Why oh why do people turn up to work when they’re poorly?! 😡😡😡

[slippedawaylikeabottleofwine]

I hate it. My colleague turned up, whinged about how sick she felt for two hours, then threw up in the middle of the carpet and went home. She admitted she’d been feeling poorly all weekend. There’s no excuse for it

Because most places don't pay, and sick pay is even harder to get!

The other side of the coin is the people who take sick time at every opportunity with ailments that other people come to work with

As she has good sick pay, and incidentally few employers are as generous, probably a combination of the Bradford Factor and a general NHS culture of dragging yourself in unwell.

it used to drive me CRAZY as a a manager in nhs. Staff would come in and pass stuff on, not just putting patients at risk but taking out half the department in the process.

Thats good its never happened to you.

It does happen though. Been a few times over the years where ive been sick into my hand and only just made it to the toilet 😩

i know the bloody brave little NHS soldiers! I'd "brave little soldier' them!

Its a very common symptom of Norwalk aka norovirus or winter vomitting

Or your colleagues won't believe you are really ill and will bitch about you until you come back

Some people are just determined to be heroes, and care not whether they infect others.

Different if no sick pay or under some sort of management threat, obvs.

I presume the most obvious answer is pay. A lot of places only pay statutory sick pay now and if you're on the bones of your arse anyway a few days without pay can really tip you over the edge.

My last job had paid sick leave but people still used to martyr themselves. Probs thought they were indispensable.

She should have stayed away, vomiting in a public place on the carpet is vile. If you are that sick, you stay home.

I know Ive seen DP a few times go from fine just a bit green to within minutes shoving past me as hes running to the bathroom 😩

That poor lady 😔I hope she's recovering and taking it easy. I doubt she did this deliberately. Some sickness comes in waves. You'll feel okay-ish on your way in and then sometimes the sight of the entrance to work can make you come over feeling ultra queasy, ie thinking about the work day ahead. I speak from experience (I never threw up, though) and felt like death warmed over for the whole day.

You can't always tell if someone is telling the truth or not and just 'pulling a sickie'. Some people just need a day or two off. But abuse is rife and therefore trust is low, so people end up coming in despite knowing fully well they shouldn't.

Sickness absence policies

I hate it when people are clearly ill in work too, however I’ve had to do it myself.
Have you looked up your Trust’s sickness absence policy. In mine if you have 10+ days or 3 episodes of sickness in 6 months, you can be bounced into a formal Stage 1 sickness review. That’s scary for some people and they do as much as they can to avoid it.

Morning sickness? I was perfectly okay at home so went to work. An hour or so later I was quite sick though fortunately made it to the toilets in time.

It might not be a contagious bug. Expand your mind a little.

My original point was that very few people actually want to be in work when they feel unwell. So if she’s dragged herself in it’s either because she can’t afford to lose money, workplace sickness policies or workplace attitude/culture on taking sick days.

I'd imagine it's because your workplace has limitations on how much sick leave someone can take and they can't afford to risk their job security or lose pay.

or she's a pain in the arse...

Because she thought she was feeling better got some breakfast and all went to the carpet.
Sometimes people think they just have been over a virus/sickness to realise in a bad and embarrassing way that they weren't.

Because you're made to feel like you are letting your colleagues down if you do take a day off sick.

You might get 6 months full pay but you’ll have targets around sickness whereby you’ll be put on a warning, so can’t just be off without penalty as you’re inferring.

If she works for the NHS she really should know better.

My friend’s a senior nurse and went to Aldi when she was very ill with flu ‘just to get out of the house,’ and couldn’t comprehend why an elderly lady confronted her about it.

Ignorance is not bliss and can potentially be very dangerous.

Employees turn up to work sick because taking sick days is frowned upon by many companies and a lot of the time employers assume the employees are skiving on these ‘sick days’

In a company I worked in a few years ago, when they were making people redundant, the amount of sick days a person had taken was taken into account when deciding between people

One of the directors in that same company who had been there 20years had never taken a sick day but came in sick one day and ended up making everyone else in the same room as him sick as well, around 15 people…..completely ridiculous

In another company when one of my work colleague too a couple of days off sick, the Director was openly talking about him and saying he didn’t believe he was sick at all !

And you really wonder why some people don’t take sick days !