Illness in offices of large groups of poeple.

I had a nice boss who took the view that it was better to have an employee off for a day or two sick so that they didn’t come in and give it to a few people who’d take a day off in turn.

I’m very lucky. I have a job where I am ahead of my work most of the time so if I have a head ache in the morning I can call in sick and there will be no bad consequences for my coworkers or the customer.

My brother on the other hand is in the opposite condition. He works for a really small company of maybe 10 people and he and one other coworker take all the customers orders and processing stuff. So if he has to take a day off the other nine people have to do extra work to cover for it. Although his boss is really cool and actually wants people to stay home when sick becuase it is better one person is out for a couple days than everyone get sick and the whole company shuts down for a couple of days.

This thread reminds me of the story my supervisor told about one week where the entire department got the flu except 2 people. Being a security department, someone HAS to be there at all times. Those two guys worked about 120 hours straight. They brought in sleeping bags and cots, and took turns sleeping every-other night. They said the paycheck was good, but it did cause the company to institude some new policies on how many hours a person can work.

Of course they could just be bull-shitting me on the hours, but I can confirm it was at least 2 days.

I’ve gotten to where unless I am unable to get out of bed or am headed to the ER I go to work and let my boss tell me to go home. That’s what I did yesterday, by 10 am I was told to go home and go to bed.

This is my company’s policy. In my opinion, it’s a very shrewd one. I think people, on average, take less sick time when it’s uncapped. I don’t even remember the last time I stayed home sick. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the last six months. If we were given a quota for the year, I bet people would be a lot more cavalier about staying home when they just didn’t feel like it.

And when I do take a day or two off to recover from illness, I don’t feel stressed about it. It’s a win-win.