When I was fifteen, I visited India sort of on a whim. I had two weeks before my flight left, and I got on all of the medications I needed. I spent two blissful months in India, and came back about a week before school started.
First day before school, went off, no problem. In the afternoon I began to get chills and a fever and felt like crap, with an awful headache. Told my mom, she poo-pooed it like she always did - you had to be dying to take a day off school.
Next day, same thing.
Third day, I threw up before I went to school, and she finally kept me home.
After two weeks of extreme sickness it was finally discovered that I had contracted* malaria - after I lost twenty pounds. That’s what it took to keep me out of school back then.
So yes, I still feel horribly guilty when I take a sick day, even when it’s warranted/
*What a weird way to put getting a disease. Feels like I signed out for it.
So I went in yesterday, still sick but actually possessing cognitive function. Today it almost felt like I was over the hump and in the recovery stage.
Showed up for work, did some work, boss sent me home. All before the chronically late people even showed up. It’s really slow right now, I have almost no billable work, but I can’t just take days off when I have a cold. With my colds, I would have to take a week off to fully recover.
I am home today with a sick 2nd grader. She feels miserable, and I am caring for her, but really enjoying a day off while not sick. I don’t think she’s going to be well enough to go back tomorrow either. Darn.
My company doesn’t separate sick and vacation days. It’s all lumped under our paid time off–PTO–pool. You can call off anytime for any reason, and you don’t have to give a reason. They wouldn’t look at a doctor’s note if I brought it in because they don’t care why we call off. You can carry over a max of 5 days a year, and you lose anything more than that (so there’s no way to accumulate months of sick time at the end of a 25 year tenure, for instance). We can also buy 5 extra PTO days a year, which comes out of our paychecks little by little through the year, and sell those 5 days back in December if we didn’t use them (for a nice holiday shopping bonus). It’s a pretty cool system, although if you buy time you cannot carry over any hours for tax reasons. I always buy PTO because I like the extra days off, and I can afford the little extra that it costs out of my paycheck.
The ONLY downside is if you’re stupid and use all your PTO early in the year for mental health days (or playing WoW expansions), and get legitimately sick later in the year, you are royally fucked–remember, they refuse to check doctor’s notes. You get 2 unpaid/unscheduled occurrences per year and then you’re fired. I’ve never gotten one since I play smart with my PTO, but I’ve seen it happen.
Of course if you’re injured badly enough to take short term disability or FMLA, you’d get to keep your job.
And to actually answer the original question: no, I don’t feel guilty taking personal days or sick days. However, I’m young. I didn’t grow up in the era where companies cared for their employees and fostered a good relationship with them. Employment, to me, is more of an informal contract that can be terminated whenever I or they want to. I am not indispensable, and there are 79 other people in my office who do more or less the exact same job as me.
Yup. Last time I called in sick was with a cold, which I’ve never done before. But I was super stuffy, super sluggish, and had no voice. If I had a job where I was isolated and didn’t deal with a lot of people, I would’ve sucked it up and gone, but I work with the public. Which means I have to talk to people. A lot. After much hemming and hawing, and much cajoling from my boyfriend, I called in. And though it was totally justified (I practically had to shout into the phone in order for the person on the other end to hear me), I still felt guilty.
If I have a minor cold or something, I’ll go in and warn my coworkers to stay away from me. I don’t accumulate sick leave very fast so I have to be pretty sick to stay home. I don’t feel guilty when I do though - the work will be there when I get back - I just don’t like my sick leave getting eaten up.
IMHO a bad night’s sleep isn’t necessarily a bad reason for a sick day. If you’re exhausted, sitting at your desk struggling to keep your eyes open - you’re not going to get anything worthwhile done anyway.
If it’s my kid that’s sick (which thankfully almost NEVER happens) - hell no I don’t feel guilty for staying home with her. My office is very family friendly and it’s a given that our families come first.
With the company I work for, if you call in sick it better be from your casket.
Unless, of course, your one of the privilged few who can take as many days off during the year and not have it counted against you. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them!
Not a whit. If I have time off, they have coverage at work, fuck 'em. My parents always taught that it’s best to not call in sick a lot because people count on you and it looks poorly on you. However, they also said if you get paid time off, that’s days your company said “We’ll pay you not to be here”. It really sucks that I work with a bunch of old people who also think you have to be here No Matter What, which then spreads disease around to everyone all the time.
I love that feeling just after I get off the phone announcing I’m not coming in. It’s so… freeing. It’d be interesting to see if there’s any correlation between people who feel guilt about calling in and also actually like their job. I loathe mine, so any time away from here the better.
Sort of, but one of the things that was highest in my college’s agenda was curing us of that. Paraphrasing several years’ worth of safety lectures:
If you’re working as a design engineer and you fuck up, you may kill not one, not two, but several thousand people. If you’re working as a lab tech and you fuck up, you may cause a fire, or consider good a product which was not, and again end up killing people. For any of the jobs for which you’re being trained, you will have lives depend on your doing it right. When you’re too fucked up to be at work, the safe thing to do, the responsible thing to do, is to stay at home.
Not everybody agrees, of course: I got an email yesterday from one of my bosses telling me that, since I left work early one day last month and “didn’t tell her” (I had, but not in writing), she will now require a doctor’s note for any time I leave early. I do hope the company doctor doesn’t mind giving notes for “nauseous, vertiginous and with vision and language problems but not puking up”… (and how does a doctor verify that you’re having vision and language problems and vertigo and nausea? It’s not like you’re bleeding…)
Sort of, but I’ve always worked at jobs where one person being out really does impact everyone else. They’re the sort of places where certain things have to be done every day, and if people are out it just means more work for the ones that showed up. So I feel bad that everyone else has that much more to do, but at the same time if it’s to the point where I wouldn’t be helpful if I came in, I may as well just stay home and rest. I try not to feel guilty.
I always feel guilty calling in sick. Even if I’m really sick. My husband usually has to shove the phone into my hand and stand there and supervise me while I call in, because he sees better than I do that I need to stay home and get well, and left to my own devices I’d probably try to crawl to work in my sorry state.
Also, we’re discouraged from taking sick days even though we do have a PTO “leave bank” we can use for vacations or sick days. Any unplanned absence (sick day) gets written up and if you have more than a certain number of them, you don’t get your merit raise at the end of the year. Makes no sense to me, especially when HR gives you a pamphlet at your pre-employment physical with a list of illnesses that you are NOT allowed to come to work with if you have, like chicken pox, influenza, pinkeye, etc.
So… don’t come to work if you’re sick. But don’t call out sick because you won’t get a raise next year if you do.
I’ve been at my present company for 14 years. I have never called in sick for work. I only take sick time when I have a doctor or dentist appointment.
It really burns me up when people who work for me call in as “sick,” yet I strongly suspect they are not sick. It’s basically theft. :mad:
Just last week, one of my technicians took Tuesday through Thursday off due to “back pain.” He seemed perfectly O.K. on Friday. I’m guessing it was B.S.
So at my company we get the 24th and 25th of December off, as paid company holidays.
Last year, I went to work on the 22nd, then went home and promptly spiked a high fever and got the flu… or something like it. I had to call in sick on the 23rd.