The problem is, I’m kind of plagued with chronic feeling-badness, when there is not any obvious cause. Stomach upset, nausea, intense fatigue… I guess it’s psychosomatic, because it usually happens during periods of high stress. I also have chronic reproductive and digestive problems. When I’m feeling like that, I generally stay home. I’d say half of the days I miss are due to depression causing physical symptoms of illness, or chronic illness interacting negatively with depression. I know most employers wouldn’t consider that legitimate, but I do. I have a documented illness, it’s a medical problem, and sometimes it interferes with my ability to function.
No matter the reason, though, I always feel guilty.
This actually reminds me of a time I took vacation days to go home to visit family. I ended up getting the flu and a throat infection and I spent my entire vacation sick at home.
Pretty much what ZipperJJ said - working from home, I literally have to be bed-bound before I call in sick. Even if I’m not working at top efficiency, there’s always testing/simple bug fixes/whatever that can be done if I’m feeling a little under-the-weather. But really, sometimes I find it easier to work if I’m slightly sick. I feel more like sitting in front of the computer more than doing stuff around the house/running errands/playing.
I also can take advantage of the couch in my office and take mini-naps as needed to get me through the day.
It’s been at least a decade since I didn’t have the option to work from home when I wanted, even if I had an office to go to, so I take very few sick days. And the one or two times I’ve gotten REALLY sick - like, stomach flu stuff so bad I couldn’t get out of bed - have been over weekends and holidays. So can really count “sick days” on one hand.
If I feel sick, I don’t go in. Not because of minor tummyaches, colds, etc.; just when I don’t feel well enough to sit in a chair in the office all day. It happens 3-4 times a year at most. Heroics are an empty gesture.
Prior to my current position, my job was such that if someone called in sick, somebody else had to be called in to replace them. I think I took about 20 hours of sick leave in 5 years…and for some reason, it seemed like I was their ‘go to’ when somebody else called in sick. So spent many a day (or night) at work with a fever, coughing up a lung, etc. so as not to be ‘that guy.’
When I changed jobs it wasn’t as big a deal to be gone, since I am less mission critical and there are already backups in place. Still took me a while to get used to calling in, I felt so guilty.
Now, however, I have found a happy medium. If I feel I am contagious, have a fever, or am going to be in the bathroom a lot, I don’t go to work.
If I think it will plain look bad (Monday or Friday as someone else mentioned) I will try to make it at least part of the day.
Some days if I just have a cold or allergies, and feel like crap but I’m not ‘sick’, I’ll stay home if I don’t have anything pressing to do. I still don’t use much sick leave.
When I was a kid, the rule was that I had to be throwing up or have a temperature over 100 to stay home. I applied this when I worked, too. It was a desk job and I had my own cubicle and few meetings to attend, so I wasn’t very worried about being contagious when I had colds.
I took an average of one sick day a year in the four years I worked that job, three of them in the first year before they fired a guy who was always in bad health and got the rest of us sick.
Fever, vomiting, or extreme pain. It annoys me that some people act like it’s a badge of courage to come to work even though they’re sick, thus infecting everyone else in the office. Yet we all do it because we feel guilty for calling in and are generally given crap about it when we do. The last time I called in, I was running a 102 temp for two days and could not get off the couch. When I came back, my boss said, “So, did you just have a cold?” Bite me, buddy.
I recently was off for a morning with a migraine. When I came in in the afternoon the boss made all kinds of insinuations that a migraine is a stock excuse and taking just the morning off is suspicious.
It was only the first time I have been off sick and I’ve previously come to work with colds and the like. Now I know my boss is a dick I won’t feel at all guilty about taking as much time as I need next time.
I have never called off sick at my current job (almost five years), but twice I have called my boss and told her I had a migraine and was unable to drive and so would work at home. Many more times I have worked with migraines that were bad enough I could have called off but, like Eve, if I call off, I lose a vacation day. They constantly tell us that if we’re sick we should call off, but then they penalize us if we do. I work in an isolated office and see no one, talk to no one, can infect no one, so if I have a cold it just doesn’t matter.
In my last job (25 years), I went more than 15 years before I had a sick day, and at the end I think I had 3.5 days. Two days I was in the hospital, one with bronchitis, and one day I went home in the afternoon with a migraine. I might have the details wrong.
I did go to my boss (one of the reasonable bosses, and I had a number of the other kind) and ask “Look, I get migraines sometimes, and what would you rather me do? I can call off and get no work done, and someone will have to cover for me and close out and change schedules, or I can come in and work at a little slower pace, and maybe have the light dimmed over my desk, and ask you to maybe tell the chimps to keep the racket down, but I will work steadily and get it done.” She picked Option 2 and said “Do what you can and go home if you need to.” So I did.
I have like 70+ sick days accumulated. If I have a cold, I stay home. Why infect everyone? If I come down with it over the weekend, I’ll at least drag my ass in on monday morning so everyone KNOWS I am sick and not just taking an extended weekend, but then I stay home guilt-free.
I just stay home for a couple of days, and it’s not as though I’m really enjoying my time, even if it’s just a cold.
That’s why I go to work sick. I would not enjoy the day at home anymore than I’d enjoy the day at work. I take days off when I feel great, and enjoy the time off.
I have to admit that this is what I usually do too. Sick Days are mostly just last minute vacation days for me, or “mental health days” as some like to call them.
I did have to call out this past Monday though w/ some nasty food poisoning. Couldn’t put myself on a train to work with all the shitting I was doing every 10-15 minutes.
I was told by my boss that I have to get special permission to use holiday days as sick days (you get paid less for sick days here in Sweden) so as to stop employees being coerced into using holidays for sickness.
I had to do it once when I had an operation and the doctor refused to write me off sick another week, despite me having an infected wound and feeling like shit. It took quite a lot to convince the powers that be at work.
If I need to be in close proximity to a bathroom, I call in. If I don’t feel like it would be safe to drive, I call in.
In either case, I monitor my email and voicemail and try to at least get the important things done (which is harder when I am not in the office but not impossible).
Luckily, I work with a great team and we all have each other’s back. Makes for a great work/life balance.
I’ll go in laryngitis, since I usually feel fine otherwise and don’t have to talk.
Whether or not there’s anything important I have to do is usually the deciding factor. I’m more likely to go in for a bit and leave early than I am to call in sick.
I work from home two days a week, and my job is pretty low-stress even in the office. Plus, I take public transit, so I don’t need to worry about driving.
It takes rather a lot for me to consider myself too sick to work; basically, I need to be sneezing or coughing enough that I’m worried I might give something to my co-workers, and feel sick enough that this seems like a serious problem.
