My boss can show up and cover for me but only if he happens to be in this part of the state. Some of the IT chores can be handled remotely but if there’s something like a network problem and there’s no one physically there it’s a problem. Fortunately the network is very stable and seldom has problems and fortunately my boss is able to cover for me today.
At my company, if you don’t use up your sick days, you lose them at the end of the year. Now that I have young kids, there are plenty of reasons to use them up, but before that, I was always using them as mental health days because I was never really sick.
I used to feel guilty too. I was trained with the “work ethic,” until in 1996, I came down with the flu. I was really sick and I came to work and I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t stand up, I was dizzy, I had a high fever, they brought me blankets and put a blanket around me.
And my co-worker Angie said, “Why did you come in?” I said, “Well I want to do a good job and I don’t like to slack off.” And she laughed and said, “Mark, if you died right now, no one would say ‘Oh what a good guy he came to work when he was sick.’ All they would say was 'What a fool, he was deathly ill and instead of taking care of himself, he came into work, how stupid can you get,” that’s what they’d say."
I used to be like that, drag myself around and force myself to do things, but I’m getting smarter in my middle age - if I’m sick, I’m SICK. Go lie down and pamper yourself for a bit. Colds are the toughest, though - they make me sick enough to be miserable but not always sick enough to stop working. I worked two days with a cold last week since I only work two days a week, and my job kind of has to be done on those two days; it was a miserable two days, but I wasn’t sick enough to call in. Blech.
I pretty much have to be totally incapacitated before I’ll call in sick. If it’s just the sniffles, or a slight fever or something I can battle through, I’ll just make do.
I do call in sick, probably on average of 2 or 3 days a year, and yes, I feel guilty as hell every time.
I once worked for a charitable medical foundation, run by retired doctors and deans of medical schools, etc. The sick days policy was basically, “If you are sick, stay home. If your family is sick and you must care for them, please stay home until they are well. We do not want you in here spreading your illness to the rest of us. We do not want you doing sub-par work because you are too worried about your sick child to concentrate, and interrupting your work day checking in. If it appears that you are out sick excessively, we may ask you to reevaluate whether you should be trying to hold down a full-time job, and suggest that you consult a doctor about your chronic and recurring illnesses, to see if you should actually be on disability.”
In my observation people actually were out less than in other places I’ve worked with strict X-days-per-year policies.
Also I know it’s true for me that if I spend one or two days doing nothing except sleeping and consuming healthful liquids I sometimes can stop a cold before it gets really going good.
A wise co-worker once said “you don’t have to be dead to call in sick.”
If you know your illness is contagious, you probably ought to do your co-workers (and your employer) a favor and stay home. If your illness is not contagious, but you are feeling miserable, and the company won’t implode in your absence, stay home and get well soon.
Remember if a big corporation that the people at the top are stealing a way too high salary every day and hurting everyone all the time, even if they feel great they are not pulling their weight, so don’t worry about you taking a needed sick day at all.
Yep, but it doesn’t stop me from doing it. I feel really guilty when I take a mental health day but, again, it doesn’t stop me from doing it. And it’s not like I go out shopping on my MHD - I stay in my jammies and read or watch DVDs so I’m essentially recovering emotionally.