Working with someone with a chronic illness

[thatsalliknowsofar]

If you work with someone with a chronic illness which can affect their work - fatigue, more days off sick, time off for hospital appointments would you be annoyed and feel as if they are a waste of a colleague?

The problem I've experienced in the past, as both a temp and contractor, is not getting sick pay (SSP really hard to get approved) while being stuck covering my own role on top of employees who go off on long-term sickness on full pay.

Despite disclosing a serious disability at one company, I was called into a meeting because I had a week off (5 days total in a 9 month contract) for illness, because 'you should have known two people in the small team are off on long-term sick and we're understaffed.'

You get treated totally differently. Temps and contractors tend to be younger (and funnily enough, often disabled, BAME etc.) while the employees who go off on long-term sick leave have been with the company a few years, so it's less risky for them.

I have a chronic illness and it appears people like me are damned if we do, damned if we don't. Work full time (you know, to eat and pay bills) and we're taking someone's job, don't work and we're lazy and trying to scrounge almost non-existent benefits. Take time off when we need to and we're taking the piss, but come in while ill and we're in denial about how useless we are.

How lucky some of you are not to have a chronic illness or disability. By the grace of god and all that eh?

The rational, compassionate, and non twatty part of me would have no issue. If I was having to regularly pick up extra work and try to finish projects which minimal time and I go to do so because they were unable to, the slightly twatty, selfish part of me would internally at times probably have a moment. But never to the person or anyone else at work.

I have a heart condition. I work part time because of it, because I know that working full time is too much to cope with.

Trouble is people take that as I'm available to cover their shift, so take more time off for their conditions (4 out of 10 of us have "issues"). I am, but not to the extent of doubling my hours for 3 weeks etc... cos then I'll be on my knees...

So sometimes those with health issues affect others with health issues too. If the boss employed another with chronic problems I'd not be happy, which would look like I lack empathy, but at the end of the day we do all have our own, often hidden, often seemingly less important issues.

I have a chronic illness and it appears people like me are damned if we do, damned if we don't. Work full time (you know, to eat and pay bills) and we're taking someone's job, don't work and we're lazy and trying to scrounge almost non-existent benefits. Take time off when we need to and we're taking the piss, but come in while ill and we're in denial about how useless we are.

How lucky some of you are not to have a chronic illness or disability. By the grace of god and all that eh?

Also have chronic illness. Agree wholeheartedly with both these posts.

You are talking aout a company which has procedures in place to deal with that situation.

which is very different from what PP were talking about. Useless managers who put nothing in place to support the person with chronic ill health and let the other people in the team deal with it. (And get resentful)

fwiw cancer is a chronic illness. There is often no end date and even when there is, it doesn’t mean that the person won’t be going through treatment again 6 months later. It can also leave people unwell, struggling to recover and with MH illness to deal with in the top of it.

Fwiw seeing the number if people affected by long covid in the U.K. (about 1.8 millions now), companies might need to tighten up their procedures around that.

Long covid is not classed as a disability:

amp.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/09/alarm-after-ehrc-says-long-covid-should-not-be-treated-as-disability

Under the Equalities Act it is - you're disabled if you have a long term illness (exception being things like cancer where you're disabled from diagnosis) which affects your ability to do everyday things, such as communicating, walking around, etc. The name of the condition doesn't matter. (some of us are living without a diagnosis but are disabled due to the effects the condition has)

Did you read the article though?

Oh I see what you mean Long Covid is not automatically a disability but for some people the effects will mean that they qualify as disabled.

Quite a lot if people with LC end up having to stop work (or rather they don’t manage to get back to work, even part time).
If I was in that place and someone was telling me I wasn’t disabled, I wouldn’t take that well fwiw.

Also, people with long covid who struggle to go back to work basically meet the criteria for ME.
To give you an idea of how much ME/CFS is affected people’s quality of life, one of the main cause of death of those people is suicide. That gives you an idea of how hard it is to live with ME/CFS and also with LC.
The fact it’s not recognised as a disability doesn’t mean the illness isn’t disabling.

Also your article is about HMRC.
I am nit remotely surprised that HMRC doesn’t want to recognise LC as a disability when there are 1.8 millions people with LC in the U.K…. That would be a lot if money to automatically give to people because they caught a ‘mild’ illness.

No. I’m in awe of them. I work with a colleague who has MS and she is outstanding.

It’s about EHRC not HMRC.

i don’t disagree with you. I’ve had long covid (in addition to my other LTC) and know how disabling it is.