There was a woman I worked with awhile back and it did not matter if she was vomiting, feverish, in mortal pain or just had a sniffle – she would be sitting in her cubicle, glowering at whoever was unfortunate enough to have to ask her a question.
One day when we were working together, she was almost in tears because she felt so poorly. And I snapped at her, “Julie, if you feel so terrible – go home. Seriously, I’m supposed to go to my parents’ house this weekend and if I come home with whatever you have, my father is going to send me back to Minnesota.”
It was not my finest moment, but according to this article on CareerBuilder, Julie wasn’t a pioneer on the trend of employees reporting to work when they would be better off curled up on the couch watching crappy daytime TV.
Now that I look back on Julie’s situation, I do realize why she hated to call in sick to work. Even though no one wanted to get sick from whatever was ailing her, we were also short handed at the time and if she was gone, it was detrimental to our work load.
I’ve also worked places where you’re damned if you do call in sick (even though I’m 30 and have called in sick twice in the two years I’ve worked at my current full-time job, people tend to take sick calls as a lame excuse for an employee to take a day off. This annoys me to no end – if they think I’ve called in sick because of a hangover, they deserve whatever ailment I’m suffering.) And if you don’t call in sick and you utter so much as a sniffle, you’re still a terrible employee.
I am thinking about taking a day off today to recover from whatever crudge I’ve been carrying around for the past week – my voice was sufficiently shot on Friday to prompt one of my coworkers to ask me if I had a cold – I’m sure they won’t think I’m suffering from a hangover.
If you are sick – you are sick. I just stayed home for a week with bronchitis even though we were short staffed. My co-workers were very understanding.
What especially distresses me is when I see sick people working in delis and supermarkets and restaurants. It is especially sad that people who work in food industries often do not have sick days or cannot afford to miss days. I think that is how a lot of disease gets spread.
I’m lucky enough to have a boss who will send us home if we are sick so as to not infect the rest of the staff. I see it all the time though, people who just can’t afford to take a day off, such a shame…