To think that if someone is off sick from work they should not fly to Oz

[Loveweekends10]

A colleague is off sick at the moment. She will be off for 6 months. She has written on Facebook that she is flying off to Oz for a holiday for a month during her absence.
AIBU to be a bit peed off by it.

People don't get signed off for 6 months with a cold though, so presumably she has a serious illness? In which case, if she's able to go on holiday it doesn't necessarily follow that she's well enough to be at work. Without knowing the circs it's hard to say if she is BU or if you are. But if she's off with, say, cancer, and is going to stay with relatives as part of her recovery, why on earth shouldn't she?

Yep, YABU, none of your business.

Depends on the illness - can someone with cancer not have a holiday between treatment sessions? Can someone with depression not go to the sunshine or be with their family? I'm sure it will have been cleared with both their doctor and boss...

don't make your life smaller by wasting time getting peed off about something that will not make any difference to you.

Depends what her illness is.
If it's stress/ depression or something like cancer, the 6 months away will probably be healing for her.

YABU, if someone is off for something like depression, then it is sensible to do things that gets them back to good health, like getting away from it all for a bit or getting some daylight/sunshine etc, exerciseing, whatever!

YABU but I can see why your immediate, unthinking reaction would be annoyance.

I can see why you'd initially think but as soon as you stop to think about it, then it's quite easy to see that one has nothing to do with the other.

Sounds like the perfect tonic.

Well, maybe, anyway. If she's off with a bad back and has booked a climbing holiday then yes, I'd be well about it - but cancer, depression, stress and a million and one other things - no, anything she can possibly do to make herself better or feel better then she should go for it, not sit at home feeling miserable for the sake of it.

It may be entirely justified, theraputic and indicate nothing of note to challenge the doc's opinion.

But to publishing it on facebook where her workplace can get wind of it and jump to potentially highly prejudiced and negative conclusions that carry a risk of repucussions, was a really bad idea.

It depends what's wrong with her and why she was signed off.

A former colleague of mine was once signed off long-term sick with "stress" (A lot of people didn't believe it in the first place, I didn't know her well enough to judge).

Almost two years later, when she was still being paid by the company's insurance scheme, she was on Facebook posting lots of holiday snaps from all over the world and saying how happy she was.

I believe her employment and sick pay were terminated fairly soon afterwards...

Unless you know the reasons for her absence, and know that they are incompatible with her choice of holiday, YABU, mind your own business.

YANBU. This kind of thing made me furious. People off sick going on holidays, attending football matches, going to the theatre and so on. It helped their stress. While the rest of us picked up the extra work and got more stressed.

I guess what I didn't add was that my workload has doubled because of the absence and it just sort of rubs salt into a wound.

YABU it's an understandable knee jerk reaction, but when your actually stop and think about it, if she is that I'll she needs to be off work for 6 months - she needs your support not your judgement or perhaps jealousy?

If she is providing medical certs and has discussed with her manager and HR then I think it is fine. If someone is well enough to fly to Australia, personally, unless there are exceptional circumstances I would expect them to be well enough for work. If they are so ill they need 6 months off, they would not be covered by insurance so it is silly.

then it's the fault of your employer for not providing adequate cover, not the person who is off sick

Not surprised you are grumpy then. But like everyone says, it depends why she's signed off. What's your boss doing about reallocating workload? Maybe you need to have a word, not fair or sustainable if you have to do two people's jobs.

I went on holiday while signed off from work. It really helped with my recovery to get away from home.

I'm sorry that you have extra workload due to her absense. My work colleagues had the same experience as there were no extra funds for cover. All of them, however, would rather be in the position of having to cover extra work, than be as ill as I was.

My HR department said to me that just because someone is off sick it does not mean they are on house arrest and part of the recovery is getting out.

However they also said that if (for example) someone is off with an injured foot and they are seen playing football then that is not acceptable.

It really depends why she is off.

I think you should negotiate with work how they will compensate you for the extra 6 months work

SOunds like your employer is being utterly U, demand that they provide proper cover otherwise you'll be the next person needing signing off!

Your workload and her illness/holiday are two separate things.

Her activities aren't your business. But you should ask to discuss your increased workload and how to manage it.

YABU.

If you are struggling with your increased workload, take it out on the person who you really should have a grievance with, your manager.

Every firm should have a back up plan for people signed off work, which isn't just to put every other worker under unmanagable stress.

My DP couldn't carry out his job after having an operation on his knee, but it didn't stop us from going on holiday, he swam every day, which aided his recovery.

It depends on your colleagues illness doesn't it really. Do you know what it is? You should be blaming your work for not providing cover rather than blaming your colleague.

How come UK docs can be so precise and predict 6 months as being the minimum required ?

It depends so much on how an individual reacts to any course of treament doesn't it? What side effects they do or don't suffer, the excellent (or not so much) recovery a specific treament tried works.

Even after op or specific serious illness I don't think you get fixed lumps of time like that here, it is more an ongoing process of short sign offs, random unnounced in home checks to make sure you are there and not off gallivanting etc.

Have to say since they insitgated the new system you get a lot more civil servants actually at their desk. But Italy did have a bloody awful situation where the sick pay system was flagrantly abused by so very many for so very long. I don't remember the UK having anything like such a problem, so maybe that's why they can do "bigger blocks of time" sign offs rather than little bits that can be extended as needed. Some might piss take but, if it isn't abused in a widespread manner adopting the system now used here would probably just result in adding an unnessassary layer of cost.