People coming into work sick

[TheGrinchIsComingToTown]

WHY? WHYYYY?!

Just a moan. Turn up this morning and the girl who's been on holiday for the last week is coughing and sneezing all over us all. It's 9 days until Christmas you utter idiot, why risk making us all sick?

(We all get paid sick pay, so she could have stayed off)

I’m sure there are some limits or restrictions on your sickness policy though otherwise some people would be ringing in sick regularly!

If you can WFH there are no excuses.

@Dezember as long as there's no pattern (I.e., every Monday, every Friday), they tend not to question you. She was unwell and shouldn't have been in work.

I had a cold on and off for 2 months this year. It would be really unreasonable to expect anyone to miss work for that length of time. Probably get fired. Tis the season and I think it’s pretty inevitable for most people to catch something. Dd goes in with a runny nose because she has one from September till January. When did we start thinking getting a cold during the winter isn’t inevitable. It’s been happening forever, it’s totally normal.

@TheGrinchIsComingToTown if your bosses are REALLY that laissez faire about people going off sick then why don’t you have a team discussion about sickness absence next time your manager meets with you all? if people have moved from another company where the expectation was that you come in unless at deaths door, then it’s hard to move to somewhere where they accept that people should be able to take off when sick….sometimes people need to be explicitly told by a manager to take care of themselves and other team members.

It's not my responsibility to stop her getting us all sick though?

Out of interest what is your policy? assume you don't use the Bradford scale or similar but you must have some policy?

@TorroFerney we have a score but nothing is ever done about it. As long as you're not taking the piss, it's fine

Well don’t come here and grinch about it if you don’t want to get involved or tell her directly! There lots of people on this thread who’ve explained why people do come in when ill.

@Dezember and none of them have very good reasons for it? It's not okay and I thought Covid taught people that

A cold. The leaflet from school says if they're well enough and don't have a temperature they can go to school

If every person where I worked went off with a cough and sneezing the place would be empty! We get paid sick leave but won’t leave each other in the lurch. The business does need to keep running and a cold isn’t really going to floor most people

No one wants to catch a cold but it's part of being a human

I have got a rotten cold but wouldn"t phone in sick for it.

Where I work, repeated absence starts a sickness absence management process that can result in my dismissal. This is not a small cowboy employer: there are over 2000 staff.

This is not the first place I've worked at with such a rule. Both Sainsbury's and the Coop have systems like this.

It's perfectly reasonable to be scared of the "big bosses" when they can fire you.

Why?

you would have thought nhs would learn some lessons from covid as regards sickness policy
but NO

may be she felt worse being at work
do you get full pay when off sick

Well, until there are redundancies....

Neither would I, but I'd rather not be on the dole more, so off to work with my cold I go.

just keep washing your hands op and open a window

@TorroFerney they won't sack someone for taking one sick day

This is why OP.

There's a version of this sort of thing in most offices.

Mostly your risk of disrupting someone else's Xmas by passing it on isn't as big a concern as ending up in fucking disciplinary.

Take it up with the unions 🤷‍♀️

I agree actually. We're all better educated on transmission of these things since COVID, and to come in while sneezing and coughing everywhere seems very selfish. Some colleagues have vulnerable family, so if colleague catches it, then the consequences for them are significant. Equally, other colleagues have trips to take to visit family over Christmas and catching it might also ruin their Christmas.

It's got to the point at my workplace where you can't even mention that someone is ill - you have to pretend they're not coughing their guts up in front of you and pretend you're more than willing to sit in a small meeting room with them with no windows open.

Awful and ridiculous.

It's not one sick day though is it? If you want people to stay at hone if they're coughing and sneezing. My son has had what can only be described as a phlegmy cough for weeks.

It was annoying before covid too. Come in, sit there doing nowt and looking like death warmed up, complain about how awful you feel then piss off home at lunchtime having infected everyone.