Can you respectfully request the bacteria-bag in question not come to close? You know, by saying something like “Get your god-damned disease-ridden soon-to-be carcass out of my cube, you fucking virus-incubator!!!”
Perhaps you could indicate that you would rather comminicate with them via telephone or email, or even cans-n-string by telling them “So help me God, if you come within 10 feet of me, I’ll grab every sharp item I can lay my hands on and fucking gut you like a lake trout, you walking bag of pus!!!”
Or, if those are too direct, hose the bastard down with lysol when he gets too close. Perhaps he’ll get the message that, when used properly, sick days are as much for every one else as they are for him.
If I am not mistaken, this is actionable. It is certainly bad faith for a company to offer benefits and then intimidate employees into not using them. I would definately go over this dweeb’s head.
I need to clarify a little bit. My husband is a sub-contractor for one of the Big Three automotive companies. His employer is actually a contract agency and they are the ones who give him the sick/vacation days, insurance, etc. The contract agency has no problem with him taking sick days off. It is the client who is refusing to allow him to take sick days off. Basically, if he doesn’t follow the client’s rules, then they have a right to cancel the contract. So we don’t really know what he can do about it. I told him to contact the HR Department at the contract agency and find out how he is supposed to handle this. On the plus side though, the contract agency told him at the beginning of his employment that he could transfer to another client site after one year if he chose too. So he really only has to put up with this butthead supervisor for another six months, then he can request a transfer to another location.
Wow. After reading through this thread, it’s clear that I have it pretty good. My employment experiences so far have comprised one place that didn’t track time off, much less care about it; one place that tracked it but didn’t care (i.e., if you went over your allotted time, they still paid you fully); and my current place, which both tracks and cares, but doesn’t expect its employees to be healthy 365 days a year (and trusts them not to lie about it).
I wouldn’t rag on people who had no choice but to come to work. I understand that that’s the way it goes, sometimes. Still, when people do have a choice, and still come in, then I start getting touchy about it. Especially when said people feel no compunction about both complaining of their illness and spreading it around. All 7 people in my department are now ailing. It’s ridiculous.
Umm, I’m a LAB TECH. I have no credentials. Yeah I have my BA in Biology (whoop -de-freaking-do) which means I can flip burgers or be a lab tech.
I just have this vague paranoid notion that I fell asleep in class and mis-heard/remembered this.
I’m not 100% sure what I’ve been dribbling about is right, hence why I tried to call in people who SHOULD know.
PS When filling out my job application I was asked to rate my skills. I say praying that by indicating [1] (learned in school) meant that I vaguely remember hearing about this and maybe did it once. Not, been there done that have the journal article to back it up.
As for you being my daddy, I think I can safely say that anyone who can spell more than 5 consecuative words in a row is my daddy
Once again I have reason to give thanks to the powers that be for giving me a great job.
I get twelve paid sick days a year, I can use them if I’m sick or if someone in my family is sick. Last year I used more sick days to take care of my family than I did for myself.
It pisses me off to no end that our part time staff do not get the same benefits as I do. If I get twelve days off for working 40 a week they should get at least 6 days for twenty.
I don’t want people coming in to work sick because they simply don’t have the option to stay home and get better without losing income.
CRorex, whilst I adore your semi-stream of conciousness style when it comes to rants, it leaves me a touch confused when you are explaining things. Could I just clarify?
Are you saying that if some germbag sneezes on me, any disease I subsequently contract is most likely to not be the disease that actually caused the symptoms leading to the sneeze?
Sorry, I keep trying to explain several things all at the same time.
What I was trying to initially explain was that by the time you are expressing all of those lovely symptoms of your cold (sneezing, wheezing, coughing ect) you are no longer able to pass on the specific virus that infected you (…). For a lot of infections, the virus has already been cleared, or at least mostly neutralized and no longer infecting new cells.
My problem is what I just said above has some things that are not correct. Whatever virus infected you is a series of random mutants derived from the initial exposure. This was the subject a few lectures in a course I took, and it seems logical looking at graphical representations of viral load and immune response over time and based off of delays between infection and viral production. You aren’t really suffering massive cellular damage (enough for you to notice it anyway) until well after initial infection. By this time the immune system has your body and phlem flooded with neutralizing antibodies (more or less). I always thought that the change in the colour and texture of phlem was directly related to increased solute load as antibodies, pathogens and immune cells aggragated. IF that is right, then we are dealing with a spike in the immune response.
There is also the whole what was the amount of virus that you were initially exposed to. The more virus the faster you get sick, and the sicker you get.
However, keep in mind I don’t have any higher level degrees on the subject, hence the call for a PhD to clairify I could be very wrong.
So what I was trying to do, was give a nice little take home message: They may be spewing nastiness but they aren’t really any more contagious than the person in the cubicle next to yours who isn’t sick.
Providing thought provoking discussion on 3 hrs of sleep a night.
In support of CRorex (although he probably doesn’t need/want a layperson’s support), I’ve always heard that infections tend to be most contagious before and just after the apparition of symptoms. Most infections have approximate periods in which they are contagious. For example, many infections which involve fever are contagious until the fever disappears. The symptoms usually drag on for a bit, but during this period the patient is not “shedding virus”. The contagious period for influenza, for example, is about a week. There is a 1-4 day incubation period to take into consideration as well. So in most cases, a person who has been suffering from the symptoms of influenza for more than a few days is probably no longer contagious. However, children and immunocompromised persons can shed virus for 2-3 weeks.
The basic point is that you often catch colds and other infections from people who did not appear to be sick at all (it’s that seemingly-innocent sneeze which gets you). And many people who do appear to be sick are not contagious.
Well, I’d like to post some links but I have a terrible head cold so I think I’m going to go home and rest myself.
Am I missing something? Because the last time I checked, there were these things called “allergies” that:
are NOT contagious
cause people to be pretty sick, sneezing a lot, having sinus headaches, watery eyes, etc., and
exist for long periods of time, if not all the time, so that even if you have exceedingly generous sick benefits you couldn’t take off every time you had an allergy attack.
Where I work, we have a very good policy on sick/vacation/holiday/personal days. But I have allergies (relatively mild), and if I took off every day I was having sneezing fits, I’d be gone more days than I’d be at work, which is likely unacceptable to even the most liberal employer. Not to mention that work would pile up, etcetera.
Allergies could be contagious. Following the theory that allergies are caused by an autoimmune defeciency preexisting due to genetic origins (ie not AIDS) [as opposed to over reactions from an immune system that isn’t challenged enough] then it is possible to can pass them on to your child upon fertalization (I really want to use the phrase “bust a nut” but the only way I can way I can fit it in is this way).
Random Thought 1) Could you genetically infect your child with AIDS if you managed to infect a sperm cell with proviral DNA then fertalized an egg? [Not pleasent but I’m wondering]
I sneeze when I’m not sick/having allergic reaction. You left out my favorite bit of allergies, HISTAMINES!!! (We don’t need no stinkin’ airways!)
Dunno about you, but the last 3 health plans I was part of all had 3-5 dollar co-pays for allergy medication. So i just self medicate liberally.
Ohhh self medicate.
(Reason number 2 why I won’t become a MD… I could get myself Demoral ANY TIME I WANTED!!!)
Mainly, allergy symptoms are usually (unless food related) fairly mild and not much beyond irritating [Ewww]. We’re talking about people who are walking examples of the pre-dead (like undead but you’re alive to not enjoy it). Someone who has allergies won’t be exhaused, turning a strange colour, shaking, ect (unless you ate something you shouldn’t have…)
Personally, its pretty easy to tell when someone is sick or when they have allergies (usually by the annoyed expression and bitching about lack of allergy medication)
)…