Is it wrong to use paid "sick days" as vacation days from work when not sick?

[boytyperanma]

These days working for my self I don’t have sick days, just time I’m losing money. When I have people working for me they are part time or temp help and aren’t offered sick time.

I had no issues with employees using sick days for whatever they wanted, however if they used up their balance, they had no leeway for when they were actually sick. Calling in sick with no remaining sick days was an unexcused absence. A few of those and you’re getting fired. Having that opinion openly encouraged people to use their sick days more wisely.

I had sick/personal days. They rolled over. I was paid for all of them when I parted ways. Getting paid for 240 hours at my final and highest pay was kinda sweet. I was in a perpetually understaffed departments for 6 years so in the rare event I was sick I always ended up making up the missed hours somewhere else in the week. Vacation time expired at the end of the year for multiple of those years my manager agreed to let me put in for the vacation time and work that week, effectively giving me double pay.

Typing that out and looking back on it boy was that miserable, I would have been much better just having some personal time.

[No_umlaut_for_U]

@Merneith

I’ve never in my life heard of any employer suing an employee because the employee took a sick day when they weren’t really sick. I can’t even imagine them winning that suit - and not because “everybody does it”, but because it’s not the company’s place to decide if someone qualifies is “really sick”. Employers are not entitled to demand the details of their employees medical records. They have no right to sit in judgement of what qualifies as “sick.”

They don’t sue, they fire.

[Leaffan]

I gotta say, I’m with Mangetout on this one. I don’t take sick days unless I’m sick.

[Omniscient]

@Leaffan

I gotta say, I’m with Mangetout on this one. I don’t take sick days unless I’m sick.

I don’t think you guys have any real understanding of what the adversarial work culture is in the US.

[Mangetout]

@Omniscient

I don’t think you guys have any real understanding of what the adversarial work culture is in the US.

True. I remember being surprised at it more than once on this very board in threads such as these, but I still don’t think I get it.

[SciFiSam]

I’d say it’s OK most of the time because it probably will help your productivity in the long run. It could stop that cold from really getting hold of you (and your colleagues) because you took day off for a mild sniffle, stop you burning out, give you a light at the end of the tunnel if you’re on a really busy project working stupid hours and you know you’ll need to rest for longer than a weekend at the end of it.

It’s not OK if you take an unessential sick leave day at the busiest time of year or when it will really cause problems for your colleagues, like if they really are horribly ill.

@Dung_Beetle

Oh no. I’m going to work that day.

Excellent username/post combo, well done.

@Mangetout

That may be true. I’m in the UK and I currently get 26 days paid leave per year, plus 5 or 6 bank holidays, plus the opportunity to earn some extra days off via flex and lieu hours worked. I don’t know what the deal is for sick leave (I could look it up, I guess). I don’t feel the need to take sick days as if they were leave, although there are those that do.

See, when I read your post I thought that you might well not think that way if you only had 10 paid days’ annual leave plus only 5 days’ sick time.

You’re working in a culture where 28 days’ annual leave is the legal *minimum]/i] for the average 5-day-a-week employee, and where companies don’t specify the number of days per year you’re allowed to be sick - and most salaried employees are paid for time off sick up to a limit far beyond 5 days, at which point statutory sick pay (paid by the state) would kick in anyway.

It’s easy to be pious about not calling in sick if you have a lot more vacation time to use and a lot more leeway for the times when you’re really ill.

[HazelNutCoffee]

@rachelellogram

The US works too fucking hard.
“Americans, on average, work 350 hours more each year than Europeans. That’s 9 weeks of labor.”
“…average working hours in the United States rose nearly 12 percent between 1973 and 2000.”

(And back in 1973 you could support an entire family on a single blue-collar income. Try that today)

“In France, for example, national law guarantees workers 11 public holidays, a minimum of five weeks paid vacation, and a 35-hour work week.”

Compared to places like France, everyone works too hard. OECD stats show that in 2008, Koreans worked an average of 2256 hours a year, while Americans worked 1796. So from where we’re standing you guys are looking a bit lazy.

As a freelance instructor working full time hours (our school is actually currently being sued for this) I never got any paid vacation days. We could take unpaid sick days but the academy is super stingy about this. There’s a famous story about an instructor who was in an ambulance and the manager demanded that she get the ambulance to turn around and bring her to work. But because taking sick days means the burden falls on another instructor who has to come in to work on their day off, instructors rarely call in sick unless they are truly incapable of standing on their own two feet for 3-6 hours that day.

[Bricker]

@Merneith

I’ve never in my life heard of any employer suing an employee because the employee took a sick day when they weren’t really sick. I can’t even imagine them winning that suit - and not because “everybody does it”, but because it’s not the company’s place to decide if someone qualifies is “really sick”. Employers are not entitled to demand the details of their employees medical records. They have no right to sit in judgement of what qualifies as “sick.”

They may legally require a doctor’s certification that you were too ill to work.

See, for example, Smith v. CallTech Communications, LLC, No. 2:07-cv-144, Dist. Court, SD Ohio 2009, U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48518 (June 10, 2009):

At issue is CallTech’s FMLA intermittent leave policy of requiring a note from a physician verifying that every instance of absence, tardiness or early departure was directly related to the employee’s medical condition that is on file. Under this policy, an employee eligible for intermittent leave was not actually required to see a doctor each time leave was taken; the doctor could go back and verify several absences in a single note.
.
.
.

CallTech was clearly entitled to some form of medical documentation for Ms. Smith’s absences even though she had been approved for intermittent FMLA leave for her depression and had verbally informed her supervisor that her absences were related to this condition. . . While CallTech may not have been required to give Ms. Smith fifteen days to comply with its request, it did have to provide her a reasonable amount of time under the exigencies of the situation to obtain any notes from her doctor.

[Omniscient]

@HazelNutCoffee

Compared to places like France, everyone works too hard. OECD stats show that in 2008, Koreans worked an average of 2256 hours a year, while Americans worked 1796. So from where we’re standing you guys are looking a bit lazy.

As a freelance instructor working full time hours (our school is actually currently being sued for this) I never got any paid vacation days. We could take unpaid sick days but the academy is super stingy about this. There’s a famous story about an instructor who was in an ambulance and the manager demanded that she get the ambulance to turn around and bring her to work. But because taking sick days means the burden falls on another instructor who has to come in to work on their day off, instructors rarely call in sick unless they are truly incapable of standing on their own two feet for 3-6 hours that day.

I’d love to know how those stats work. That number for the US only works out to 34.5 hours per week. Since the standard work week for a full time employee is 40 hours and it’s becoming the norm that salaried employees work more than that and work from home on weekends I’m suspicious of the methodology.

I assume that it factors in the part time workers to bring the average down, perhaps the US has a higher proportion of part time workers than other countries.

[SciFiSam]

@Omniscient

I’d love to know how those stats work. That number for the US only works out to 34.5 hours per week. Since the standard work week for a full time employee is 40 hours and it’s becoming the norm that salaried employees work more than that and work from home on weekends I’m suspicious of the methodology.

I assume that it factors in the part time workers to bring the average down, perhaps the US has a higher proportion of part time workers than other countries.

They’re not including breaks as working hours.

[HazelNutCoffee]

The US is still above the OECD average (1764 hours a year).

[Duckster]

@HazelNutCoffee

The US is still above the OECD average (1764 hours a year).

I would even think the US has OCD when it comes to not taking days off, be it sick or vacation days.

For those who think taking a mental health day is wrong, why? Mental health days are wellness days that help reduce the chances for critical and life-threatening illnesses. How much will your employer support you when the strict attitude to sick and vacation days causes a heart attack? Watch those sick days dry up in a pinch. Then what? Vacation days gone like that. Then what?

When an employer offers leave benefits, then attaches various strings to using those benefits through archaic rules and management coercion, your employer isn’t offering benefits on your behalf. Those are artificial benefits to keep their expenses down, profits up, and you expendable. Guilt trip to the max.

[Mangetout]

@SciFiSam

See, when I read your post I thought that you might well not think that way if you only had 10 paid days’ annual leave plus only 5 days’ sick time.

You’re working in a culture where 28 days’ annual leave is the legal *minimum]/i] for the average 5-day-a-week employee, and where companies don’t specify the number of days per year you’re allowed to be sick - and most salaried employees are paid for time off sick up to a limit far beyond 5 days, at which point statutory sick pay (paid by the state) would kick in anyway.

It’s easy to be pious about not calling in sick if you have a lot more vacation time to use and a lot more leeway for the times when you’re really ill.

I don’t disagree with any particular.point, it’s just that it doesn’t feel like piety. The prevailing culture just means that I can have a relationship with my employer that includes a measure of trust and mutual goodwill. In practice, this means I actually put in many more hours than I am contracted to do, and tolerate the fact that sometimes, i arrange my life to fit around necessities of work.
(For example when I’m booking a single day off for personal whateverness, I’ll slot it into my calendar on a day where I don’t have any meetings or events scheduled - I could quite legitimately just decline or reschedule the work obligations, if I wanted to)

And it’s worth reiterating that within the prevailing culture here, there are many that still choose to take a deeply hostile and adversarial stance against their employer- and not just because their employer provokes it by twisting the regs- although that also happens.

I guess my surprise is not so much that people pull sickies, it’s at the way they rationalise that choice.

[Maeglin]

@HazelNutCoffee

Compared to places like France, everyone works too hard. OECD stats show that in 2008, Koreans worked an average of 2256 hours a year, while Americans worked 1796. So from where we’re standing you guys are looking a bit lazy.

Korea has one of the lowest levels of labor productivity in the OECD. While Koreans apparently spend more time in the office, the appear to be under somewhat less pressure to actually produce anything of value.

[PunditLisa]

Here’s the deal. You come in when you’re supposed to, work hard, meet deadlines, do outstanding work, and the boss is going to be as lenient as he can when it comes to time off. You schlep off and eventually it’s going to catch up with you. Either you’ll be looking for work somewhere else, or everyone else will be promoted ahead of you.

FYI, here are things that I’ve witnessed first hand that will get definitely you noticed (in a negative way):

*Calling in sick during the probationary period. I wouldn’t call in sick unless I was actively dying within the first 6 months of employment. I’d rather go in and be told to go home vs. calling in sick. There is nothing that raises eyebrows higher than calling in sick too soon.

*Routinely maxing out your sick days.

*Routinely calling in sick on Fridays, Mondays, or before/after a holiday. (Yes, these things are routinely tracked. And no amount of acting skill is going to mask the trend.)

*Calling in sick to someone who is not your direct manager. Don’t call your manager’s assistant or your neighbor to report your absence. Talk to your manager directly.

*Having your spouse/roommate/mom call in sick for you.

*Calling in sick only on days when your manager is out.

*Calling in sick and arriving the next work day with a glorious tan.

*Calling in sick and then forgetting that you were supposed to be sick by telling tales about your awesome weekend.

[RedBloom]

We get 184 hours per year of PTO. You get that amount upon starting the job, you don’t even have to accrue it. Anything you don’t use is rolled over to the next year. I’m so thankful for this job, that I don’t abuse it. Most of my PTO is taken for my kids when they are sick or need to go to the dr., or when I have a dr. appt. I rarely take sick days or vacation. I have so much accrued now that I’m taking off a few Fridays through the summer now. It’s nice because you don’t owe anyone an explanation, if you need a mental health day or your car broke down or something unexpected came up, you can take the time off with no guilt or resentment.

[JohnT]

@Rigamarole

I recently started a shiny new corporate job, which incidentally is the first time I’ve been paid on salary and not by the hour (yay!). The company handbook allows for some mandated holidays (like Christmas, Labor Day, etc.), 10 vacation days/year, and 5 paid sick days which can not be accumulated from year to year. I happen to be of pretty sound constitution and rarely get sick - even when I do it’s fairly minor and I tend to work anyway.

I feel like if I claim those sick days when I’m not actually sick it would be kind of “playing hookey” and would feel wrong, yet I’d also feel like they were wasted if I didn’t use them. What is the typical rule of thumb here?

I completely disagree with TriPolar’s advice (post #2).

IMHO, you have a salary+benefits package, which includes:

$ in salary
X in vacation days
Y in sick days
(and etc)

Yes, you should keep your sick days for those times in which you are legitimately sick, but if you’re coming up on the time in which you will lose them, you are completely within your rights to use your sick days. Why? Because it’s part of your compensation.

[TriPolar]

@JohnT

I completely disagree with TriPolar’s advice (post #2).

IMHO, you have a salary+benefits package, which includes:

$ in salary
X in vacation days
Y in sick days
(and etc)

Yes, you should keep your sick days for those times in which you are legitimately sick, but if you’re coming up on the time in which you will lose them, you are completely within your rights to use your sick days. Why? Because it’s part of your compensation.

First of all, I didn’t offer any advice in post#2.

Secondly, sick days are not part of your compensation unless so specified. If they were, any employer who didn’t compensate you for unused sick days would be in violation of the law (in most states anyway), and you could sue for the money.

Finally, it’s wrong. If sick days are specified as being for the purpose of actual illness, then calling in sick when you are not is lying, and accepting pay for those days is stealing. No other wrong committed by the employer or anyone else or extra hours you worked some other time will change that.

I think these policies are stupid. Sick days should be wrapped up with all other time off and treated as compensation or unpaid. There are plenty of other wrongs done by employers and employees that are more significant. But the difference between right and wrong is plain as day and night in a simple case like this.

[Agent_Foxtrot]

@Hello_Again

Do you live in the United States? 10 day is typical for new hires in the US. it usually bumps up after X# of years with the company.

Yes, I live in the U.S., and I’ve never worked a permanent full-time job that has offered less than two weeks vacation per year starting. And I work in the healthcare industry, which isn’t exactly known for being generous with time off.

Edit: I wish more companies would move to the PTO system instead of the sick/personal/vacation leave system. The latter seems like it’s still done only because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

[PunditLisa]

@Agent_Foxtrot

Edit: I wish more companies would move to the PTO system instead of the sick/personal/vacation leave system. The latter seems like it’s still done only because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

My company, a Fortune 25 company, no longer has a stated sick day policy. It just states that the expectation is that you will report to work every day but the company recognizes that there are times when an employee is too ill to work, blah blah blah. And that abuses will be dealt with on an individual basis. This gives flexibility for someone who’s battling cancer, for instance, to take off several days per month around chemo time, without eating into her vacation. It also stops employees from thinking that they’re entitled to take 7 days off without repercussion, and by gawd, that’s what they’re going to take!

It’s also worth noting that after 5 consecutive days, short-term DSA kicks in and after 21 consecutive days long-term DSA kicks in. (I could be wrong on the number of days, but it’s close to that.)