To wonder about this person calling in sick at peak time

[bestfakesmile]

Had a crazy busy week at work with a major project on. One of our team who has been very involved in all the planning for this project and was supposed to be supervising the completion of it has been off sick for the entire week with a cold. This has put massive pressure on our team, we would have been stretched even with that person, so without them it’s been very difficult. It has meant that everyone on our small team has had to put in loads of extra hours to cover her work between them. She could have helped out a bit by doing some work from home even if she couldn’t make it in but no.
The irony is, I know she is still going to expect the credit and the sales bonus in her pay packet this month. Even though the sales would not have been fulfilled without everyone else stepping in to do her work while she’s been off.
If the rest of us hadn’t done that work there’s no doubt we would have lost a number of important clients and that would have had a devestating impact on the business. Quite literally she would have put herself out of a job. She must be mightily naive if she hasn’t worked that one out.
Obviously it’s a time of year when coughs and colds are running riot, almost everyone I know has had something in the last month or so but most people know they can’t just drop out of life when they have a cold. But this person is the type to refuse to have a lemsip because they don’t like the taste, and won’t take a tablet either cos she can’t swallow it. It’s as if she actually enjoys being ill and wallows in it.
Personally, it would have taken hospitalisation for me not to come in to work this week. Firstly, I would feel absolutely awful if I let my colleagues and boss down at a crucial time. I don’t think I could face them afterwards knowing I’d left them in the lurch. Secondly, I’d hate to miss out on the satisfaction of completing this project that we have all worked so hard for, I could not bear to let it all go down the drain and see these clients walk away.
It feels a lot like she couldn’t be bothered or possibly couldn’t cope with the higher than usual workload this week so just bailed out and left everyone else to pick up the pieces. I’m going to find it hard to work with her when/if she manages to drag herself back in next week.

Irritateduser1960
I've worked in nursing for over 30 years, the majority in the NHS and I've never heard that. I hope you don't work in a SCBU or with immunesuppressed.

Maybe they like to wear scrubs too, what nonsense.

To be fair a company cannot continue to employ someone who is too sick to perform their duties and to make comments about the dark ages is ridiculous. People with health conditions need to be supported a different offered reasonable adjustments but if these all fail ending the employment is inevitable.

I see both sides. I have been the one dropped in the shit time after time like this. I’ve also come into work as ill as all get out & infected all my co-workers. However, as I’ve got older I’ve learned to say fuck the job. My health is far more important. However, I think the fairest would be for the boss to give an extra boost in the pay packet of those who had to cover her absence and then there’s no unfairness.

YABU. I have had to take a whole week off in the past, I would very likely have made serious mistakes if I had forced myself in (I am unable to work from home), so it's better to rest until you're back working on all cylinders

YABU really, sometimes a person can be really poorly with heavy cold, and have to blow their nose like 30 times an hour and be coughing and spitting into tissues etc.
Nobody should be infecting the rest of the team if they are ill. These things cant be helped.
If things were that tight at work then why couldnt they get someone from an agency for the week?

OP YA probably NBU

I say probably because I tend to think the best of people, and there could sadly be something we don't know which has kept this person away for a week. Its not fair though to leave your colleagues to pick up the slack at a particularly difficult time for a whole week IF its a cold

Most people in my office have had a cold in last few weeks, some have worked from home for an afternoon or maybe day but I can't imagine anyone taking longer than that because they know it will leave their team members short, and they are invested in their careers.

Remember also OP has said that everyone has had to put a lot of extra hours in as a result - can't be good for their health either!

I can't have lemsip as it might cause me to have a stroke (apparently!) So if I get a cold I can struggle in on paracetamol usually. If I had a big project and called in sick, chances are that I'm genuinely too ill to move and especially drive. Judge her when she comes back looking smug, not before. I've just been off work on Drs orders and I felt dreadful about what I missed at work and that I was letting the team down. A bad cold can be horrible and just as debilitating as flu.

You sound like a very nasty person and I'm glad I don't have to work with you. Your colleagues and team members are supposed to be supportive and you just sound bitter. Sometimes colds develop into chest infections and pneumonia.Let's hope you don't come down with something like that and someone decides to come online to trash you.

Oh, I forgot to mention...a guy I used to work with kept going with a bad cold because it was a significant project and he didn't want to let the team down. He went for a walk to get some air and I never saw him again. I believe he developed double pneumonia but whatever it was, he ended up dead from trying to work on a project with "just a cold".

I currently have a dragging cold. Can’t get out of feeling shitty and extremely tired. Only because I had a bad cold and laryngitis and took two days of home office instead of a full week of rest recommended by my GP. As a result, my fibromyalgia is now driving me half mad with pain attacks, fatigue and feeling down.
YABVU. You have no idea about this person and how sick she can be. A flu can be bad. Or would you rather have the whole team sneezing and coughing because she wanted to be a hero? She worked hard too.

Health always comes first. When I had a head injury and post concussion syndrome, I could barely concentrate enough to read and I couldn’t even write properly. I had a lot of time off and am lucky I worked from home. I then had a mental breakdown and could have been hospitalised after not sleeping for 3 weeks. For someone to suggest that I should have pulled my finger out and got on with work is absurd. You sound lovely OP, and such a delight to work with. I wonder if you are so sympathetic all the time toward sick colleagues...

Maybe the boss knew a real reason and was covering for her. If she would have lost her job if the project failed I highly doubt she would have risked that because she couldn't be bothered to pull her socks up for a week. It is much more plausible that she was genuinely ill...... maybe you don't have the best working relationship with her to start with?

I haven’t RTFT, so if I’m being irrelevant I apologise
I know it’s annoying, YANBU for that bit. We had a new project launch this week and the lady heading it was off sick leaving less senior staff in her department to deal with it. Very annoying for all involved.
But, this time last year (next week in fact), I was off for a week with “a cold/flu virus” type thing. In reality, I was having my second miscarriage and couldn’t bear to tell anyone because no one knew I was pregnant after my very public miscarriage in the September. So YABU for judging her so harshly.

Damn, I meant firing on all cylinders!

YABU

1. She may actually have been really ill. Would you have preferred she spread the germs so you were all ill?

1. I don’t know what your job is but she may have had enough of the ridiculous work load at low pay. Not worth it for her and she was just pissed off.

1. She may have personal problems which may have meant she just really needed some time to get herself back together.

Yabu!
I’m sure you would hate to think that if you were off sick that people would be moaning about you like you are her. It’s called teamwork, everyone helps everyone else!

She may well be pregnant. When I was 8 weeks gone, nobody knew, and I caught a cold. I thought I had been hit by a train. My body ached and burned, my throat was scratchy, my face felt stuffy and swollen and I was extremely fatigued. I couldn't take medicine and so the only option was to stay home from work.

I went back to work, but just a couple of days later I had a total break down due to stress and antenatal depression - I ended up in A&E with palpitations and breathlessness. I dealt with this privately and needed to take another week off work. This caused anxiety due to my feeling like everyone was saying, behind my back, that I was probably just being lazy as we had a tough time coming up at work. I didn't leave the house after working hours were up in case I bumped into someone from work. In the end, I became almost agoraphobic as I panicked about bumping into people who would be angry as, on the surface, I "look fine".

Mental health is not a joke but negative attitudes mean people don't feel comfortable talking about it. It's often not taken seriously.

You need to think about why you feel so angry. Chances are, your bosses haven't supported you as well as they could have in your colleague's absence - not her problem, I'm afraid. Your bosses should also be rewarding the staff who did extra work. Again, not her problem.

Sounds like this was one weeks work towards a much longer project drawing near completion. Unless she was off sick all the other weeks, I fail to see your right to be pissed off that she will still get her sales bonus.

How do you know just how unwell she was.

I had "just a cold" last Christmas. That was until my throat swelled up, couldn't even swallow my own saliva, went almost completely deaf with watery pus running down the sides of my face, screaming agony in my entire head/face/neck/chest, constantly coughing violently till I threw up farted and gushingly pissed myself at the same time. I didn't sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time for 2 weeks. Ended up on antibiotics and have never felt so ill before in my life. That was just one of your "colds". I could barely stand let alone have gone to work.

To be honest you sound judgemental, spiteful and yes YABVU.

You sound like a colleague of mine..... mean, nasty and spiteful. Have some compassion for someone who is ill.

You sound like a horrible person to work with

Yes there might be unknown factors of course

But people do have different thresholds of how ill they are before missing work. I'm sure there is that person at every workplace who every knows takes sick leave for the slightest sniffle. There's one at my work - he lays the ground work the day before with a bit of coughing and clearing his throat then sure enough, calls in sick the next day, funnily enough always a Monday and/or Friday. He literally has not done a clear fortnight without the odd day off. And he joked once when he was in about how 'everyone' puts on an 'ill voice' when they call in to say they're sick.
It is bloody annoying when it impacts on others, but just one of those things.

Gosh I would hate to work with you! People often say they have a cold when it is in fact a nasty viral infection which starts off like a cold and gradually worsens. I bet she feels bad enough being off at such an important time without knowing her colleagues are stabbing her in the back for it. Take a step back and find a little empathy and kindness it goes a lot further when it comes to staff loyalty than the way you are behaving!

YABU. It sounds like an incredibly high pressured environment and I wouldn’t be surprised if the pressure got too much for your colleague. Have a little empathy OP.

I think the issues here, OP, is that you don’t like your colleague.

Years ago I went through a phase where I often had time off work for all kinds of innocuous things and I couldn’t shift simple illnesses. Being anxious or working hard resulted in massive fatigue that meant I was far more susceptible to colds and other illnesses that other people would just shake off. Then I was diagnosed with Lupus and a couple of other chronic illnesses. That was what was wrong me and ignorant colleagues making uneducated and unknowledgeable assumptions just meant it was an unhappy working environment rather than a supportive one.