"Up all night" reason for calling in sick

[cherrypied]

If you call in sick with "been up all night", do you mean you are tired from being ill or still ill?

Had a few recently of staff calling in sick because they "have been up all night" anything from headache /cold / cough/ bad stomach etc minor illnesses.

They call in sick the next day as they are stating they have "been up all night". Am I I taking this too literally? Because to me it seems like calling in sick for being tired rather than unwell?

Even if haven't slept well and have been ill, by the time 6am comes around I will get up and go to work. I'd only call in sick if I was still ill. And have dragged my bones in shattered having been up with a cold or cough etc

It grates on me too. If I have a bad night's sleep I just get on with it. If they say up with ill health then I guess you need to accept that.

Well I don’t know, when I was working I went in when I was so tired I didn’t know what day of the week it was and looking back I regret doing it as I made mistakes that were later used against me.
Mine wasn’t , but there are plenty of jobs where being at work in that state could put people in danger.
It depends if ‘up all night’ means you had a bad night or you got literally no sleep. The times I am thinking of were the latter.

Same here, if I didn't go to work every time I had little to no sleep I wouldn't have a job. Some people just don't seem to be able to function when they are tired! Unless you are driving a HGV or something you should be fine to do a work day on little sleep every now and again.

For me, it would be literally throwing up all night or something. Not sleeping isn't a reason to not go to work.

Driving if youve not slept all night is dangerous if you need to drive to work.

If they are calling sick it means they aren't capable of working. It's their legal right to self certify this for up to 2 weeks. One persons tired is different from another.

It's none of your business quite frankly.

I take ‘up all night’ to mean ‘up all night due to the illness and wasn’t able to sleep.’ Not ‘up all night because I was restless but actually fine to work bar the tiredness’

You're not going to feel great if you've been awake all night from illness. Even if the illness is gone by morning. I think it's a valid reason to be fair. Its related to the illness

I'd take it to mean that their illness has kept them awake all night so they are both ill and tired from the effects of the illness.

The fact you drag your bones in when you're feeling unwell is irrelevant to your colleagues. Not everyone is able to, or wants to, martyr themselves for their job.

I have had terrible nights with hardly any sleep and I get migraines too. There has been a handful of occasions when I've let my manager know I'm in no fit state for work. Sometimes this has meant not working that day, others it has meant getting a couple of hours sleep then going to work. If someone is a good worker and not taking the mickey then it has to be preferable they are in a fit state to work rather than have someone who is not up to it and potentially a danger to themselves and others in work?

We have a stupid culture of dragging ourselves into work almost with limbs hanging off in the UK. None of my Nordic colleagues would! Thankfully COVID has meant a more sensible approach in some ways - many people work from home instead of bringing their lurgy into the office, for example.

depends
some people cope really badly with disrupted sleep and if not safe should stay home and rest.
others drink and are good to go.

if it happens too often ask hr for advice and if a visit to occupational help would be required.

Well I rarely get a good night's sleep thanks to the menopause, usually around 4/5 hours and I go to work as that is normal for me. However I had a night recently where I didn't sleep at all, not a wink and I had to call in sick. Firstly because I have to drive and there is no way I was safe to drive, and secondly my job requires a great deal of concentration as well as being physically demanding, so yes on that occasion extreme tiredness is why I was off. I went to bed after calling in sick and slept for 6 hours.

A few weeks ago I was ‘up all night’ due to a stomach upset. I was probably awake/up every hour and barely got any sleep. I had to work that afternoon so got a grandad to look after my child in the morning so I could sleep first. If I’d had to have worked first thing I would have called in sick. You can’t work properly on no sleep. I couldn’t think straight.

It depends. Theres’s a difference between having a bad nights sleep / little sleep to having had absolutely no sleep whatsoever.

Ive called in sick for literally being up all night while feeling poorly and tending to a sick child. No way I’d be able to function at work on those occassions.

Probably depends what you do as well.

To me it means up all night ill. I thought that was universal.

when I say that I mean I’m still ill and that’s how ill I’ve been that I’ve been up all night. I’ve often been up a lot with my DC but don’t call in saying I can’t come in for that obviously. I can’t imagine being well enough for work the next day if I’ve been ill enough not to be able to sleep (apart from perhaps a cough that might have kept me awake a bit). I don’t want to be at work with someone who has that level of cold or tummy upset either and that’s how I often get ill is people coming into work quite ill

If they were up all night dancing, drinking or even just a bad night's sleep, it would not be okay. But if they were sick enough to be coughing or running to the loo all night, they should stay home with my blessing!

This is why when I call in sick I just say "I'm unwell and unable to work" and leave it at that. Someone will always judge you on whether or not they think you're ill enough to be off when it's actually none of their business what's wrong with you (and it's usually the martyr types who will say "I was up for three nights straight and still worked a 12 hour shift, man up!"). I just can't be arsed with it. I'm an adult, I'm telling you I won't be in, do with that information what you will.

When I’ve been ill and not slept I’m not dragging myself in, to be unproductive when I could get rest, get better and come back the next day (or a couple of days later) and actually be productive rather than just some performative nonsense of just showing my face.

I sometimes experience insonmia where I might be tossing and turning all night and it's only the early hours when I can get to sleep. Like 5 or 6. I'm not able to work like that because litterlt there's two days going into one. It's hard.

I'm ok a lot of the time.

I have severe insomnia. I exist on 2 hours sleep a night, every night. Sometimes I don't even get that. I still have to go to work full time and be a single parent to DS(10).

When I commuted into an office I would have wfh or called in sick (before wfh was a thing) if I'd not slept the night before because the commute was at least 20 miles of motorway and I do not want to drive that distance, that speed on no sleep.

Now I wfh permanently, I would not. I would just do the day of work and perhaps take a lunchtime nap or go back to bed early after my day was done.

I think being up all night from being ill is different from having a bad nights sleep. It can completely drain you physically as well as just being tired, in which case phoning in sick is fine. If they are phoning in sick just because they haven’t been able to sleep then that is different and they are being cfs. If I phoned in sick every time I had a bad night and was tired I’d never be in work as I have young DC.

This

It's nobody business as to what you're sick with.

I had a day off recently when I had spent the previous evening and night sitting in A&E with my elderly mother. I had had literally no sleep and a very difficult experience with my Mum asking me the same questions over and over for hours.

Should I have gone to work?