Sick days

[Belladog1]

Just wondering how many days sick you generally have per year. I'm not talking serious ailments but coughs/colds/stomach issues etc ....

I am very lucky and I'm rarely ill. I can't remember the last time I got a cold and i don't think I've taken a sick day in years. I'd have to feel really rubbish before I'd consider not going to work.

But my colleagues are very different. One lady is off a lot, at least fortnightly with headaches or a cold. She apparently takes to her bed and gets looked after by her husband. I've noticed her son takes lots of time off too for ailments and she often gets calls from the school for him to be collected as he has tummy ache. I can't help but wonder if her sickness days and staying home look great to her son who gets a day home with one mention of a poorly stomach.?

My boss often phones me to say he's woken up feeling grotty and is taking a day to stay under the duvet.

I remember as a kid trying to convince my mum i was sick. She would sit on the bed, pull a silly face and if I giggled she'd say 'I think you're well enough to go to school', and off I'd go. But, even today, as a middle aged woman, I still feel guilty, almost like I'm lying, if I need a day off sick.

We don’t get paid sick where I work so I’m not losing £150 a day staying home with a cold!!

We don’t get paid sick where I work. I literally can’t afford to lose £150 a day staying at home sick. Lots of people are in the same boat. It’s crap, but we don’t have a choice.

So you'd rather make people ill? That is incredibly selfish.

Disgusting.

My father died because he picked up an illness from my SIL, who got ill at work.

Would they step in and pay my bills? Nope
Not going would mean losing the entire conference which was worth a full mortgage payment and more - I don't think so.

I’m a self employed hygienist. I don’t work I don’t get paid. Patients come to see me all the time when sick. They cough all over me. They either don’t want to cancel as they don’t want to wait weeks for another appointment or, as in one of my jobs, they’ll get charged if they cancel short notice (not my fault. I don’t make the rules). There was a thread on here recently about going to the dentist ill and the consensus was, tough shit. People are going to go to the dentist ill so all dental professionals need to suck it up. So yeah as a result I catch lots of colds. So I should expect to be taking off WEEKS or even MONTHS a year should I because i have a slight cold? All unpaid?? Don’t be ridiculous. Not only will I end up losing my house, the patients will be waiting MONTHS to get another appointment if I was constantly cancelling them.

Tell you what. You find me a lovely cushty office job where I can work from home or get paid sick pay, I’ll happily stay home if I so much as sneeze.

Ps- I’ve also had to go in to work while having miscarriages. I’ve bled through my uniform and needed to rush getting changed while patients were complaining I was running late. 🤷‍♀️ I’m not sure what you want me to do? Cancel them all and they’ll complain. Run late they complain. Come in and you’re still complaining. Health professionals just cannot win.

Fucking hell, it wasn't a personal attack.

I personally cancel the dentist if I'm ill, and my last appointment was cancelled by my dentist because they were ill.

I guess I though health professionals would understand the risk of spreading illnesses and vulnerable people and not take such an uppity attitude when challenged.

What you are failing to take onboard @QuietComet is self employed people cannot afford to take days off sick.

I work part time employed and part time self employed. A chunk of both goes into a pot for sick days and unexpected days off.

Self employed people absolutely can afford to take sick days, some just don't plan them in.

But there’s a difference in what people do as their self employed-ness. I work 10 inches from people’s open mouths. Up to 15 people a day right in my face. Yes I wear a mask but as we all learned from Covid (and what health workers knew long before) that masks don’t protect you fully. Especially when people are coughing it lingers in the air for a while after. I do need to take that mask off occasionally.

If I worked self employed as an IT consultant working from home, I wouldn’t come into much contact with people and therefore am unlikely to get sick as often. So I’m sure I could easier afford to “save” for the odd day off from a job like that.

Sorry but my wages just do not allow me to save enough to “cover” a few months off work a year potentially. Trust me I do not get paid enough for that. As well as not getting any holiday pay or pension benefits. I need to save for both of those things as well.

Also do you think any of us ENJOY going to work ill? I’d much rather be sitting at home under a blanket rather than trying desperately not to have a coughing fit or having snot run down my face into my mouth behind my mask. Honestly, I promise you, I do not enjoy that.

My self employed role has me 30-40cm from my clients faces.

I cancelled most of my January appointments due to illness.

I live as frugally as possible as I don't want to be caught out when I have to take unexpected time off. This means that I will have to take less holidays this year, but so be it.

Anyway, have a lovely day, I understand you think you have it worse than everyone else, but it's unlikely that you do x

3-4 days in total over the last 7 or so years. But I appreciate that I am just lucky I don’t often get ill. If I had as many as colleague though I would have been out the door a long time ago

Don’t be one of those martyrs that doesn’t take sick days for the good of the company. If you died in crash on the way to work, there would be a job advert out by end of the day. Everyone is replaceable at work.

Oh I definitely don’t think I have it the worst. For a job that gets the worst deal with illness? Teacher in my opinion.

My point is though that you’re calling people disgusting and selfish. I’m telling you why a lot of people have no choice! And that it’s not because they actually want to do it!

By the way I don’t really want to live as frugally as possible. I actually quite fancy enjoying life a bit as well. I don’t live purely to clean teeth then go home and repeat daily!

I think you're missing my point. Perhaps my father would be alive today if my SILs colleague had stayed at home and lost a day's earnings.

My father's life is more important than 150 quid.

I DO feel guilty, silly or like I’m lying if I take a day off sick.

I’m not ill that often and have the option to wfh so if I just want to sit at my desk at home with Vicks under my nose and a blanket but am still able to work I’ll opt for that, and that probably impacts how many sick days I actually take.

But that being said if I’m ill ill then I’ll call in sick, I spent days in my early 20’s feeling like death at work because I didn’t want to look bad and wasn’t sure what the sick pay was and I was skint. No one ever said I should maybe go home (I remember once I even passed out) and no one ever thanked me for dragging myself there.

How did your SIL pass on the illness? Why didn’t she isolate away from your father when she was sick? Sadly it’s because you can pass viruses on without having symptoms. I do know this. So yes maybe if your SIL hadn’t caught that illness your father would have lived longer. Then maybe he’d have caught another virus from another family member who didn’t know they were ill. Viruses have always been around and always will be. If they were only passed on when obviously sick it would be much easier to contain them.

Honestly, if you want to start a campaign for full sick pay for EVERYONE from day one, both employed and self employed, I’d back you. I promise you I would happily stay home if I could get paid. But I can’t risk losing my home because I have a runny nose. If I’m too sick to work I won’t work. But with a cold? As in a runny nose and a cough? Absolutely I need to keep working.

Also I guess you’ll need to campaign for parents to have full pay as well for when their kids are ill. So a single mother with 3 kids in a high paid role could potentially need 3 months off a year. If each child is ill at different times for 3 weeks a year and the woman herself catches it. Could even be up to 6 months in a bad year. And if that woman was a GP or similar they’d need to pay whoever is covering her as well. I really can’t see the government happily paying for every single person full wages to stay home just because they/their kids have a runny nose. It really isn’t feasible.

My father was staying with her and she isolated as much as possible. They had separate bathrooms and she didn't use the kitchen or living room. As you can imagine, she is more than distraught.

We'll agree to disagree on the rest. I just find it scary that a health professional values money more than peoples lives.

I find it ironic that you're asking why my sil didn't isolate, when you yourself say you don't take time off when you're ill and you are very up close and personal with your clients. Talk about double standards!

Anyway, speaking to you is like speaking to a brick wall.

It's institutional ableism. Also leads to more staff getting ill because people come in whilst unwell to avoid being hauled into sickness trigger meetings.

How is it double standards? I’m not disagreeing that mixing when sick passes it on. I know full well how viruses spread. Hence why I know how I catch them all from sick patients. I didn’t say she had to isolate. You are the ones worried about it spreading not me. If I was worried about spreading or catching an illness I would isolate. But sadly that’s not the real world most of the time so I don’t and neither do others. That’s the way of the world. I accept I will get ill from others and that unfortunately I may also pass illness on.

The reality is - there are hard working people who work even if not 100% and lazy people who take any opportunity to stay home as soon as they feel a bit unwell. It reflects on the way they work, do the bare minuimum or strive for the best they can do. I am not talking about people genuinely sick just people taking a day off if they are a bit under the weather. Some organisations are better than others in hiring and retaining high performing ambitious people and it’s just an amazing environment to work in if you are one of them. Others seem to be full of mediocre people who do the bare minimum and it’s so easy to spot. Each one to their own ofc, people like the op will be miserable in being lazy. Unfortunately in same cases lazy ppl affect all us, as the slow admin at the nhs or at the post office but normally nothing dramatic.

Between 2020 and now ive had 8 sick says one was a whole 5 day week and one i went back to work after 3 days as had stuff to do even tho i felt rough - both times covid.

Obviously it’s awful about your father, but lots of people literally can’t afford not to be able to pay the bills or put food on the table on the off chance they pass something on to someone who then passes it on to a vulnerable person!
If we’re being brutally honest, your SIL should not have visited your father while she had flu. It wasn’t the fault of the person who gave her the flu.

What makes you think she visited him?

Is rather not pay my bills and go to food banks than potentially kill someone.

Whether she visited him, he visited her or whatever else might have happened, they were still in contact with each other when she had flu, which could have been avoided. Sorry, but however sad it is at what's happened, it's true.
I also don't believe for one second you'd rather go into arrears on your bills and use a foodbank than go to work with the sniffles on the one in a million chance you'd pass something on that killed someone.

I've been on the breadline, living off tins of kidney beans and bread, and not gone into work because I was ill and in a public-facing role.

Anyway, thanks for the assumptions and shaming my SIL.

U take care hun