It’s what he wanted to do. He really loved his job and was extremely loyal to the company.
Back when AIDS was just becoming a household word, we had a co-worker who had it and who was dying of it, and who came to work every day anyway. He was terrified of losing his benefits. It was a horrible situation.
On to people like this:
Please stay home. No one wants your viral whatever. No one needs your fevers. Please determine some other way to reward yourself. This isn’t helping anyone.
I would too. I love my job, and if I had a non-communicable, terminal disease, and knew I was never going to feel any better than I felt right now, I would come to work for as long as I had the strength.
I’ve worked multiple times with what I later discovered was the kind of thing for which you’re supposed to get hospitalized, namely pretty brutal cases of gastrenteritis. In my case, they were always stress-related; after finding out that you’re actually supposed to have “chicken soup and a cozy corner on the sofa”, I’ve done it and they’ve cleared up within 24h. The longest case I worked through lasted weeks.
My paternal family has a long history of dying “of cancer at 65”. Uncle Julio was a GP. On the day after his retirement, he went to the head of the local teaching hospital’s Oncology department and told him “I’m coming to tell you I’ve got terminal liver cancer”“oh, we can’t know it’s ter”“don’t cut me off, boy. And you already diagnosed me three months ago. A patient by the name of José Luis Jiménez Martínez? [<— a Joe Smith kind of name] There was no such patient, those were my plates. So don’t try to sugarcoat the diagnosis now. I’m coming to tell you that if you’ve got any trials for which my case can be useful I’m game, but otherwise palliatives and fuck this. I’ve had a good life, I got my gold watch and I’m ready to grab the door.”
You didn’t give orders to Uncle Julio. He’s been dead more than 30 years and people from the local medical establishment still ask, upon seeing my name, if I’m family of his and gush over what a superb doctor he was. “Could rip your head off with a Look if you screwed up, mind you, but this one time he…”
When I was seventeen and working at a Mom and Pop grocery store, I had the worst sinus infection one summer and was hacking and coughing constantly. My dad told me I just had a summer cold and I could go to work. Okay, fine, I didn’t care, I liked my job.
Only my boss DID care, and sent me home, twice. The second time he told me I wasn’t allowed to come back until I was better.
After a few weeks of being really tired, I finally went to get checked after being out of breath after one flight of stairs - pneumonia.
I had to fly to a remote Northern community on a Twin Otter with a puking migraine. It got to the point that the Commanding Officer offered to carry me off the plane. The Flight Surgeon put me on bedrest. That was miserable.
The worst, mostly because it was out of the blue, was attending the final confirmation exercise for a really important career course. The staff officer was going through her opening spiel and then paused and said “Are you okay? You don’t look well.”
I knew I had felt weird all morning, sort of like I was getting a migraine, but not quite. I got up and went to the washroom, I thought I was going to vomit. I did not, but I quickly got tunnel vision and was having a hard time breathing. The ambulance luckily got there quickly and they treated the anaphylaxis. I was allergic to Topamax.
The next day, I had to lead the mock news conference so I could be graded. Luckily I was able to pull it off, even though I still felt really weird.
I came to work with the heebie-jeebies once.
Was afraid it was going to progress to the willies, but luckily, no.
mmm
I’m a small business owner. in call off, things pretty much shut down and employees get the day off as well. When I’m ill I sequester myself in my office, sign papers, oversee things, allow others to earn. I’m pretty careful not to infect my peeps.
I worked with appendicitis for 2 weeks. Finally called out when the pain got to the point where I was pissing and vomiting on myself.
I’ve known cooks at fast food joints and restaurants to come in with the flu and work full shifts.
When you’re living paycheck to paycheck because of shit pay, you really don’t have the option of calling out unless it’s life or death, and even then you work up to the last minute.
Two days after my return from a mosquito-laden tropical holiday I knew I had dengue fever. The symptoms were classic: the severe, continuous, muscle pain that got worse with massage; the fever; the lack of appetite; the fatigue.
It was the week before Christmas, my colleague was already on leave with no coverage but me, and I literally couldn’t afford to take any more time off (no work, no pay). So I continued working through the whole thing.
My self-diagnosis was confirmed by a blood test. The sample had to be sent out of state for testing (hello QLD!) and I got the result only after I’d mostly recovered.
It’s just as well that my case was “uncomplicated” and I got to miss the “haemorrhagic” part.
Shittiest Xmas/NY ever.
Yeah, all these stories do make me appreciate our paid sick leave here in Finland - just visit the work health nurse, she checks that you actually are sick and then its off to bed on full pay. I’m going to work in about 10 hours and I still have a cough but I’m sure having had two extra days of rest has helped quite a lot. I’ll just think of this thread if I start feeling bad for myself tomorrow morning.
Of course if you are a small business owner like kayaker then it’s not that simple, a friend of mine who has a small clothing store has worked while having high fever a few times. But I guess that’s the story with small business owners all over the world, they are free to work themselves to death if they want to.
A former co-worker of mine did something similar with twins. She was in active labor at work all day, and running a training, in fact. We kept asking her if she wouldn’t be more comfortable at home, should we call her husband, etc. Her response: “At home, I have a two-year-old and no car, and I’m an hour in traffic from the hospital. Here, I’m a 5-minute cab ride from the hospital and surrounded by 20 supportive women.” It had a certain logic.
When her husband came to pick her up, he talked her into swinging by the OB’s office, from where she was rushed into the delivery room. She gave birth 2 hours later. We had an office pool on the weights, genders, date/time of birth, and when she left a voice mail for the receptionist with the results we were all in shock.
I had a boss who was insistent that using your sick leave was BAD AND NOT TO BE DONE.
I was already in deep shit because I used a sick day a few months earlier after being in the ER all night with an asthma attack.
Was diagnosed with infectious mononucleosis, and the doctor told me to stay home for two weeks. I called in with the news and the manager told me to get my ass in there because I wasn’t contagious.
Mind you, I was sick – fever, chills, falling asleep that was more like passing out, and everything hurt. My brain wasn’t working well at all.
One of the nurses I was friendly with at work saw me and said, “You look like crap, are you ok?” I told her I had mono but the boss made me come in because it wasn’t contagious.
She was pissed.
First she lectured ME that I shouldn’t be out of bed or off the sofa, and certainly not carrying boxes of our publications around, that people with mono used to be put into the hospital. And that my spleen could rupture, and that I should go home and go to bed like the doctor said. And call her if I needed anything brought to the house.
I said, nope, because I was already in deep shit for the sick day a few months back.
So then the nurse went and yelled at our mutual boss.
I don’t know what the nurse said, but a few minutes later, the boss came out, looking more chastened than I’d ever seen her before or since, and told me to go home and come back after the doctor released me to go back to work. And that she hoped I felt better.
(The boss had not learned her lesson. She tried to get another coworker to come in to do a presentation when the coworker was in the ER with pneumonia. HR gave her a little slap on the wrist that no, you can’t expect your employees to disconnect their IV bags and come in from the ER. But, the boss is, unfortunately for everyone, now a member of upper management at the same company. I’m glad to be far away.)
When my mono situation (above) happened, I had unlimited paid sick leave at my job.
I just had a batshit crazy boss who didn’t believe that people got “that sick”, no matter if you had a doctor’s note or anything. She got mad if you needed surgery.
Ironically, it was a large health insurance company. In the provider relations department. :smack:
When I had my own business I was much the same. From high fevers to that cardiac thingy, sick time is isolation and paperwork. Its not exactly going to work ill in my humble opinion, but it kept the bills paid and paychecks in everyone’s hands.
Salmonella was probably the worst sickness I ever worked through. The worst part was the commute. It was only a 25 minute drive, but I would have to pull in at a store or restaurant (quickly!) anywhere from once to 3 times along the way to find a bathroom. By the time salmonella was officially diagnosed the worst was over.
I’ve never missed work time for an injury, and schedule the bare minimum time off for any medical procedure. For example, I took 4 days off for my hip replacement surgery. Even when I was injured on the job I scheduled doctor and PT appointments to occur during my lunch break. Work ethic was instilled in me early.
My parents ran their own business; once when me and my Dad were away for the weekend, my Mum fell ill, not sure what with, she never made it to the doctor, but she couldn’t walk for more than 100 yards or so without having to lie down. She still went to work, despite the fact that it’s a 2 mile walk away (we had the car). Lying down by the side of the road when she couldn’t stand up.
It’s a small zoo, so someone had to be there to feed the animals, or there would be dead animals, and she had the keys.
I also briefly worked for a (total psycho of a) guy, driving an ice cream van in Brisbane, who had had heart surgery (surprised they could find it) the same morning that he interviewed me. He’d discharged himself from hospital pretty much as soon as he came round. He still had slippers on.
My Dad did that. Finally after lots of pestering, he went in to the ER. While sitting there waiting for his turn, he felt MUCH worse, then MUCH better. Yep, it ruptured. Awesome. What should have been a relatively uncomplicated appendectomy now turned into a several weeks of draining and re-packing.
Fun.
I didn’t actually go in but I volunteered to come in the day after (extremely minor) surgery, but my boss was having none of it. It was so minor (just a skin bump removal) that I’m glad it was on a Thursday because I would have felt guilty missing more than a day of work, but I think my co-workers were glad I wasn’t walking around with a big bandage.
You should never take a chance like that.
It could develop into the screaming meemies, and all hell might break loose. :eek: