Personally, I average once every two or three months…probably closer to once every two months. 75% of the time I’m either not sick at all or I have a very minor cold/allergy/stomach ache that serves as a convenient pretext. The times I fake it’s most often because I’m so behind in some aspect of my personal life that I just need a day at home to catch up; very, very occasionally I just want a day to stay home, order in Chinese, and watch TV all day.
For the record, my job does not allow me “personal days” - you’re either sick, or your using a vacation day. (There’s a little more leeway if you occasionally have to leave an hour early or something, but I’ve almost never used this.) Luckily, they also don’t require a doctor’s visit if you call in sick. I don’t think faking being sick is justified, but I also can’t honestly say I feel too guilty about it. I pay attention to how often the other employees at my level call in sick, and make sure I stay within the average or better-than-average range.
About once a year, when I’m literally too wonked out to do any productive work. Since I can work from home (Software Engineer), I will do that occasionally if I’m waiting for a technician, etc., but also in cases where I’m sick but capable of working; it’s company policy that if one thinks they may be contagious then they are encouraged – nay, required – to work from home that day. I’m not counting those days as “calling in” since I am working… Also, those happen maybe another couple, three time a year – it’s not like I work from home a day every week or something.
ETA: To the second part of the OP – I will never call in sick if I’m not. If I’m working from home because I need to be home for some reason, I’ll just state I’m working from home. If I actually take a day off working (not as a day of vacation) then yes, I really am too sick to think straight.
In my job, we can take vacation days or hours as we need to, as long as the project you’re working on allows it. If you call in sick, you had better be sick; most companies emply an agengy that checks up if people that are sick more then a couple days really are sick, and they require a doctor’s notice.
But then, we in the Netherlands have a lot more vacation days then you guys. This year, we have 42 days; so, 8 full weeks. Most companies offer up to 5 or 6 weeks.
Yeah…my first year at my current job I got 5. 5 days, that is. Now that I’ve been there over a year, I think (?) I get 10, though no one seems completely sure.
If I’m missing work, it means I’m too sick to work. I’ve been known to give meetings while in the middle of an attack of something which apparently isn’t MS but happens to share its symptoms (so I use it as shorthand).
I missed a lot of days of school in 4th grade (repeated tonsillitis) and one in 12th grade. I missed one class last semester due to a bad flu and one yesterday due to having to wait for a courier who never showed up. I’ve been gone home several times when I got the MS-like symptoms while already at work.
I’m one of those weirdos who tend to get sick on weekends :smack: Runs in the family, apparently, it’s as if our immune system says “ok, I can get sick now, right, RIGHT? You don’t have any work, right? OK, I am totally getting sick!”
I picked once every 6 months. But I only take sick days when I am indeed sick. Sometimes I’ve gone for a couple of years without using one, and sometimes I’ve been sick for 2 or 3 days in a row.
You folks in the rest of the world (outside Canada and the US) have an enviable amount of vacation time.
No, mostly what we have is an enviable amount of sick days. In most jobs, if we miss a day at work due to being sick, we don’t miss pay. Or if it’s a week, or even two years.
I get sick enough to actually stay home maybe one day a year, and it’s usually just that I feel completely miserable in the morning with fever, chills, etc., but by the afternoon I feel well enough that I could really go to the office, but I don’t. In the last 10 years in this career there have been maybe 2 or 3 days that I was actually completely healthy, but wiped out/exhausted, so I called in sick and played hooky. It’s extremely rare, though.
We get something like five sick days a year and you can accrue up to 10, which just keep carrying over from year to year. I’m maxed out at 10 because I never use them.
Then you have both an enviable amount of sick days and vacation time. Between this and Maastricht’s 8 weeks…damn, why is it so hard to emigrate to EU countries?
I work at a hospital - I’m not medical, but we’re open every weekday the hospital is open, so we don’t get holidays & sick time separate from vacation - if I take a day off, it comes out of my vacation, no matter what it’s for. So if I call in sick, I’m actually sick.
In my previous job, I had four sick days in 25 years. In my current job, I have no sick days in 2.5 years, and I am afraid to call off sick for fear of retribution.
Man, I wish the US would finally get on this bandwagon.
I generally take a day or two for every two years so I picked one a year. My company is one of those that doesn’t separate vacation and sick days so it’s technically the same if I wake up one day and just don’t feel like working as if I’m laid out with the flu.
Excluding most recent year (no FT job, therefore question irrelevant), I’m in very good health and I do not abuse sick days. I rounded up to once per year, “never” is not correct but I don’t get sick every year either. On the rare occasions when I do get sick it’s likely to be several concurrent sick days.
I have the good fortune to really enjoy what they pay me for, I have no dislike for being at work.
This seems to be the direction my company wants to take. You get x amount of sick days per year but don’t you dare use them. I’m pretty sure the lost production from low morale has more than made up for the extra time they have people in the building. The managers I’ve worked for aren’t known for wise decision making.
On average I use about three a year although last year I had to use five because I hurt my back.
I will occasionally get these vicious colds that knock me out for three days straight. Since I’m working weekends right now when there is no one to cover for me, I’m less stingy about taking sick days on Fridays than I used to be. Now I’ll call in on Friday, then sleep and fluidate all day in an effort to be marginally useful on Saturday and Sunday. When I worked a regular Mon-Fri shift I’d be more likely to just try and work through it and then crash on the weekends.
In my younger, wilder days, I have called in hung over, though it’s been at least 6 years since I’ve been dumb enough to put myself in that position. I’ve also been known to take a mental health day every 3 or 4 months - the enviroment at my previous employer was so toxic that sometimes I really just needed to not be there for a day in the middle of the week. I haven’t needed to do that in the last year since changing jobs.
