.. to send this message to my knobhead of a boss about a day's sick leave yesterday?

[Bluestocking]

Background; I get terrible menstrual migraines. These are much less frequent now that I'm perimenopausal, but I do still get the occasional one. i got one yesterday and knobhead boss sent me an email with "are you feeling better?" in subject line and no text.
Can I send this or is it too fighty?

Dear (knobhead boss)
Yes, thanks, I am feeling much better today.

I was sorry to learn that you said yesterday to (knobhead boss?s PA) that I?d phoned in sick ?again?, loudly enough for other colleagues to overhear. I looked back at my sickness record for this calendar year (which I cut and pasted into my message ? 5 days since January) and while it?s not perfect, I don?t think it?s anything out of the ordinary. As I?m sure you are aware, I am rarely actually ill, but am occasionally incapacitated by migraines. I realise that it?s inconvenient for you when this happens, but believe me, it?s far worse than inconvenient for me. I would much, much rather spend the day at work than spend it prone in a darkened room with an excruciating headache, nausea and dizziness. As I?ve suffered from monthly migraines for most of my adult life, I?ve probably wasted a full year of my life in this way; this is a matter of considerable regret to me.

I have, as you know, had a consultation with Occupational Health (February 2013) about sick leave associated with migraines. If you think I should go back for another discussion, I would be more than happy to do so.

Regards
Bluestocking

Draconian sick leave policies are a sign of a poorly managed company.

If someone is taking excessive sick leave and/or the amount of sick leave is affecting their work, management should step in.

People get ill. People not able to take sick leave means they come to work and make everyone else ill.

Fucking stupid.

There are several large companies in the United States that have no sick leave policy or holiday leave allotment. Instead they hire people they trust and let them take what they need and use good management if someone starts taking advantage.

I work in the nhs and if those 5 days where all separate occasions you would have been on a disciplinary before now.

Shelly it just seems a really unreliable and unfair way to measure this. Someone could go five years without a single day sick and then take five separate chunks of sickness in a single six month period due to basically, bad luck. Unfortunate, yes, but it doesn't mean they are abusing the system.

Averages, by their nature, take no account of these extremes at either end of the curve.

Managers, if they are managing properly, should be able to gauge whether they trust their employees based on their record, performance and the reasons they are providing for sick leave. Plucking a random number of days based on a national average and then penalising people who for whatever reason fall outside this curve just seems an astonishingly heavy handed and unreliable way to do this.

Also, as numerous people have pointed out, making people feel they have to come into work regardless of how sick they are in order to hit their quota (or not hit their quota) seems a really effective way to make the workplace into a petri dish of contagion.

5 days in 8 months is considered bad! that's shocking.

My ds1-18 [was a student til last week] works at Sports Direct part time and has only cancelled one shift in 13 months due to a bad ear ache which made him feel nauseous. He phoned up the supervisor he had a number for and left a message, plenty of notice.

He was told, aggressively, when he turned in the next time [the next day] he would be issued with a warning if they found him out to be lying [ie on the lash with his mates].

For the record SD are not the best Employer, in my opinion

Migraines are completely debilitating though, it's not like a cold where you can struggle on. You can't.

However, if you do have an on going condition you need to find a way with your employer to work around that, so perhaps flexi hours to make up the work on other days, or work around your triggers - so if it is monitor use for example your employer would compromise on the amount of computer work you do.

I'm another one who suffers from pre-menstual migraines where I have to have the day off work. Luckily I have very understanding bosses. Holidaysarenice I work in the NHS and have never had a disciplinary due to my sick leave (probably one day a month)

Quesadilla - that is exactly how I used to manage my small business of 9 employees. It worked brilliantly. We trusted them, they trusted me. When they were genuinely ill we were supportive and flexible, as they were of us.

Then we got a new starter who totally took the piss. Odd days off here and there, would brag about going out drinking then phone in sick with d&v etc

We desperately tried to deal with it in our same way, supportive if she had genuine tummy problems etc. nope, she got worse. Other staff get fed up of covering her. When we tried to discipline her we were told by Acas we have to measure sickness in order to identify levels above and beyond which we deem acceptable. In my workplace, along with their consideration, that has been set at 50 on the Bradford index.

I would much rather manage the business in the way I used to. Where a very long term employee was diagnosed with cancer and we paid him full salary for a number of years until his untimely death in recognition of everything he'd done for us in addition to ensuring his widow wasn't left short.

(not sure about etiquette of hi-jacking one's own thread?)
I had a fantastic sick-leave piss-taker in my team at my last job. Classics included needing a day off after a weekend spent training as a crystal therapist (apparently it was Emotionally Draining) and a day off after attending a wedding fair (also Emotionally Exhausting).

5 days since Jan is loads, particularly if only taken one day at a time.

Like it or not, most companies use a series of deciding factors when imposing rounds of enforced redundancy, and after performance measure, the sick leave is usually the next criterion. HR departments have a formula (I forget the name), which, in summary, says that if you've had 5 days consecutively, that will rank significantly lower than 5 single days. Fridays and Mondays as single days score even lower.

If you aren't worried about losing your job, no problem. But if you would be seriously inconvenienced by job loss, you should be realistic about the vulnerable position you are in by taking regular sick days.

I was very very ill recently, at a time
I had to go into London to hold 3 x days of 12 hour meetings. There genuinely was no one other than me who could do it and the people coming for the meetings were flying over specially (long haul). I dragged myself there (1.5 hour commute each way) and got through it. But I am a single mum and losing my job is not an option.

As someone who owns a co pay, I would consider this amount of sick too much consistently, if you have the equivalent a day off every six weeks over the course of two years without a doctors note I would assume you did not value your job.

As for the email....i would give you a warning, confrontational and disrespectful.

Company! Bloody iPad!

I think migraine can be tricky, because some people abuse the term and say they've got a migraine when it's just a headache. Like saying they have flu when it's just a virus. Migraine can be devastating and difficult to treat, and flu is a serious acute illness. But people throw the words around so no wonder there is scepticism.

"Confrontational and disrespectful"?
Compared with the shit I get from him, it's polite, considered and diplomatic.

But to repeat.

I. DIDN'T. SEND. THE. FRIGGING. EMAIL.

And.

You have convinced me that I am a workshy, malingering fraud, who is lucky still to have a job.

What does he do to you?

Someone made an interesting point about whether or not this was mentioned at the start of your employment.

If you informed them that you were susceptible to menstrual migraines, they can't really be arsy that you do, in fact, suffer from menstual migraines.

But MotherOfDragon surely there can be perfectly valid reasons for "this much" sick leave - such as these migranes ? People do seem to forget that fact ?
It seems very unfair to conclude "you did not value your job"

Also I thought you didn't need/ couldn't get a "doctor's note" for single/ 2 day sickness absences. I thought they were required for longer absences only ?

Juggling - that's why I mentioned the doctors note, my sister has migraines and has been prescribed medication, she took them to work to how her boss as she was worried he would think she was just messing about. I guess I expect as much openness as possible without being intrusive. If they are that frequent the doctor would do something surely?

I get an average of 3 migraines each month, clustered around my period. The advent of decent medication ( I use rizatriptan) has been a massive help, and I can usually struggle through a working day feeling dazed and confused, but at least not puking and clutching my head. I have also found going down to 3 days a week has helped as my migraines thoughtfully seem to occur on my first day off after the 3 days. On the odd occasion where I wake up to a full blown migraine - I take the medication immediately, ring in and say I will be a bit late, and then stagger in later and work late to make it up. I have a very good work ethic and put in a lot of extra hours anyway, so nobody questions this.

Migraines have been blighting my life since I was 11 years old, but you do learn to live with them in the end. So happy there is medication that works now.

I would much, much rather spend the day at work than spend it prone in a darkened room with an excruciating headache, nausea and dizziness

How are you sitting in front of a bright computer screen if you have a migraine? That's probably making it a lot worse to be fair. I couldn't be anywhere near TVs or computers when I suffered migraines.

Migraine is dreadful, and there are people on this thread who've clearly had the good luck never to have one. My sister has terrible ones - she ended up in A&E being given morphine once, because she collapsed in agony at work and someone called an ambulance. Hers are classed as a disability for Equality Act purposes and her employers have to discount them for their automatic referral processes for sick leave (3 single days off in a year where she works and you're on to a first stage disciplinary warning).

I get them too but mercifully less badly than she does - mine are controlled by medication if I take the pills the instant I realise one is coming on. But if I don't get to the pills in time I couldn't possibly work through one: I get the full bells and whistles migraine with aura, visual disturbances, limbs going numb, and the last couple have been aphasic as well - I've been able to think in sentences but not get the words out in the right order. The first time I had one of those my DH thought I was having a stroke.

Oh, and for those on this thread who think migraine sufferers are trying it on to get extra sick leave, I've had one day off sick in ten years. I get migraine at the end of a period of stress, so it tends to hit at the weekend and the beginning of holidays.

You have convinced me that I am a workshy, malingering fraud, who is lucky still to have a job

Unfortunately, Bluestocking, this is some of the attitude you will get on here .

Re. your letter, I actually thought it was pretty good (apart from the wasting a year-of-your-life-stuff, which comes over as a bit melodramatic and angry, even if its true and you do feel that way). So, if you pruned it correctly, it might be a good email to send ...

I also think its important that you have the support re. Occupational Health. I have never had a migraine in my life, but I know that unless you are a 100% healthy person (and not all of us are), the workplace can be a difficult place to navigate.

MotherOfDragon Thu 22-Aug-13 20:58:01
Juggling - that's why I mentioned the doctors note, my sister has migraines and has been prescribed medication, she took them to work to how her boss as she was worried he would think she was just messing about. I guess I expect as much openness as possible without being intrusive. If they are that frequent the doctor would do something surely?

DP has migraines, and used to get them in clusters. He had different meds, that didn't work well, he saw a neurologist, who couldn't really help him any more than his GP could. He now takes sumatriptan as soon as he feels one coming on, but if he's even a little late in taking it, it doesn't work.

However, he was prescribed Amytriptiline after being diagnosed with depression, and one side effect of these is that it seems to work in reducing the number/severity of migraines. He's definitely had far fewer since taking this medicine, so much so that his GP is okay with him taking a small "maintenance" dose to help him keep the number of migraines down.

On the other hand, I know 2 people who have severe migraines, and there's very little that can be done for them as they react to most of the available meds. Sadly the doctors can't always "do something".