Funny from someone who doesn’t seem to care that other people don’t have the option to stay home. No, you only care that you might catch a cold, but hey, you have sick days! Who cares if other people don’t?
Douche.
I probably should add that the last time I had 'the ‘flu’ as diagnosed as a dinkum case of INFLUENZA, with full lurgy credentials yada yada was when I was 7 yrs old. I’m 55 now…and since my terrible event all those years ago (that I don’t even have a memory of by the way) I’ve only endured the usual snuffs and sniffles that people get as a result of colder weather/springtime allergies.
So DrDeth can really go shove an influenza-infected phial up his/her most available orifice!
And I hope he has no sick days left either…mwahahahahahaa. Yes, I’m evil like that! 
You’re absolutely right. Funny thing is though, there’s a whole mindset that backs up this policy. Apologies in advance for a rambling anecdote, but…
We’ve got three offices in the US. The first was in Texas, and when it was setup we just went with the de facto “this is normal practice for your industry and this state” advice from the lawyers. That would be about 15 years ago, and when we opened the other offices they inherited these policies, modified to fit state laws.
Couple of years ago, we decide it’s best to try to equalize benefits and salaries as much as we can worldwide. Most of it was pretty complicated - having to match up jobs by grading, identify an appropriate weighting factor for local cost of living, compensate for local mandated perks like a 13month salary, etc. One thing that should have been easy was sick days. Dead simple, right - just be nice! Apply one of the European models, allow staff to sign themselves off for up to a week, just keep an eye on usage to ensure people aren’t routinely being “sick” on Mondays or following big sports events. We do thing in a stack of other countries, it works just fine, pretty much all adults are sensible enough not to abuse this policy. Seriously, it costs fuck all in the scheme of things. It also means you avoid productivity dropping like a brick and mistake rates shooting up because people are trying to do work that requires attention to detail whilst feeling like shit and zombied on Tylenol.
But in the US we honestly encountered opposition to this from pretty much the lowest levels of management upwards. Basically every person who’d earned enough seniority/time with the company to have what I’d call basic sick leave entitlement thought it was a bad idea to give this to all staff. People would abuse it. It’d make scheduling rotas much harder. It would demoralise other staff who’d earned this entitlement. Ridiculous, easily destroyable claims - all we had to do was point to every other country where we have such policies, and show that attendance levels were absolutely fine. Even then, people still opposed it, arguing that things were different in the US. Baffling shit, as if the flu or common cold somehow had a different affect if you had an american immune system.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that the reason they were so opposed was because they felt that if they’d had to earn the sick leave, everyone else from then on should. It was the only explanation I could come up with
In the end we had to just tell local management this would happen , and impose cast iron performance metrics so that they couldn’t then encourage people not to take it through negative reviews. Even then we still had to set a couple of examples when department managers were basically keeping their own list of sick leave, and marking them down for something else.
I thought DrDeth’s posts were a shoe-in for most tone-deaf and mean in this thread. Which is weird, because AFAIK he’s pretty okay. But thanks, D’Anconia. Thanks for being just that much of a tool.
Because the alternative for many is:
- Going to work and making their coworkers sick
- Not going to work, not getting paid, and not being able to pay their bills
- Crime
It’s not only downright cruel in a pre-union, Dickensian way. (Also, whoever wondered if people actually exist under those conditions: YES. THEY DO. THEY TYPICALLY HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO THAN HANG AROUND ON MESSAGE BOARDS. Assuming they have Computers.) It’s also just stupid. It’s straight-up in the business’s own self-interest. It’s also in society’s best interest all around to enforce laws guaranteeing that workers get paid sick leave.
That’s a great idea. Just one question - if I’m out of work for a week with the Flu, and I’m barely scraping by, which should I not pay for:
- My medical bills
- My rent
- My electrical bill
- My water bill
- Food
What fucking century do you live in, dude? Are you completely detached from the reality of working-class America?
I’m lucky enough to live in Germany, which has extensive, legally mandated paid sick leave. I know that if I get sick, I don’t have to worry that I’ll be unable to pay my rent. I’m so glad I don’t live in the USA any more. It sounds like your laws are barbaric and stupid, and the people who live there often doubly so.
Good points. I accept that at a drugstore, etc, those customers are unavoidable, but there are grocery delivery services, etc.
There are these medical professionals called “Doctors”, perhaps they can assist you with your diagnoses?
There are grocery delivery services, at little or no fees.
What, so I can sit in a waiting room for an hour, possibly infecting everyone around me? Especially when the answer will just be “wait a week and see me again if it doesn’t go away”?
Seeing a doctor for what is at worst a common cold is just about the worst possible thing I could think of. Especially since the doctor will expect me to demand useless antibiotics, and prescribe them to make me go away as quickly as possible.
It’s dumb, and a complete waste of everyone’s time and resources, and in particular means the doctor has that much less time to deal with people with actual medical problems.
I would like to amend it to: If you have a contagious disease and you have a company that has sick time and lets you use it: stay the fuck home! No one thinks you are tough for braving it and coming in and hacking on everything, we just think you are an asshole.
Which you are.
If you can’t, like my SO, who gets penalized for skipping work even when sick, then, well, you have to come in.
Sure. There are some asshole cheapshit companies out there.
But you know then, if you do go to work when sick to your asshole cheapshit company, and infect everyone else- some of them may not be able to come into work, thus they wont be able to pay their bills.
Why is it only “Numero uno” For you? Doesnt the welfare of your fellow human being mean anything?
Obviously not to you, despite all the evidence people have given you that your assumptions are bullshit.