Calling in sick

[PenforPrez]

This is kind of a silly question, but I'm just curious. If you were feeling under the weather, and you wanted to call in, what sort of criteria would you use?

I've been a tad sick the last couple of days--sore throat, sneezing, light cough. I wanted to call in today, but with Thanksgiving, I'll already be two days short on my next check (no holiday pay at my company). Can't afford another day off. Besides that, three or four weeks ago, I was so constantly exhausted that I couldn't function, and I still came in. So I came in today, but it was against my better judgement. I'm OK so far; better than yesterday. :)

Paul

[Bocheezu]

I'm kind of the old stodgy type when it comes to sick days. I've never called in sick from home. I come into work and at least make an appearance. A lot times, I'll feel better, and as long as I'm not coughing/sneezing like crazy and making everybody else sick, I'll gut it out for the day. If I'm coughing/sneezing, that does nobody any good and I'll just go home in that case, but that's very rare for me (once in 8 years of working). Being single without a whole lot of human interaction means you never get sick.

I'd never take a sick day for being tired. Those are vacation days for me.

[vinsanity]

Last time I called in, I was in a similar condition to what you described 3-4 weeks ago. I actually spent my lunch break the day before sleeping in the back seat of my car, and later that afternoon, wanted so badly to sleep under my desk. There's a Sunny Delight facility near my apartment, and on my way home that day, I felt like I could've drank the whole building.

[stephly21]

I never usually take a sick day. I always trudge into work even when I am sick. There was only one day recently where I called in sick and I acutually was, but that was because my wedding was coming up and I needed to get better! Recently I called in sick when I wasn't. That was nice, but then 2 days after that I actually got sick with the flu but came into work anyway. I kinda felt that was Karma.

[AsianGeek]

it really depends on how many assignments you have that are coming up soon and whether or not being sick will hamper your progress.

[PenforPrez]

If I'm coughing/sneezing, that does nobody any good and I'll just go home in that case, but that's very rare for me (once in 8 years of working).

I sneeze most of the time due to allergies; I'm used to that.

Last time I called in, I was in a similar condition to what you described 3-4 weeks ago. I actually spent my lunch break the day before sleeping in the back seat of my car, and later that afternoon, wanted so badly to sleep under my desk.

I did that many times when I worked at Wal-Mart cause I had an hour lunch. I slept in the break room, though. Now, I only have a half-hour, which is not enough time to do anything.

There's a Sunny Delight facility near my apartment, and on my way home that day, I felt like I could've drank the whole building.

Could be worse. You could live near the Bud brewery here in St. Louis. :evil:

I actually woke up at 2:30 this morning with a sore throat, so I went to the fridge and got some OJ and went back to bed to read and chug my OJ before I went back to bed. I started reading and got comfy, and I nodded off, and woke up with the sensation of cold orange juice running down my back. :p

[Jersey_Steve]

I try to save my sick days for when I just can't deal with it today (aka mental health days). I usually go to work when I'm sick because I'm already miserable, so how much worse can it get if I go in.

It's annoying that I only have 4 sick hours left. Maybe I'll turn that into a nice early day. Go home and play some video games. Anything other than work :)

[PenforPrez]

That's another problem I have here. No sick days at my company. That ticks a lot of people off, and i don't blame them. I could use one today.

Paul

[Samwell]

That's another problem I have here. No sick days at my company. That ticks a lot of people off, and i don't blame them. I could use one today.

Sure makes you motivated to show up to work, though. I work under contract so I make pretty good money per hour but with no sick days, vacation days, or health insurance (I have to provide that all that on my own). Consequently I've taken 1 sick day in the last 3 years. And that was for a hangover...

[PenforPrez]

Sure makes you motivated to show up to work, though. I work under contract so I make pretty good money per hour but with no sick days, vacation days, or health insurance (I have to provide that all that on my own). Consequently I've taken 1 sick day in the last 3 years. And that was for a hangover...

I called in sick three days in February when I had a severe sore throat. It helped that we had constant snow and ice that week, making my 83-mile commute (at the time) nothing short of suicidal. :rolleyes:

Paul

[Bsig84]

I used to work somewhere that didnt offer sick or vacation pay. Now that I work for a company that does offer them I really appreciate it. My company emphasizes that everyone needs a break at times and if they get that break they will be more inclined to stay at the company longer and work harder. I agree with that.

[wordsmith]

I don't call in sick. My employer offers an incentive for attendance...all those who qualify split a significant cash bonus every month for have perfect attendance. I also haven't been significantly sick since I started working there (except over my vacation, naturally). I've gotten an additional $200-$500 every month I've worked there, depending on how many people qualified for the incentive that month.

You're not penalized if you're sick, or take vacation days, or have an appointment or whatever. You're just out of the incentive for that month.

I'm not big on calling in sick, in any regard. I also had perfect attendance for three of the four years I was in high school. It's usually more work in the long run to not be there than to be there. At jobs, every time I do take a sick day or personal day, it puts me so far behind, it's not worth it, unless I truly am so sick I can't be upright.

[ddrost1]

apparently i'm the only one who thinks this way here, but maybe it's because i'm immune compromised...anyways, it annoys the living SHIT out of me when people show up to work wheezing and sniffling and feeling like hell and contaminating the air with their germs. if you want to work while you're sick, do it from home. even if i wasn't IC, i think it's rude to show up and risk getting everyone else ill with some bug to bring home to their families, friends, etc. take a day off, rest, and at least get past the point of being contagious.

[spiritedaway]

I don't usually call in sick because I usually don't get sick. *knock on wood*.

The last time I was really sick was back in high school, when I came down with a bad flu. I was out for a week. I didn't even bother going to school; I could hardly get up without falling over.

I've never used up my sick days at work. My last company offered 4 sick days a year, and my current one offers 12 days. There's no incentive for me not to take them (since it's not under a general umbrella of PTO), but it doesn't really matter. I usually have plenty of work to do. I take some "scheduled" sick time for regular doctor's appointments or if I need to take my parents to theirs. I would call in sick if I'm feeling totally under the weather (mental day) but those are few and far between. In those cases, I'd try to get to work and if I'm still not up for it, then I just take the rest of the day off.

If people are really sick, I'd rather that they stay home for two simple reasons: they're unlikely going to be too productive anyway and they're spreading germs too if they're wheezing and sneezing all over the place.

[Depressed11]

apparently i'm the only one who thinks this way here, but maybe it's because i'm immune compromised...anyways, it annoys the living SHIT out of me when people show up to work wheezing and sniffling and feeling like hell and contaminating the air with their germs. if you want to work while you're sick, do it from home. even if i wasn't IC, i think it's rude to show up and risk getting everyone else ill with some bug to bring home to their families, friends, etc. take a day off, rest, and at least get past the point of being contagious.

I totally agree. Too many people try to be a hero.

[PenforPrez]

I totally agree. Too many people try to be a hero.

Since I don't get sick pay, the only thing I'm being a hero to by showing up today is my pocketbook. :rolleyes:

[ebrillblaiddes]

When I was working chow hall in college...sniffles, if the sun was out. This was Oregon so that wasn't as often as it sounds like :p

When I have a real job, it has to be either worth seeing a doctor (criteria: cough that includes blood or keeps getting worse even on Mucinex [this actually happened to me once; it turned out to be bronchitis], fever that induces loopiness, vomiting, "the squirts" if repeated frequently, migraine headache that doesn't respond to meds, or something on that level) or involve an injury acting up (I can't rule out the possibility of my bad ankle doing this, but so far it's only involved the slightly-off-alignment vertebrae that are as good as they're going to get, and really not that bad, but a bit vulnerable to any kind of strain).

I'll leave work for less than the above (like this one time I was queasy and shaky for no reason I could figure out) if it doesn't clear up on its own in a reasonable amount of time, but usually I'm not up early enough before work to let stuff like that clear itself.

[wordsmith]

apparently i'm the only one who thinks this way here, but maybe it's because i'm immune compromised...anyways, it annoys the living SHIT out of me when people show up to work wheezing and sniffling and feeling like hell and contaminating the air with their germs. if you want to work while you're sick, do it from home. even if i wasn't IC, i think it's rude to show up and risk getting everyone else ill with some bug to bring home to their families, friends, etc. take a day off, rest, and at least get past the point of being contagious.

I work at a school full of kids who show up sick CONSTANTLY, and have a variety of special needs that involve us being exposed to a variety of bodily fluids in a hands-on way routinely, so we're all exposed to crap anyway. Most of us deal with more snot, piss, poo, pus, blood, and/or fill-in-the blank with biohazard of your choice than we care to really think about. We are not allowed to send students home even when they come to school sick, which is often, unless they have a fever or are vomiting. Which has a lot to do with a) why so few of us actually have the lower immunities to actually GET sick incredibly often, and b) why we have an endless supply of things like sanitizer and Airborne available in-house at all times, not to mention drums upon drums of poly gloves. Being exposed to germs is reality if you choose to work with kids, particularly the population of kids I work with, who aren't particularly in control of their bodily fluids and require real hands-on care.

We also don't get sick pay.

Overall, I really tend not to get sick. If I'm having a sick day, it's generally for something non-catching, such as extreme fatigue from my severe anemia, or something menstrual-realted (which also typically aggravates anemia). And staying home will solve neither.

[winneythepooh7]

I rarely call in sick either, since fortunately I tend to be a healthy person. We have what are called "PTO" or "paid time off" days that we can use for sick time, personal, vacation, whatever so we still get paid.

[winneythepooh7]

I don't call in sick. My employer offers an incentive for attendance...all those who qualify split a significant cash bonus every month for have perfect attendance. I also haven't been significantly sick since I started working there (except over my vacation, naturally). I've gotten an additional $200-$500 every month I've worked there, depending on how many people qualified for the incentive that month.

You're not penalized if you're sick, or take vacation days, or have an appointment or whatever. You're just out of the incentive for that month.

I'm not big on calling in sick, in any regard. I also had perfect attendance for three of the four years I was in high school. It's usually more work in the long run to not be there than to be there. At jobs, every time I do take a sick day or personal day, it puts me so far behind, it's not worth it, unless I truly am so sick I can't be upright.

That's so cool that you're given incentive pay. Never heard of anything like that before!

[ddrost1]

I work at a school full of kids who show up sick CONSTANTLY, and have a variety of special needs that involve us being exposed to a variety of bodily fluids in a hands-on way routinely, so we're all exposed to crap anyway. Most of us deal with more snot, piss, poo, pus, blood, and/or fill-in-the blank with biohazard of your choice than we care to really think about. We are not allowed to send students home even when they come to school sick, which is often, unless they have a fever or are vomiting. Which has a lot to do with a) why so few of us actually have the lower immunities to actually GET sick incredibly often, and b) why we have an endless supply of things like sanitizer and Airborne available in-house at all times, not to mention drums upon drums of poly gloves. Being exposed to germs is reality if you choose to work with kids, particularly the population of kids I work with, who aren't particularly in control of their bodily fluids and require real hands-on care.

We also don't get sick pay.

Overall, I really tend not to get sick. If I'm having a sick day, it's generally for something non-catching, such as extreme fatigue from my severe anemia, or something menstrual-realted (which also typically aggravates anemia). And staying home will solve neither.

yeah, the reason i choose to work in a relatively isolated "clean" environment of a lab. that and i just don't like kids to begin with :)

i think we know what i'm talking about though. showing up with the flu does noone any favors. sure, there's stuff that's not contagious that if you want to show up to work, then that's your prerogative. i'm not the wuss that won't go to work with a headache, but i don't want someone with the flu or a nasty cold virus mucking up the breathing space of 20 other people, is what i'm saying.

[Bocheezu]

At my workplace, unless I have some crazy all-day meeting, the only person I'm likely to contaminate or be contaminated by is my officemate. So it's not like I'm coughing on an entire department of people. Plus, my lab equipment really should be running 24 hrs a day as much as possible. If I don't come in and at least set them up for the next day or two (it's all automated otherwise), that's time I can't ever get back. I can't work weekends or extra hours here or there to make up lost time in the lab when the equipment is already running at 100%.

[wordsmith]

Problem is that you're usually contagious before you're showing symptoms. By the time you're spiking a fever, feeling generally shitty, etc., you've likely already incubated the virus and spread it, no?

[wordsmith]

That's so cool that you're given incentive pay. Never heard of anything like that before!

You've got to figure that we've got a one-to-one student/teacher ratio, and as severely disabled students, these are kids with very unique, very specific education and behavior management plans, so it's very tough for our limited number of subs to just jump in on a given kid if that kid's teacher is unexpectedly out and hasn't set up the day's procedure well in advance with a given sub. It's not like there's any one generic plan you can follow, there's a lot of minutiae. So the result is basically a wasted day if you're out, because your student's just getting babysat, programs aren't necessarily getting run or adhered to. And because strict consistency is so important with these students, it can really set them back to be off their routine for even a day, trigger emotional/behavioral meltdowns, etc. So it's in everyone's best interest to have an incentive that works to ensure that people show up if at all possible, for the good of these very uniquely challenged students.

[PenforPrez]

I woke up at 4:30 with a nasty sinus headache and could not get back to sleep. So that crossed the line for me; I called in today. Went back to bed. :) Sometimes, I suspect it's a bad idea to get out of bed. :p

Paul

[ebrillblaiddes]

i'm not the wuss that won't go to work with a headache, Normal headache, I'll tough it out. Certain levels of migraine, I'll even tough out. There's one that I call a "technical migraine" that doesn't really hurt any worse than a bad tension headache, but has the migraine symptoms like being on one side and visual spots and flashes. I might go home if one of those shows up early in a workday and starts getting worse because I'd like to get home while I can still see to drive. If it's late in the day I'll deal with it and put my head down on my desk for as long as I need to, after the day is over, to be OK for the drive home.

A nasty migraine though...now and then I get super-light-sensitive ones where my best odds for not wanting to tear my head off to make it go away is to shut myself in as dark a room as possible, close my eyes, drag stuff over my face to shut out more light, preferably sleep until it goes away...I would not be functional at work with one of those, so why take up space?
but i don't want someone with the flu or a nasty cold virus mucking up the breathing space of 20 other people, is what i'm saying. I have to be unable to work to call in with either, because I generally pick them up from work. I probably picked up the cold that turned into bronchitis from work, for example, and went in with it a few days before it turned nasty.

[ebruening]

I'm not big on calling in sick, in any regard. I also had perfect attendance for three of the four years I was in high school. It's usually more work in the long run to not be there than to be there. At jobs, every time I do take a sick day or personal day, it puts me so far behind, it's not worth it, unless I truly am so sick I can't be upright.

In the nearly 3.5 years I've worked in my district, I've never taken a sick day or a personal day. It's simply too much work for me to be gone. I've gone in with migraines, continual sore throat, head colds - essentially, everything except for the flu. (I'm convinced that working at a school has built up my immune system against bugs like the flu or other viruses that are going around.) As Wordsmith said, I plan to go in, unless I'm so sick that I can't stand up (or if I have something highly contagious - like pinkeye - where the district requires you to stay home.)

[wordsmith]

In the nearly 3.5 years I've worked in my district, I've never taken a sick day or a personal day. It's simply too much work for me to be gone. I've gone in with migraines, continual sore throat, head colds - essentially, everything except for the flu. (I'm convinced that working at a school has built up my immune system against bugs like the flu or other viruses that are going around.) As Wordsmith said, I plan to go in, unless I'm so sick that I can't stand up (or if I have something highly contagious - like pinkeye - where the district requires you to stay home.)

That's the thing...it's so much work for somebody else to take over (and usually creates so much work that you come back to), it defeats the purpose of taking the day off.

Our school will send you home (teacher or student) if you have any of the following - a temperature, oozing wound or sores, or are vomiting/having diarrhea or fainting spells.

[GreenwithEnvy]

I actually can't believe that some places offer incentives for NOT calling off...and that some places don't give sick days at all...is that even legal?

Anyway, I learned my lesson about getting rest when sick when I was a junior in high school. I was in the marching band and about a month before our trip to Disney World, I got a pretty bad cold/flu. But since I had a lot of projects in classes, band practices, and other band responsibilities (I was one of their student secretaries), I pushed myself to keep going to school (and staying after school for rehearsals, etc).
Needless to say I kept getting sicker. After about 2 and a half weeks of refusing to stay home, I literally almost passed out while sitting on my couch eating breakfast. Even so, my mom had to BEG me to stay home and get some rest and see my Dr.
When I finally got to the Dr., I had borderline bronchitis, an ear infection in both ears, and a temperature of 102.
She told me that if I had slowed down and taken care of myself when I first felt sick, that probably would have never happened.
So by the time the Disney trip rolled around, I was still sorta sick and I couldn't breathe properly. My ears (though no longer hurting) were clogged up and I had to take two different pills twice a day.
So my Disney trip (while still pretty cool) was hindered b/c I was trying to be a tough girl and suck it up.
Needless to say, now I stay home and rest when I feel sick -- even if it's just for a half a day or so. I have not been even CLOSE to being that sick since then.
(and I also hate when people come into work hacking and sneezing all over the damn place)!! I'm not a germ-a-phobe but that's just GROSS!

[PenforPrez]

I actually can't believe that some places offer incentives for NOT calling off...and that some places don't give sick days at all...is that even legal?

It's legal. Employers in most states don't have to offer vacation time or sick time or much of anything else.

Paul

[wordsmith]

Totally legal.