You are missing the point. You expect that, during the time when flu/colds are common, everyone who thinks they might be sick must stay in their homes for a week, no matter what? Just in case they might infect someone with a poor immune system?
I have no dog in this fight. As I said, I am rarely ill and do not work, so I don’t need to worry about whether or not I have enough sick days to stay home when I have the flu/a cold. But I simply cannot believe that there are people out there who expect others to quarantine themselves in their homes for days just so they won’t be exposed to germs.
As another side note, I do have a dog in this fight (so to speak, I hate that expression.)
Although I’m a generally healthy, middle-aged man, I also have asthma, which puts me at higher than normal risk for pneumonia. As a result, some ass hat with the flu who thinks exposing the world to their virus is cool beans could very well be putting me at significant risk of winding up in the hospital, or worse.
Unless it means essentially losing your job. People are motivated by enlightened self-interest, and unless they are meeting their essential needs (food, shelter, health care) they’re not going to concern themselves with potential harm to others.
Yes, well, I’m a generally healthy, middle-aged woman who also has asthma AND who can not get the flu shot because I’m allergic to it - but right now I work retail and have sick members of the general public sneeze and cough on me all the time. And I have no paid sick time. And if I call off too often I will be fired.
Sucks to be me, yes, I know. But what alternative do I have?
It’s not a good situation, obviously. My hope is for you to build a career somewhere else. For now I suppose you have to hope that the randomness of the universe falls in your favor until that happens.
In the meantime, we can keep lobbying managers and employers that it is, in fact, in their best interest to grant their employees sick leave.
A bunch of my friends have worked in fast food at one point or another. Not one was shocked by this story. Well, some were… shocked it made the news for once, that is.
It’s the companies that are dicks, and anyone ever who said, “Why do you need another day off*?” I bet there have been a million studies done that say employees do better work if they feel they are valued and not forced to come in when they are sick. Plus it’s guaranteed your work is not stellar when you are sick.
Yet companies continue insisting no sick leave AND making a big fuss when people try to take earned vacations.
*I had an old man say this to me once many years ago. It was clear he was disappointed by people wanting days off. I wish I had had the presence of mind to say, “Why on earth would you want to work another day?”
I have read this entire thread and it makes it sound like the average employee wants their co-workers to stay home when they are sick. This is not true in my experience – they view sick days as free time off and they hate it when their coworkers take them.
When I used to work in an office, this is what happened when you called in sick.
The first day, you were maybe OK depending on who picked up the phone when you made the call. You might get a little bit of “we are really short-staffed, are you SURE you can’t make it in?’ but you could “get away” with it. I use this term because the assumption was if you called in sick that you were getting away with something.
But if you needed more than one sick day the complaints about being short-staffed and the stories of how inconvenient it was that everyone else had to do YOUR work would come out hot and heavy. You would also be unfavorably compared to sick employees that had more dedication than you and managed to make it into work, which is why it was especially dangerous to take a sick day during those times when a virus was going around.
You could expect to get several calls during the day and – and as someone that was in the office when others were sick- every call resulted in gossip on your condition – “Well, she’s not too sick to watch TV”, “She’s not too sick to eat” … again, the assumption being that you were faking it in order to watch TV and eat bon-bons all day while everyone else did all YOUR work for you.
And God forbid if you didn’t answer the phone at your home ( this was in the days before cell phones ). The assumption was that you were out enjoying amusement parks and champagne brunches.
Then after two or three days you would get THE QUESTION – which was the equivalent of “Have you stopped beating your wife?” “Have you been to the doctor?”
Answer NO and the scuttlebutt would be – “She’s called in sick for three whole days straight and she’s not even sick enough to go to the doctor”.
Answer YES and the scuttlebutt was “I know her doctor is on the Upper West Side and she lives in Queens so that means she’s not too sick to walk 3 blocks, take two trains, walk another two blocks to the doctor and then do it in reverse to get home, if she’s well enough to do that then she should be able to come to work” Really, I am not making this up - this is almost word for word what I heard my office manager say about an employee that had called in sick 3 days straight.
Back in the ‘90’s I had a horrible devastating case of the flu. I was as sick as I had ever been, it took an hour to muster up the strength to make it to the bathroom. I worked sick for a couple of days before the flu really kicked in ( New job and I recall being a key organizer for a big event so I HAD to work) then stayed home for 3 whole days + the weekend.
There was a lot of pressure for me to return to work and they had booked me to head up a large special project on Monday morning, calling several times to remind me to “get well soon”. And on Sunday night I was still bring up with fever and could still barely walk across the room without passing out.
So I did the only thing I could think of to save my job – I took a taxi to the nearest emergency room where they took one look at me and my fever of 104 and admitted me. I was there 5 days. It was probably the best thing all around because I really needed the IV fluids but if I hadn’t needed the excuse to miss work I probably wouldn’t have gone.
The funny thing is that this was a great place to work in all other aspects – generous bonuses and liberal family leave policies – my boss once insisted that I take a week off to be with a sick family member and they paid me for the week + my plane ticket and hotel. But he was one of those old guys that had never missed a day for illness in his whole life and he had a blind spot in that regard, he just could not conceive of anyone being too sick to work.
That’s what I used to think. You can have the flu and feel like you got hit by a truck. Or have it and not feel too bad at all.
This happened to me last year. I was at the doctor for a b-12 shot. Didn’t feel to bad, but mentioned something in passing. Nurse took my temp. It was a tad bit high. They then did the flu test. Yup, I had it. It was a Friday after work. Went home and had an ordinary weekend.
The time I had the flu before that. Well that was a run over by a truck flu.
So this was true over how long a period? Because it sounds like the workers were too dumb to notice that their** real** gripe was with their cheapskating employers who had them short-staffed all the time.
The place wasn’t really short-staffed. The problem was that the employees were extremely resentful about having to absorb any additional work due to someone else’s illness even if it was only cutting into their computer solitaire time.
And I currently lease office space for my business in someone else’s office and they have the same damn attitude towards illness and calling in sick. The office manager there - ironically, the same woman who performed the meta-analysis on how much energy was expended by an employee to get to the doctor - let a flu devolve into viral pneumonia and a 4 week hospital stay because she kept dragging herself into work.
Of course, now the office gossips are blaming her for not staying home earlier in her illness but only because her absence has now inconvenienced everyone for 6 weeks now. She claims a coworker called her while she was hospitalized to complain about the extra workload but I’m not sure how much credence to lend to her rendition of the phone call, she was really sick at the time.
Employees in a large business understand their primary gripe is with the employer, but know they are essentially powerless to change policy and know that bitching about it only annoys management.
They also understand that they have influence over colleagues in the form of guilt, aggression, and resentment.
This goes on for years and years, depending on the person. People hold grudges for a long time, especially those who consider themselves superheroes for coming in while they were miserable, snotty, and contagious.
You think the line cooks etc. at even a fine dining restaurant get sick time?? HA!
Better think about the underpaid people fixing your meals, with crap insurance and no sick days and a family to feed. But what you don’t see can’t kill you, or make you sick?
Every place I have ever worked has been a very small business - between 5 and 20 employees. I think this may be responsible for the attitudes I’ve described - because everyone is aware of who is at work and who isn’t every single day – also because there are fewer people to absorb additional work when one person is out. I know the attitudes I described have become deeply ingrained in me during the years, I am currently sick at home, I work for myself and it is a slow time of year … yet I have residual feelings of guilt for not working.
You must really stay busy here, Guin. 