# Worst case of working while sick you've seen or done? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2017, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195 "2017-04-25T09:08:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mrdeals](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@Mrdeals](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrdeals)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2017, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/61 "2017-05-11T06:19:46Z")
When I was a cook, I worked a 12 hour shift with pneumonia. Running around in the heat coughing up my lungs all day made me really weak. I was scheduled to do another 12 hour shift the next day but told my boss I couldn’t do it, and just did 6 instead 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mrdeals](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@Mrdeals](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrdeals)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2017, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/62 "2017-05-11T06:22:54Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > My former boss spent the whole weekend at the office without going home at all even though he was dead. I bet he was a real hard ass Monday morning… ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/63 "2017-05-12T00:37:40Z")
> [@Mrdeals](#): > > I bet he was a real hard ass Monday morning… He was just hanging around. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/64 "2017-05-12T17:16:30Z")
> [@Mrdeals](#): > > When I was a cook, I worked a 12 hour shift with pneumonia. Running around in the heat coughing up my lungs all day made me really weak. I was scheduled to do another 12 hour shift the next day but told my boss I couldn’t do it, and just did 6 instead 🙂 How does this not violate health codes? ---
**Author:** ![Mrdeals](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@Mrdeals](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrdeals)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/65 "2017-05-13T11:30:53Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > How does this not violate health codes? Pneumonia isn’t contagious ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/66 "2017-05-13T12:25:14Z")
> [@Mrdeals](#): > > Pneumonia isn’t contagious [Yes it is](http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1069.aspx?CategoryID=69) ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/67 "2017-05-13T14:14:31Z")
Coughing for 12 hours in a hot kitchen isn’t good for anybody, whether its Pneumonia or not. Even if it was hay fever I wouldn’t want anybody coughing or sneezing on my food. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/68 "2017-05-13T14:41:50Z")
Co-worker came into work to make a few phone calls while coughing the whole time. I don’t know what he had, but everyone, including me, ended up with it. And I have an incredible immune system, and almost never get sick. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/69 "2017-05-13T15:16:28Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > Coughing for 12 hours in a hot kitchen isn’t good for anybody, whether its Pneumonia or not. Even if it was hay fever I wouldn’t want anybody coughing or sneezing on my food. I cooked in a busy restaurant for a year. Shit happens. One of the prep people seemed upset one night. I asked her what was up. She had lost a bandaid. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/70 "2017-05-13T15:48:16Z")
The rules for being paid for overtime were changed (thank you Republicans) so that employers can (and will) refuse to pay you any overtime wages until you’ve actually worked a full forty hours. Sick time is not counted as time worked, therefore if you volunteer to work an emergency double shift on Monday, and come down ill due to having done so by Wednesday, if you fail to continue to come to work and cough on everyone else, you’ll get nothing for your sacrifice. And everyone else will then get sick, and productivity will fall throughout the company. BRILLIANT thinking by the bean counters. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/71 "2017-05-13T20:19:52Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Co-worker came into work to make a few phone calls while coughing the whole time. I don’t know what he had, but everyone, including me, ended up with it. And I have an incredible immune system, and almost never get sick. Thats going around. I hadn’t been sick for more than two years before working where I work now. One of the cow-orkers came in coughing and it spread like wild fire. Granted, she was the first person to use a sick day because of it, but 5 people after her got so sick that they had to use a sick day in the week after. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/72 "2017-05-13T23:15:40Z")
My dad is a retired firefighter. He had a co-worker who took advantage of their generous sick leave policy, mostly for hangovers, and then he got cancer. Because he had a family and no sick leave, he was put on “light duty”, which mainly consisted of sitting in the truck while everyone else put out the fire. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/73 "2017-05-14T01:37:22Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > My business partner somehow got it in his mind that he was a spartan who could withstand anything and wait out any sickness. He was sick at work every day for two months. Repeated attempts to send him home were met with deaf ears. > > The result? He finally went to a doctor who immediately sent him to the hospital. > Sever Pneumonia so bad that at one point his chances of survival were less than 50%. Collapsed lungs, heart attack and intubated and put into a coma for over 30 days. > > He missed 90 days of work over that episode. Not really related to the thread, but one of my brothers died essentially from that. Refused to seek treatment for a lung infection. Pneumonia, heart failure, kidney failure, other infections, surgery to remove part of its intestine, then spleen. The worst part is that he was in a too good hospital. In some random small town hospital, he would have died early, where he was, they put him on extra-corporal blood circulation and other machines (including dialysis), did emergency surgeries and he lived three months, intubated and unable to speak, too weak to even raise an arm, confused, in great pain when he wasn’t in induced coma. One of his doctors told me once : we never see lung infections like that in western countries, people get _treated_ before they’re at death doorstep. If he had lived, they had no clue about what the consequences could be, ranging from 100% fine to colostomy bag, life dialysis, paralysis and brain damage and anything in between. All that because he didn’t want to see a doctor for his originally very mild sickness. In fact, he never went to see a doctor until a neighbour found him laying on the floor and unable to rise up by himself, and called the emergency services. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195/74 "2017-05-14T02:20:57Z")
In 2009, I was manning a station on a remote base in Iraq, and came down with a nasty flu. I worked a few hours at a time, trudging from the radio shack to my quarters. I couldn’t keep food down, and later had to fight to take in water by the teaspoon. This was made worse by an equally virulent dysentery. The 50 yards to the bathroom didn’t help. I started experiencing chest pains, which I knew were likely a result of the loss of vital minerals like potassium to regulate the heartbeat (I remembered bodybuilders running into this during pre-contest prep). So for two nights, I left the door unlocked, in case I couldn’t answer it the next morning, and wished for the best. I have a picture from right after I’d started recovering. My team is holding me up. I don’t remember it at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-case-of-working-while-sick-youve-seen-or-done/785195.md?page=3)