People coming to work sick

[MeredithGrey1]

A woman I work with came in yesterday looking absolutely dreadful and saying she’d had a rubbish weekend because her kids had been sick Saturday. After about an hour she threw up in her desk bin and dashed to the toilet, and then went home.

For context, we get paid sick pay and our manager is lovely and doesn’t guilt trip or try to get you to come in when you’re ill.

Am I being fair to be a bit annoyed she came in? She achieved nothing because half the time she was here she had her head in her hands saying how rough she felt. It’s pretty unpleasant to have someone throw up in the office, and she could have passed it on to other people. However, I mentioned this to my other half this morning and he said he didn’t see a problem with it, that it showed a “good work ethic” and that he would do the same! I know I have a slight tendency to be a bit of a germaphobe but am I being unreasonable to feel like you shouldn’t come to work if you’re ill like that?

Your manager might be lovely about it but what’s your HRs policy? Lots of places will pull you into meetings if you’re sick for more than the officially approved number of days. Perhaps she’s experienced that in a previous job and doesn’t want to lose this one?

YANBU. People constantly going into public places with sickness is one of my hates.

I am also a germophobe though so probably no help.

YANBU!!!! I hate when people come to work and spread the infection..I absolutely hate it!

I'm off sick now as one of the women in the office came in coughing and full of snot insisting she is not contagious anymore...well she was! I'm now on antybiotics coughing my lungs out and worrying I will pass it on to toddler DS and DH..

You can take time off sick until you are actually sick.
She wasn't knowingly sick until until she threw up in the bin.

Schools and work places are quite clear on their own guidelines re being off for d&v type illnesses (I.e.48hrs clear before returning etc) and it only relates to the person affected, not other members of the house hold who have not (yet) been sick.

I know someone who was made redundant. He was told that it was between him and one other colleague. They were almost completely even, but my acquaintance had taken half a day more sick leave than the other, so they picked him! I don’t even know how (if?) that’s legal.

I have worked in places where they really frown on taking sick leave. They would rather you threw up in the bin (not envy).

If she thought she was coming down with it then she shoukd not have come in, but its possible she thought she felt dreadful due to the exhaustion of looking after sick children.

She was between a rock and a hard place, wasn't she? She didn't feel good, her family had been ill, but she herself didn't have any objective symptoms that justified her time off at the time she was coming to work. You can't take time off for "my children were ill all weekend and I don't feel too good now". As soon as she herself was unwell, she went home, which was the right thing to do.

I had to take extended leave from work last year due to caring for my sick mother. I ended up with 6 months off work. I just walked out of work one day and phoned up to say I couldn't come to work and I didn't know when I could come back. They were fantastic with me, and when I said I couldn't return to my job, because my mother was too ill, they have me a different job with less hours. I feel that I have to prove myself, that I'm not a shirker, that I'm not flakey. So when I have a migraine (a chronic condition they are well aware of) I still drag myself in to work and work through it. Ok, I'm not firing on all cylinders, but I'm there, I'm just about functional, with my meds, and I'm working. I have a stinking cold virus that hit me suddenly yesterday. I feel grim. I have work tomorrow. I'm in bed today, I'll decide whether I go in tomorrow or push work back until Thursday, because fortunately my work is flexible enough that I can do that. But I won't phone in sick.

People don't always have the choices that you assume that they have. They aren't necessarily being selfish. They may have complex reasons for going to work while they are sick. If we didn't penalise absence in the way that we do, they probably wouldn't.

You can take time off sick until you are actually sick. She wasn't knowingly sick until until she threw up in the bin

OP said she’d come in looking, and no doubt feeling dreadful. Considering she’d been caring for sick kids all weekend, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to work out that she’d caught it. But instead she vomits in the office and exposes everyone sitting nearby. Clever

I think it depends on the employer. Decent employers that trust their staff and have a good working relationship will not want them to come in when they're sick. They won't be productive, it doesn't give the greatest impression to customers, they are more likely to make mistakes, they will be I'll more frequently and for longer if they don't rest properly when they're ill. Plus they will spread it around. Unless someone is taking the piss (frequent absences on Fridays and Mondays for example) or they've already taken up a lot of sick leave or there is some unusually vital deadline then I think people should stay off. In this case no she hadn't thrown up yet but if her kids were throwing up all weekend and then she was feeling bad it was reasonably forseeable that she was coming down with it! She didn't achieve anything by going in

We get a disciplinary after to many instances of sick leave. You need to make sure you really are sick before "using up" an instance of sick leave.

Unfortunately, although most companies pay sick pay, they also guilt trip/intimidate employees into not taking sick leave.

My last firm would haul employees into a HR meeting after each day taken off sick and penalise those who were deemed to have taken too much sick leave by reduction in bonus/salary increases. This was a large London law firm.

As someone mentioned it's all good and well that your manager is understanding but the HR policy might not be.

In my trust they use the Bradford Factor to calculate sickness absence and this penalised short term sickness significantly over long term. Nearly everyone "chances" it when they are ill here becasue being sent home doesnt affect your bradford score. Yes its shit and means people do come in when they shouldnt but our HR policies are largely to blame.

My husband has a chronic joint condition and has 4 absences in 12 months. Total time off is 6 days in a year. He has dragged himself in on painkillers with two crutches, unable to move from his desk the whole day, requested a laptop home so he can continue working on flair ups and also put our property on the market so we can get somewhere more accessible so he can make it into work (currently live upstairs and has to step over bath to get to shower). On Thursday he received a letter saying that they were concerned about the 4 absences in a year and he would have a meeting with his boss’s boss and HR on Monday.

I get that they are following a procedure but it gets to the stage where he would be scared to take time off for flu or sickness bug because of the way they have made him feel like. The doctor has offered to sign him off numerous times but he wants to work so drags himself down two flights of stairs crawling on his hands and knees every time.

If your work would have been OK with her being off, yanbu.

Our place is awful. Someone went home because she was throwing up the other week and when she told the manager, the put her on report because her sick record was bad.

I would not want to work with someone chucking up and, if they worked in a shop, I would not want to be served by them either.

One place I worked you had to last half the day to avoid it counting. I remember one ridiculous incident with someone semi conscious with back pain on an office chair while we brought drinks of water and counted down the time with her.

YANBU. Used to work with a guy who was a real martyr about it. He would always come in anyway – had a big thing about his attendance record. If he had train issues he would still make it in even if it was hours late and he could’ve been more productive working at home with the time lost. It was the same when he was sick, coughing and sneezing and ‘battling’ through. I think he thought it impressed the senior bosses that he was so committed but they didn’t want to get ill!!

One morning he arriving, snot streaming out of his nose, eyes red and watering, sniffing and coughing every 5 seconds. Looked white as a sheet and like death warmed up. His manager took one look at him and told him to go home. He insisted he was fine and he could stay, but thanked her for caring. She said she cared more about him infecting the entire staff!! And made it clear it wasn’t a suggestion. The weird thing was he was miles ahead in his work and could probably take a week off before it caught up with him.

I wasn’t allowed to be off sick unless I was literally dying, and if I stayed off I wouldn’t get paid. Many times I dragged myself to work because I couldn’t afford to lose the money.

DH is too important to take a day off unless he’s literally incapacitated. He only gets that sick maybe once a year. If he’s capable of functioning he has to go to work.

This would annoy me too as I have to take medication to suppress my immune system and I do wish people would sometimes think about whether they should really be at work. Having said that, I also sympathise because not all employers are sympathetic and some sickness absence policies are triggered on a low number of days off, so it can be a difficult choice to make. Your manager can be lovely, but HR still have their policy and that is what causes the issue.

I have also been guilty of struggling into work on days when I have important things on, so I can't really criticise people too much.

I can never understand why we have such a culture of punishing illness in this country. I don’t mean that the chancers who have lots of Mondays and Fridays off work should just be allowed to carry on, but sometimes you see people on MN saying things like “3 days of sickness in 6 months is too much” (or something similar). I can easily see how someone could be ill 3 times in 6 months, especially in winter. Between the annual flu and norovirus outbreaks you’ve then got other assorted bugs and colds of varying severity. And if you have migraines or get cripplingly severe period pain then that could add to it.

And that’s not to mention those who are managing long term physical and mental illnesses.

YANBU, as a childminder people bring kids to me I'll all the time. Even although it's my policy not to have sick children in my setting as it means If I get sick I have to take time off from everyone unpaid, it's also not fair on the other children I look after and their parents. I do understand though, people are so scared to take anytime off work now because it's so difficult. Even if there is sick pay.

With the cohort of students I work with, they don't cope at all with change, and will go nuts if they get a relief teacher. We've had relief teachers spat on, abused, punched, and a lot of property gets damaged if routine changes. We try and take as few sick days as possible, because for one thing, it's very tough to actually get relief teachers willing to come in, so another teacher has to take ours as well as their class, and it's just not worth the fact it takes three days for them to get back into routine.

I always go in when sick and then ask to go home. I had a manager once who never believed you and you got moaned at and taken into the boardroom for a telling off when you came in the next day.
I had german measles once and he made me come in after the doctor telling me i was contagious, it was only when i drove 30 minutes and got to the office that there had been a bit of an uproar and another manager told me to go home. Maybe she's been in a situation like this before and feels she has to show shes sick even if your manager is nice

time

That’s so annoying.

Parents in all of my former workplaces didn’t get any leave entitlement for their children being sick, so they either had to take unpaid leave or holiday. I bet that’s a factor in why parents insist on bringing sick children to CM / nursery / school. It’s understandable, but so selfish.

I know and I do understand how difficult it is and have agreed to keep children who really shouldn't be with me because I feel guilty if I say no. Bit it's also unfair on the child who is sick. I have to be put and about for school pick ups etc so they have to come when really they just want to be at home on the couch or in bed.

We are allowed an emergency day for a sick child. After that you are supposed to have found someone else to look after them.