Taking a sick day when too hungover to work

In My Humble Opinion
61

That is kinda wacky. Our state retirement is very good for employees; they let you combine your personal and sick days, and give you credit towards your ‘time served’ so to speak.

Dude. My husband has over 200 DAYS of sick leave. With his accumulated sick days and personal days, he gets credit for a year’s worth of employment.

I knew one lady who was postmaster of a dinky little South Mississippi town. She had 2.5 years of accumulated personal & sick days when she retired! She also owned the building the P.O. was in, so she still gets a rent check from Uncle Sam every month.

62

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a sick day for a hangover, mental relaxation or “vision problems,” (I just can’t see going into work today), and I wouldn’t work for a company that did.

That said, I think a bit of discretion is in order. Don’t flaunt that you’re just goofing off and give your boss the old white lie so both of you have plausible deniability in case there’s someone higher up the chain with a stick in their butt.

63

Over the years I’ve seen a number of people writing to “Dear Abby” and similar columns complaining about people who come to work sick, and wondering why they do that. In my own work experience, I’ve found it’s because most managers automatically assume you’re lying if you call in sick. That’s especially annoying for somebody like me who almost never gets sick or calls in to beg off work for any reason - when I do actually get sick its patently obvious from the tone of the manager’s voice that he/she thinks I’m lying. So it’s better to just show up and let the boss see for himself how sick you are and hope he’ll send you home.

As for people being too hungover to come to work … I have little patience with that. I used to be a chronic drunk — as in I got drunk every single night — and I still showed up for work every day and did my job. As a result, when I gave up the drinking I really got tired of coworkers calling in sick because they were hungover. Mainly because their calling in sick always seemed to coincide with my scheduled days off. When you’re a breakfast cook who needs to be to work at 5:30AM, it’s no fun when you’ve stayed up doing whatever until 1:00AM because tomorrow’s your day off and you get to sleep in, and then get awakened by a phone call from the boss at 5:35AM asking you to come to work because the guy who was supposed to work that day called in “sick”.

64

I’m lucky enough to be working for one of those companies that have been listed in the “Best Companies To Work For” for a number of years. If I’m too sick to come in, even if it’s self-inflicted, I don’t come in. They don’t *want *me there in those cases, either because I’ll spread the disease (if I’m actually sick) or because I’m a danger to myself and others (if I’m hung over). Either way, they don’t track sick days or personal days, per se – if they see that a worker isn’t showing up regularly, it will be reflected on their annual salary review or it might eventually lead to a dismissal.

In my four-plus years in this company, I took a week off at one point to help my wife attend to her father’s funeral arrangements, with the simple understanding that I return to work when everything was finished, but with no specific timeline and with need to produce a death certificate or whatever. Likewise, when I wound up having unexpected gall bladder surgery earlier this year, the simple understanding was “when you are ready to come back, you come back, but don’t push yourself.”

I really appreciate this approach, as do most of my co-workers, because the company recognizes that employees who don’t feel that their personal issues are under constant scrutiny will remain more loyal and dedicated, as a general rule. Do right by the staff and they’ll do right by the company.

65

You know you could reduce your chances of catching communicable diseases by staying inside and limiting interactions with other people, right? You could reduce your chances of broken limbs by moving closer to work and limiting driving.

Each of us takes the risk of illness or injury quite regularly, and it seems unreasonable to me to pick certain offenses as being at fault, and certain ones as just random happenstance.

Now, someone who constantly calls in sick because he’s hungover is clearly using poor judgment. But, what about someone who constantly calls in sick because they don’t get enough sleep and have a depressed immune system? What about somebody who constantly calls in sick because they get food poisoning because they don’t carefully store their food?

You can make value judgments about the worth of a particular cause of sickness, but why? I say that as long as the sick time taken isn’t inordinate, the cause of the sickness is immaterial.

66

Speaking as a supervisor, I tell my guys to just call in and tell me you wont be in to work that day. I don’t need to know “why”.

I could care less if you’re too hung over or if your Grandma just died. It’s none of my bussiness. It only becomes my bussiness if you do this habitualy. Our company has guidelines already put in place to decide what those lines are.
But hey, I’m pretty laid back anyway. I had one guy leave me a voice mail the other day to which he said: “Hey Boss I wont be in today. I drinky, drinky way too much last night. later”

:rolleyes:

He’s a good worker with good attendance so I thought it was pretty funny he was so forthcoming about it. Of course I kiddingly gave him shit about it the next day. “Soooo Mr. Smith, how kind of you to join us today…”

67

The general problem with sick leave/personal time off is that sometimes people use/misuse their entitlement, and then they really undeniably get sick/bereaved/etc. This leaves the company in a difficult position - they either stop paying an employee who has a genuine issue, or allow them to eat into holiday time, or can them. Not a good position for the company to be in, particularly if the regulatory environment makes some of these options difficult.

So they police sick days, and make employees use vacation time for personal days off, because losing vacation time for a hangover/personal day/etc places the cost on the employee (they have to shorten their holiday plans).

When I worked in NZ, we had 5 statutory sick days a year, no carryover. Eventually our managers were given discretion to authorise an additional 5 days, if staff had a good attendance record and did not come into work with colds/flu.

Here in the UK, some companies have really generous sick leave entitlements - we have one guy from our office who has been off for 26 weeks or so with a hamstring injury. Everyone thinks he has been milking it - signed off for a hamstring, extended course of physio, physio didn’t work so surgery scheduled, surgery delayed, surgery carried out, long post-surgical recovery, a months leave to be used before the end of the year…

But outside influences have an impact. When I broke my elbow, I was signed off for a month. And because I was signed off, I could not drive because it would have invalidated my car insurance. And the sign-off also impacts the workplace insurances. So after 3 weeks when it felt fine and I was bored, I could not go back to work due to the insurance issue, both car and workplace. So I had to stay at home.

Now I am a contractor, if I don’t go to work I don’t get paid. Full stop. I have to have enough in the bank to cover me if I get sick. I can’t even get any income insurance at the moment. If I started to get really concerned about my health I would need to take a permanent job with great sickness benefits. It’s a bit scary.

Si

68

I’m planning on getting drunk Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this weekend and I’ve already told my boss that I won’t make it in Monday. We don’t get sick days, its just one big pool, and no one here cares that it will be because I will be feeling like the living dead come Monday.

69

Here in Sweden they tried to stop the “sickie” culture by making it law that the first day of a sick period is unpaid. All days after that are at 80% for a certain amount of days and then I lose track of what goes on.

Seems like a good idea, putting people off just not coming in to work because they just don’t feel like it, but it has had the side effect of people coming in to work when sick as they don’t want to lose money, which is clearly a ridiculous state of affairs. Additionally, many people will take a minimum of two days off for anything rather than just taking a single unpaid day as they feel they are owed it due to being off and unpaid for a day through no fault of their own.

70

We get flex days as well as vacation days. A flex day is one extra day off a month, that you have to use in that month. It’s usually used to extend a long weekend, or if you have the cable guy coming by or something.

If I’ve used up my flex and something comes up, I usually use a vacation day.

71

Also, sick days are sick days up to three days off. After that you need a doctor’s note and you’re on short term disability.

I had to take a month off this past May and all I did was get a note from my doctor, give it to HR, and that was that, no questions asked. And I got paid 100% of my wage.

72

With a potentially nasty recession on the way (or already started), many people are going to involuntarily be in the same position as you. When Joe the Manager is told he has to cut staff by 20%, attendance is going to be one of the factors when he draws up the list.

73

My company does not have much flexibility. If one person calls in sick, someone else has to cover the shift. I have had to work a lot of overtime, covering for people who loved their booze more than their job. Now, I’m greedy, and I like making time-and-a-half, but it’s nice to get a day off once in a while.

The problem is, when people start using sick days for hangovers, it usually gets to be a habit. And then it becomes cheaper to hire and train a new guy, than to pay my overtime.

74

Did they have a discount on stupid analogies this week and I missed it? I can only imagine what it would look like to hear you making any of these arguments to a manager. These sound like things you might try to argue with your middle school principal, maybe high school, but seriously.

Maybe there are some people out there who drink too much and never get hung over and so this would be an unusual situation for them. For everyone else, you drink too much and you have about a 99% chance of being sick the next day, so you don’t do it on work nights.

And you bet your ass if there was an employee who had a high rate of absenteeism due to self-abuse, it will get noticed and disciplinary action will be taken…

75

Yes exactly. Coming into work hungover is a violation of the policy.

We don’t have PTO days. It’s either a sick day, a vacation day (the balance is paid, when you leave or retire) and holidays, including a “personal day.”

So if a person knows they’re going to be hungover on a particular day, they can schedule a vacation day in advance. Or if you have an “unplanned” hangover, you can call in sick, but cannot say it’s a hangover. Or go in and take your chances that you’ll get through the day without anyone noticing. I’m sure that’s been done a time or two.

But more to the point. Why would anyone, at any place of employment, admit to their boss that they’re too hungover to come into work. It seems to be the height of irresponsibility and lack of judgment. And it may create a suspicion that the employee has a substance abuse problem if they’re too hung over to come into work.

76

I am in a field, where taking a weekend off is considered slacking. As a lawyer, if there is a case monday morning, you work sundays. Simple. I have worked with a 103 fever, barely being able to stand up in court. All of you are slackers!

Serioulsy it depends on the profession.

77

I actually get really offended when my employers try to pry into “why” I’m taking a sick day. Being sick is a private issue, and I don’t need to tell anyone what I’ve got, etc. If I’m ever a supervisor, “I’m taking a sick day” will be enough, and as long as they’re entitled to that day, then the story’s over.

Maybe I’m just bitter from that one really painful UTI that I didn’t feel was anyone else’s business. I’ve entertained the idea of saying “flare-up” or “social disease” or simply “it’s those damn herpes again” next time an employer asks, “what do you have?” Maybe they would quit asking. But in my best interest, I think I’ll stick to, “it’s a personal issue.”

78

You may need to save them for when they remove the stick from your ass.

79

Yeah my company has PTO (Paid Time Off). However we don’t get any sick time. When they converted us to PTO and took away our sick days, they also gave us an extra week of PTO days. The way I see it, they’re basically giving you your sick days and telling you to use them all. Personally I like it, as I never (rarely) called in sick anyway, so it’s like an extra week of vacation time. On the day that I am sick, I can work from home so as to not infect anyone else, and not burn a day off either. All in all, it’s a system that works well for me.