I have yet to find a dentist who works Sundays. :dubious:
“Should’ve” my lily-white ass (and almost lily-white teeth). OP, your mental health is as important as your bodily health (they’re not really unrelated, after all) and also: enjoy your shiny new job!
My company gives me over 100 mental health days a year.
Most companies spell out the policy for sick days, otherwise, their is no agreement. If the policy says sick days are for people who are actually ill and have a valid medical reason for not working, then you are stealing if you take a sick day when you are not sick. If your employer doesn’t pay you when you are out sick, you can sue them, and they will lose, and may be subject to further action by the state. If you take a sick day when you are not sick, they could sue you, and they would win. Your excuses wouldn’t work in court, and they don’t change the ethics of the situation either. You agree to the terms when you take the job.
Disclaimer: When I was a young man, I took sick days when I wasn’t sick. Since then I’ve mostly been self-employed and when employed by others it hasn’t been an issue.
My conclusion: Employees and employers contribute to an ‘everybody does it’ environment. That doesn’t make it right, but it certainly diminishes the level of ‘wrongness’ in the practice. If taking a sick day when you are not sick is the worst thing you’ve ever done, you qualify for sainthood.
Mangetout, ‘everybody does it’ doesn’t mean every single person actually does it. Everybody knows that.
I like the way our office does it. We just have ETO, not separate vacation and sick time. (although we do have a separate bank of extended sick leave). I have something like 350 hours of ETO banked right now, I should get on using some before I hit the 500 hour cap.
Before my last job switched to PTO from sick/vacation, I took the following tact:
Vacation time was for items that were planned ahead. This included vacations, scheduled non-medical appointments, and Fridays/Mondays off in order to get a long weekend. Sick time was for things I couldn’t plan. Obviously, the most obvious use would be due to physical illness, but it also included things like, “my car just died on the interstate” and “I think that if I have to go in today, I am going to have a fucking nervous breakdown.” It also included scheduled medical appointments, as per company policy.
Now, if you plan in advance to call in sick, I think that is a little dishonest. But a mental health day? Bah! You don’t have to endeavor to use all of them, but using one or two for an unexpected day off is, IMHO, totally kosher.
Well, I get a whopping 2 weeks of vacation and 4 days of sick time a year, none of which rolls over; it’s pretty easy to use up 4 days on routine medical appointments, even if you don’t get sick. One routine physical one gyno appointment, 2 dental checkups, maybe another appointment with my ortho or something…it adds up, and none of my doctors is anywhere near my office, and I’m not willing to give up any of them (I’ve had the same dental practice ever since I had teeth!).
Luckily, at least my office is pretty flexible about using sick time for other purposes, should we have any left by the end of the year. But suffice it to say that I don’t use sick days if I’m not sick, because then I won’t have any left if I actually am sick. And good thing that we have short-term disability coverage.
I’m allowed to use sick time for visits to the doctor, dentist, etc. I can also use up to half of it for when a family member is sick. Between those two things, and also staying home if I have a cold, I can always use up my sick time (4 days/year) without faking.
It really does mean that. It might not be what you wanted to say, and I suppose I probably guessed you meant most or many people. No matter- what i posted is my sneer to the question.in this thread anyway.
I propose the dictionary definition, where #1 on the list for “sick” can of course refer to “nauseated” or “inclined or likely to vomit”. I mean, I’m happy to take a sick day without drinking that much, but if folks insist I get well and truly sloshed before calling in – drunk or hung over, take your pick – then, uh, yay legalism, or something.
Its your time. It shouldn’t matter to the company how you use it. Do you feel bad if you take a vacation day and stay home? Or have a paid holiday but don’t celebrate it?
If you’re off, it shouldn’t matter why
I work in coporate absence management / leave administration.
First of all, the time off design of having a block of vacation time and a block of paid sick days is losing favor in the corporate world, and for good reason. You are essentially penalizing honest workers who don’t get sick, and encouraging your workforce to call in “sick” when they want a day off, leaving you with an unplanned-for absence.
More and more companies are going to a “PTO” style time off policy (personal time off) in which you get a certain number of paid time off days to use for whatever reason: sickness, vacation, or just for the hell of it. These must be scheduled in advance when possible. That way, a healthy employee gets just as many paid time off days as a sickly employee or one who has to take multiple days off to care for kids or whatever. PTO days may or may not be carried over into the following year; typically there is a limit of the number of carryover days and beyond that it is use-it-or-lose-it.
The company I work for has a system similar to you, but I’m trying to get that changed.
Anyway, using a paid sick day when you’re not sick is definitely dishonest, IMO. But “sick” is pretty vague, and once or twice in my career I’ve called in sick for basically just fatigue.
Also, I should add, rules vary from state to state. Some states require employers to pay out all accrued but unused vacation when an employee leaves the company. Others don’t. Some states have rules about sick paid time and many don’t. So where you live (or where your company is located) has a lot to do with the policies they have set up.
It’s funny, I’m just reading “Metamorphosis” where the main character discovers, on waking up, that he’s been transformed into a giant insect of some unspecified kind. His first worries are that he’s missed his train, and he can’t call in sick, because he’s never called in sick and actually he feels fine so he thinks it would be dishonest.
For the record, if I turn into a cockroach, I’m definitely taking the day off.
Blame companies that won’t allow their employees to take unpaid days off, not the employees themselves. For instance, if you take two unpaid days off at the call center where I work, you’re fired. We have a pretty good amount of PTO available (72 unscheduled PTO hours are allowed per year, or 9 days, plus a decent number of scheduled PTO hours on top of that). UU (unpaid/unscheduled) absences are pretty rare, but it could happen to an unlucky person.
Say someone had an illness in the first part of the year and uses up their 9 unscheduled days of PTO, then has another illness later on that year. They can’t not come into work without getting fired, unless they qualify for disability or FMLA. And since most people have burned through their annual PTO allotment by December, it’s a pretty nasty time of the year to be working in the office (plenty of sick people sniffling and sneezing and such). Smart veteran employees here schedule off a week or 2 or 3 in December to avoid it.
I worked for a corporation that allowed 10 paid sick days per year, if you were sick. But offered nothing to the healthy people who did not miss time. We had a couple of people with either shitty immune systems or poor work ethics who took advantage of all 10 every year.
Then a couple of the managers bought our local part of the corporation to split off into our own private company. The first thing the managers did was say that everyone was getting 10 paid “Health & Wellness” days. You could use them for any health related issue regarding you or your family.
Doctors appointment? Half a wellness day. Kid or wife sick? Take a wellness day. We could use them in half day increments.
Work your ass off and come to work every day all year? Here is a bonus check for your 10 or 8 or whatever remaining days left this year. Go shopping.
They always paid off your unused H&W around the start of December. The decline in sick call-ins and the apparent increase in the health of the general workforce was remarkable.
Paid sick leave is fine, but those who do not use it should be rewarded too, or else you are only rewarding those people who call in sick. Even in a perfect world where the only people who call in sick, are actually sick, the healthy worker who continues to carry the load should be rewarded.
OP here - this is a very interesting discussion. This company I’m working for, although a corporation, is a pretty small one (~80 employees) only 5-6 years old, and the definition of what constitutes sick vs. vacation days isn’t really spelled out explicitly in the documents I’ve received from them so far. I just didn’t want to ask until I’ve been here a bit longer lest I seem too concerned with the wrong things. Eventually I’ll get it clarified but I don’t intend to lie about being sick as I’d feel too guilty.
But my impression working for them so far is a positive one: it’s a fairly relaxed environment and I have quite a lot of freedom in my work (which I actually enjoy! It’s not my dream job but it’s way better than I ever hoped for an entry-level position), so I don’t think it will be much of an issue.
If you have a short-term disability policy, it does not usually kick in until you have been out of work for 5 days. At one point in history, the 5 sick days many people get was intended to help cover the gap until your insurance policy took over paying your salary (or percentage of your salary).
Some companies still view your 5 sick days as part of that policy, and look unkindly at you if you use them for more routine things.
As an HR/Staffing person, I can tell you that I would look slightly askance at someone who was already contemplating usage of the sick days. Typically we would question anyone who used more than 2 unplanned days off in their first 90 days.
I’m wearing my HR hat, so excuse my semi stuck-up-the-butt attitude 
ymmv
The single best member of my team, and probably the best rep in our office overall, used to be my peer. When we had hte same job she was unabashed with me about using sick days as mental health days when she felt the need, and she’s just as unabashed now that I’m her boss. I don’t have a problem with her behavior.
I don’t have a problem with people taking a sick day if they’re not sick. However, don’t pull this on a day when the company is already thinly staffed. I started a pit thread about people calling in sick the day after the Super Bowl. I’d also be pissed about people calling in sick right after a 3 day weekend or if they wake up and see that the stock market is likely to take a huge dump that day (I work at a brokerage firm)
We have different policies depending on the type of employee you are.
Faculty can pretty much do whatever they want, as long as their duties are fulfilled.
Salaried staff earns 1 sick day per month and up to 2 vacation days per year (depends on when you were hired and how long you have been here). You can accrue a total of 24 vacation days before you hit your limit, there is no limit to the amount of sick time you can store up. Back in 2007, I had to have hand surgery and was out for 6 weeks. I applied for short-term disability, which basically means I had to exhaust all my accrued sick and vacation time and I ended up not actually using any STD time, but I still had to “apply” for it because I was using all my sick and vacation time for a medical issue.
Hourly staff accrues PTO. They can use the PTO in any fashion they choose. They have a max of 30 days accrual before it is lost.
I have to check my bank, but I think I have at least 30 days sick stored up and I know I have 24 vacation available. I will ask for a week off and stay home and do nothing rather than lose more vacation time. I typically use maybe 7 sick days a year, if I hadn’t had the surgery, I would have tons of sick time accrued.