I dunno, my adult opinion is that I have a certain amount of PTO/Sick Time and it’s none of your damned business when I use it and for what reason.
Now, if you have an issue with someone regularly calling in ‘sick’ before or after holiday weekends, especially when they walk in the next day with no sign of illness, then yes, this can be considered a disciplinary issue.
“Doctors Notes” just piss me off. My current company would never consider asking for such a thing. Really, the only places I’ve seen demand them are the shithole companies that pay shit wages and offer no sick time, in which case you’re double penalized in that you’re a> not being paid for the days you don’t work, and b> some asshole decides you need to pay a day’s wage (+/-) to visit a doctor and get a fucking note saying you were sick just so they don’t fire you. What next, you want one from my mommy too?
Although… in typing this I remembered a company I worked briefly in the 80’s doing IT work. They had a Company Nurse on staff. You were not allowed to go home ‘sick’ without the express permission of this person. You also had to get a note from them when you returned from an illness of more than one day. My God did everyone hate that.
As a cook who has spent most of my career working in small restaurants where the entire kitchen staff consists of three cooks (one to work 5 opening shifts, one to work 5 closing shifts, and one to cover the other guys’ days off), you have my sympathy. I’m the guy with perfect attendance going back too many years to count, and I’m also the guy always being woken up with a phone call on my day off telling me that so-and-so is “sick” again and can I come in?
Goddammit, I was drunk almost every night and hung over almost every day in my 20s, and I still showed up for work, every day, on time. Including that one job where I had to be there at 4:30 AM every day.
Eh. People get sick at different rates. I used to be sick every freaking month, then some weird thing happened when I was pregnant and I’ve had maybe one or two colds in the past year.
Thank goodness my workplace has a good telework policy. I can manage minor illnesses and routine appointments without missing a full day of work.
Wow. This conversation makes me glad none of you is my manager, judging people guilty of bad behavior on no particular evidence. Yup, it’s the day after a holiday so they must be hungover. 'Cause everyone I know drinks so heavily on fucking Labor Day.
In my case, one of those frequent sick-callers was a guy who suffered from Crohn’s Disease. For that, he had my sympathy and understanding. But part of having that condition, as he confessed to me, was that he shouldn’t drink alcohol. So imagine my surprise one day when, on the same day that he had called in “sick”, and I’d had to drag myself out of bed, I got off work after filling in for him and went out to my favorite karaoke place, only to find him sitting there with a beer in his hand.
Posters above have mentioned the idea of management keeping track of this kind of thing and learning who really is, and who really isn’t “sick”. Well, you don’t have to be in management to notice these patterns. I worked at one 24-hour restaurant, where the two primary swing shift cooks were two women who also happened to be best friends. They had different days off. After a while, it became very curious to me that one or the other of them would always call in “sick” on the other one’s day off (and I would get called to cover). Were they really sick, or were they just wanting to have the same day off to do something together?
As far as Labor Day, and all other national holidays, I would happily see them all abolished. I don’t call them “national holidays”. I call them “government holidays”. Because I sure as hell don’t get the day off, and in fact I have to work three times as hard to feed all those people who do have the day off, and I don’t get any extra pay for it.
No, but you pretty much have to be in management to do anything about it. I am advocating for engaged and competent managers who will monitor this kind of behavior and then react appropriately.
Of course many people do abuse sick days at least once in a while, and some abuse it a lot, and of course that has a negative effect on the rest of the staff. That’s why the manager has to be aware of it and take appropriate individual action. I make no excuses for anyone who does abuse sick time. I only expect that each employee will be given the benefit of the doubt until either proven otherwise or at least they have established a pattern that indicates abuse. My biggest beef is for those managers who don’t want to manage people and so either ignore the abuse or else establish some draconian blanket rule as suggested by t-bonham@scc.net above, so they don’t have to deal with it on a personal level.
Anyway, we’ve probably beaten this to death, please feel free to return to your normal workplace griping.
I had my annual review today (my anniversary was August 26). My manager specifically pointed out that, since making me aware of the problem, I’ve improved, and his boss has noticed as well. It’s like you said, “The first thing we need to do in order to improve is know where we have problems.”. I compare it to cleaning the bathroom at home. The bathroom doesn’t get “filthy” overnight (ideally, anyway). It just gets a tiny bit worse each day, and you don’t notice. Then one day somebody else goes in there (like, Mom comes to visit), and you suddenly realize, “Damn, that place is a mess! I’d better clean it!”
My boss’s boss also told me today that she’s going to try to get me the maximum raise that corporate will allow, a whopping 3% increase. Which would amount to another 33 cents/hour, but eh, I’ll take it.
As far as my annual review - like I told my manager, “You’re my third manager in one year. You only know what you’ve seen since you started.” And he started immediately after that 24-straight days and 17 consecutive 13-hour shifts I worked. So he’s only ever seen me “burned out”. Yet he still likes my work.
Today we got two of them back, but the one who was here yesterday called in sick. It’s hard not to think this is retaliation, because that department is big on keeping scores against each other.
Uh no. How about sick days belong to the employee, to be used whenever and however they choose to? Sure, sometimes you get situations where many people are out at once, but those are rare and the company won’t be significantly impacted
I work at a chemical plant, and you’re not allowed to leave ‘sick’ without being checked out by the nurse (or by a trained emergency responder, as fill-in). It’s for OSHA tracking purposes; they have to be able to identify if a ‘sickness’ was due to work or otherwise. We only have to get evaluated by the (company) doctor if we’re out longer than 5 days, though. Not too onerous.
One of the most irritating people at work got walked out this morning, because of reasons related to stuff. Not clear on the details, and probably shouldn’t share if I knew… but I’m finding it hard to dredge up any sympathy. He was an unpleasant jackass whom everyone suspected was incompetent, so mostly what I’m feeling is surprise they actually let him go. (That never happens.)
I have to respectfully disagree with the second sentence here. I worked at a job that was heavily “output-based.” Basically, any file submitted by 5 pm would need to be “sent back out” before the work day was over. It was title examination (looking for gaps in chains of title, releases for any lien on the property / owner, etc.) and it was very high-stress. We were a team of four or five, with each person averaging 250+ files a day. This was a job that paid by the hour and while lunch breaks were mandatory, you almost had to work while you were clocked out, to ensure that you wouldn’t be in the weeds in the afternoon. And this was when we were at full capacity.
On our team, we had a veteran who served in Afghanistan and was involved in an attack where he was severely wounded and suffered from PTSD. As such, he’d often go to the DVA and since it was 35 miles away from the office, and these appointments always took longer than expected, he’d just take the whole day off. We also had a woman who would find any reason to leave early, miss a day, etc., under the guise of being sick, having to deal with her children, etc. (She was the favorite of my boss, so she got away with this all the time, much to the chagrin of the other co-workers. Especially since some were friends w/ her on Facebook and Instagram, and her posts & pictures didn’t always mash up with her official story)
So, that would leave us at half-capacity on some days. Suddenly, the typical somewhat-heavy workload was doubled. And, since they were really hesitant to pay overtime, they would encourage us to sacrifice quality over quantity, meaning we were submitting reports riddled with errors and oversights, because otherwise we’d have a queue of 100+ when the official workday was over. It led to a great deal of resentment and whispering, really affecting morale.
Luckily, now I have a job where, if I ever am sick and don’t want to spread germs, I can work remotely, and most projects aren’t things that need to be completed by the end of the day, so I can understand if that’s what you were thinking of, when you made your statement. But, I will say that there are jobs out there where multiple people taking a day off can really affect the rest of their co-workers.
While I sympathize, this seems like a company problem to me. Ideally, companies shouldn’t be punishing some employees for the actions of others. The proper way to handle this isn’t to take away or restrict sick days, in my opinion, but for the company to simply hold non-sick employees accountable for the work they are mandated to do and no more. Had I been in charge, I would either have to hire more people to make up for instances where this happens or simply say that you and the others are still only responsible for the 250 files a day and no more.
Eventually they’d run out of sick days so doesn’t the problem solve itself?
Respectfully, I’d like to ask you why you disagreed with employees having control over their own sick time as a policy rather than throw your disagreement with a company that won’t pay overtime? Seems that is a much easier solution: Need extra work done, pay people overtime to stay a few hours!
I do understand your point, but this was much more of a “sweatshop-type” environment. Files were submitted at all hours of the day, and the only rule was that the queue had to be clear through to 6:30. You couldn’t leave files from a day before except in certain extenuating cases - for example, if you were looking through all the liens held against someone w/ a common name, and you had to figure out which ones were and weren’t applicable (and that would only be if you got a “Jose Rodriguez” from California late in the day). This was a job with a very high turnover, in part because they didn’t like to hire “enough” people. Ironically, they ended up laying off multiple waves of people while I was there - adding even more to the workload of those who remained.
In theory, yes, but for example, in the case of the veteran, he probably took off a day (on average) once per 2 weeks. The other woman was basically “teacher’s pet,” and would use her kids or some other excuse when she just didn’t want to come in. Once again, a management problem, I agree, but a problem that affected the rest of us.
If it’s legitimate “sick time,” I agree. I don’t want you coming in and sitting near me, while you are coughing and sneezing. Are you using “sick time” as a general term for the bank for all days that a person can take off? That affects my response.
I am, though I’m distinguishing it from vacation time (which I understand not all workers are entitled to).
In my line of work, I manage a few people. I’ve always told them that their sick time is their own, to be used without need for prior approval, differentiating it from vacation time, which tend to be longer consecutive days and does need prior approval. There’s been a few instances where we had to scramble to make up work that I was expecting someone else to do, but we make do. Work shouldn’t be prioritized ahead of people’s lives and if someone needs a day off, I tell my staff to just take it. Whatever it is can wait until the next day. I don’t personally like having to sometimes make up for work that someone else is supposed to do but to me that is a small price to pay for treating my staff like adults.
Sometimes of course, I’d have to step in, and luckily this hasn’t happened a lot. During holiday periods, staff tends to want to take days off at the same time (day before Christmas, New Year’s Eve, etc.). When I get multiple requesting those days off, I talk to them and ask them if they can change their days. If not, I let them take it off anyway unless there’s nobody at all coming in, but this hasn’t happened before and I think my staff appreciates the fact that I ask instead of demand.
Bad offices and managers create problems and exacerbate it with worse management, in my opinion. But its incumbent on the employer to change because they have the power to make policy rather than telling employees to get sick on different days or to stop having family emergencies.
See, maybe that’s where I’m having the disconnect. In my mind, any day that isn’t used because of a legitimate medical issue is a “vacation day.” This includes car repair, waiting on the cable guy, etc. Keep in mind, I rarely take any days off, so I could easily be mistaken. I actually have to use 4 days before the end of the year, because only a certain amount roll over to the next year, but given my job, I feel guilty taking time off (for a variety of reasons that aren’t really important for the sake of this discussion).
This might be part of my tainted view of how things transpired when there was a team all operating from a pool of work. There would be occasions where they would know that a certain person would be gone during a particularly busy period of time, and so, to avoid having to share in the extra workload, they would take off for whatever reason - something that could easily be rescheduled. This only added to the burden of the rest of us and (as mentioned before) causing the quality of work to drop affecting the bottom-line of the business. This is more of a management / business issue, but if you need to get your oil changed, I think it can wait an extra day for when we will have more team members present and your loss won’t be felt as much.
I agree with this approach and I will say that my family is in a different state and my co-workers at that office were very accommodating, allowing me to take off the day before Christmas, so that I could spend more time with family, versus having a 250 mile drive after work on Christmas Eve. All the rest of them planned to spend the holiday at home, so they didn’t have to worry about the commute.
I think that’s where we are in agreement. As I said before uncontrollable “acts of God” are one thing - you can’t plan when there is a family emergency. Hell, we had one co-worker who (coming home from Thanksgiving) saw her step-son (who was driving another car) get into a fatal car accident. She didn’t come in for a few weeks and we all completely understood. It’s the aforementioned “oil changes” and things like that where I take issue.
If you are responsible for your work, I feel that you should be able to control your schedule to a fairly good degree. If you fall behind, you will suffer the consequences. It’s when your behavior negatively affects others that I think an employer should have more control - not over illnesses or family emergencies, but over errands that can wait, for the sake of the sanity of fellow co-workers.
Yesterday I left work at 3 p.m. knowing that IT was coming in overnight to change out our computer.
Today I get into work at 7 a.m. to find the night auditor standing up front chatting with the IT guys. We have new computers! They’re nice. However, one small problem. They’re not connected to the server yet because that was still updating. Then the main program we use for everything needed a patch that took about two hours to download. Then the IT guys had to set up all four workstations. Then the main IT guy had to call the Helpless Desk because we started getting error messages when we tried to log into the main program we use for everything.
All told, it was 1 p.m. before I was able to start getting any work done today. When I left, they were trying to find the shared drive we keep all our forms and daily reports on because it disappeared sometime in the night. The main IT guy had been up for over 50 hours by that point, poor guy.
There’s a reason that it’s referred to as a PMS, spazcat! Seriously, Starwood, circa 2008, was the worst I’ve ever dealt with - ever done a database build and all of your accounting in UNIX? - but most of 'em are a gigantic PITA!
(Except, oddly, for ChoiceAdvantage. I loved that system, especially when I was managing and training at a company level. I could log on from anywhere, and fix stuff. Choice may have other issues, but their property management system is the bomb.)