Newsflash: You are not indispensable and eventually the work will get done whether you come in with your vile diseases and drip noxious mucous all over it or not. God help us if the bird flu ever does transmit among humans - you people will catch it and carry on with your normal lives until everyone in Spokane is dead. I am the poor schmuck who has to touch everything you drool, cough and sneeze all over at the end of the day. When you came in with the flu last year, you gave it to me and I took it home to my elderly sister who ended up in the emergency room. And she had her flu shot! So fuck you with an orbital sander. May you get curvature of the spine so your nose ends up under your asshole, get explosive perpetual drizzling shits and live for a thousand years.
Can we start a movement whereby people who come to work sick are viciously ostracized, and we abolish the practice of shaking hands as well? I ain’t no germophobe - I just hate getting sick from someone else’s bugs that they just coughed into their hand and then wiped off on mine.
Hey! It must be autumn - I just spotted the first stay-at-home-you-sicko thread of the season!
(For what it’s worth, I agree with you and I sympathize with parents of tots saving their sick days for when their kids are sick and can’t go to day care. Someday when my immune system is better, I’m going to start a chain of sick-but-not-horridly-so daycare centers.)
Where I work, in Japan, you are only allowed to take sick days if you are actually dying of cancer. Even then, you better grovel and apologize or you will be taking vacation days for your next chemo appointment. I come to school any time I am capable of walking, and take a certain mean pleasure in spreading my germs to all of these workaholics. Yes, I am a little bitter.
I find myself saying the same thing in all of these threads, but…
I don’t disagree with the OP in principle. I’d vastly prefer to stay home when I get sick. I don’t drag my miserable contagious self into the office for the joy of it, or because I think that I’m just that important. I do it because at the end of the year, when they do your performance review and count up your sick days, they don’t thank you for keeping your germy self home.
I had a weird situation a few weeks ago. I was sick enough to call in sick, which I really only do when it’s completely necessary, but I had just started a new job. Who the hell calls in sick on their second or third day? No one who wants to keep that job, that’s for sure. Yet, of course, my new coworkers hated me for bringing germs in. It was a completely no-win situation. The best that I could manage was to surround myself with Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer and to explain to people that they could welcome me to the company with a wave rather than a hand-shake.
Right, that’s the problem. Most employers don’t look at it that way. Mostly because most employers are a bunch of imbeciles.
So what ends up happening is that every sick schmuck tries to be a “hero” in the eyes of the imbecilic employer. We have people dragging their diseased, fevered, yellow eyed selfs in to work only to puke or almost pass out 15 minutes after they get in, but not before going to everyone’s office to let them know how bad they feel (and to spread their germs around). THEN they go home. But dare I call in sick from home, trying to keep my germs to myself, and I’ll be getting incredulous looks all next day.
And the gods forbid I decide to leave early one day because I’m coming down with something, because then I’M the one being ostracized as everyone makes a point of telling me how “Suzie made it to work” nevermind that she is barely getting anything done and is barely getting by her miserable snot ridden day, accomplishing nothing, except perhaps getting all of us sick.
So I hereby turn this pitting around and aim it squarely at these stupid attitudes in the workplace and the moron employers who encourage them.
I have a crap immune system, no doubt about it. There’s nothing I can do about it other than to try to generally take care of myself.
I hereby add to the pitting the two separate managers who warned me that they were being generous by not doing anything about the amount of sick days I was taking, despite my not being out of sick days.
Just another person agreeing with the sentiment. My boss sends us home whenever we are sick, no problem, but my SO’s office - well, last year, on Valentine’s Day, we got three feet of snow. Three feet, in ONE DAY. Our cars were buried past the wheel well. I took the day off. He eventually dug out and got in around 10:30 am or so.
They penalized people who did not come in.
They penalize you for anything. They’re assholes, and so my poor guy has to go in when he is sick as a dog.
Me too!! If I call off, that means two or three of my employees get a day off, sans pay. Hardly sounds fair, but my office manager says it is an economic necessity. Plus, I’d rather work sick, then take time off when I feel good to go kayaking!!!
I practice good hygiene, trying to avoid an epidemic.
Another ditto here. When I had strep last time, I got a shot so I wouldn’t have to miss as much work (shots mean you’re able to go back after 24 hours, pills you have to miss 48), and my boss threw a tantrum that my doctor would not let me come in and infect everyone the next day.
I don’t live in Japan, but I do work in a call center, and you bet your ass that if you take any of your sick or vacation time, you will get an ass-chewing for it. Meanwhile, the ugly bitch that sits across the way is out every other Monday or Friday (always a Monday or Friday) and still has a job, how that works, I don’t fucking know. Best part? She calls out sick but comes in the next day with her hair and nails did. Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker, my daughter called to say she was coughing so hard she was coughing up blood and my cunt of a boss said “do you really think it’s an emergency? Can’t she just see the school nurse?” No, you fucking ass-crumb, it is and emergency, and there isn’t a school nurse. WTF? There weren’t school nurses when I was in school 20 years ago, you think they figured out how to pull money out of their asses and install them now, think again.
So, while I agree with the OP, I will point out that I am at work every fucking day, no matter how sick I am, because if I am not here, the cunt will lose her fucking shit. And I really do not want to go to jail right now for strangling her with a fucking pull-bow.
Lysol is my friend. I have a cow orker who is coughing and sneezing ALL THE TIME. I’m not so worried about me, but if I take anything home to my children, my daughter’s blood glucose numbers will be all over the place. And, if she develops ketones, she could end up in the hospital.
A few decades ago I worked for a health care foundation. When I was hired I asked about sick days. Policy was, if you are sick, stay home. If your children are sick, stay home as needed. When you are well, come back. If you appear to be abusing the policy, or if you are in such poor health that you cannot do your job, perhaps you should go on disability. My guess was that they probably had fewer total sick days among all staff than most places.
I came in an hour early this morning, 'cause I had a training class… I felt just fine.
Then, about an hour into the class, I suddenly felt like I was going to vomit. Several times I nearly bolted to the bathroom, but after an hour or so the nausea went away. Then I got chills and couldn’t stop shivering for a couple of hours, then a nasty-ass headache.
After the class was over I was almost sure that I was going to go find my supervisor and tell him I was going home, but he was in a meeting.
Ugh. 3 hours to go… at least the shivering stopped.
If I feel like this tomorrow, I’ll definitely be staying home.
I work in a monitoring station for alarms, and thank all the higher powers my bosses have the sense to tell people to stay home when they are sick. There are no sick days, so you either use a vacation day or you don’t get paid. There is only one employee who takes advantage of this - and no one wants to work with her anyway so they would rather work short staffed than have her come in. I’ve been there a year this month and have called in twice; once with a nasty sore throat and once with food poisoning.
I am glad there are a few sensible employers out there. I’m sorry there are only a few.
It sounds like we should be pitting idiotic employers more than employees. It looks like another example of short-sightedness - we’d rather have all of our employees come in sick and infect everyone, than have employees decided for themselves when they are too sick to come in to work, take a day or two to get healthy again, and not infect everyone else.
