To think it's pure selfish to come into work full of cold barking every 2 minutes

[lilly423]

AIBU to think if your full of cold and coughing non-stop then you absolutely shouldn’t come in to work and infect everyone else? It’s pure selfishness. Colleague sits on desk attached to mine so very close to me and we share a phone. She gets paid to be off so I’m really pissed off if I’m being honest that she’s come in coughing and spluttering germs all round. I’ve got plans for over the Christmas and if I catch this because of her selfishness then it will ruin it for me. I told her she shouldn’t he here today and she just says she’s not as bad as she has been … certainly doesn’t sound that way and I’m saying it for the benefit of other staff.

You can't expect people to quarantine themselves for coughs and colds. Life has to go on

Yanbu.
But sadly it's mostly down to HR depts with punitive sickness policies.
I'm a LP and desperately try to keep healthy and can't stand sick colleagues. I'm happy to pick up the slack if they're off.

Really recommend vicks first defence for these scenarios, not cheap or pleasant but effective.

Coughing into her hands all morning and hasn't been to the toilet once to wash them or used hand sanitizer 🤮 I can't tag but the person who is a TA that sounds absolutely awful! Bless you!

YANBU

I have asthma so every cold goes on my chest. A colleague came in with "just a cough" last year - spluttering all over the place without covering their mouth.

I ended up in hospital with pneumonia. It's my fault for being a weakling apparently

@shoesaregood I have some at home I'm going to spray soon as I get in although it burns the nostrils!

Virtually everyone I know at the moment has colds or has had them, and they haven’t been in contact with each other per se so haven’t infected each other.

If everyone was off sick with colds at this time of year the UK would grind to a halt.

Get yourself some first defence

Wash your hands op

YABU.

I wouldnt be allowed to be off for a cough and cold.

I think most peope feel quite keenly that phoning in sick a day or two before Christmas is likely to get a whole load of eye rolls from colleagues thinking "yeah, right".

I expect she felt that if she wasn't too poorly to be up and about then she was well enough to come to work.

It's crap but it's the presenteeism culture we have.

We don't get paid for the first three days off sick. So, exactly as long as it would take to get over the worst snotty bit of a cold.

So we come in sick. We can't afford not to.

Perhaps your colleague who is sweating is going through the menopause.

Why do you think she's in?

I doubt that it's because she feels rubbish and wants to feel even worse.

Shouldn't teachers and teaching assistants get flu jabs

I think it’s difficult and depends very much on the attitude of your employer. In my old job their attitude was “unless you’re dead, I expect you to be working, you can check emails from a hospital bed” (yes, someone did once say that to me). So they didn’t really “do” sickness - you were expected to be in and if you infected everyone else they were likewise expected to be in when sick.

In my new place they’re much kinder re sickness but I think it also gets reflected in your bonus/performance review so sometimes people are between a rock and a hard place as to whether or not to come in.

That said, I’d be pissed off if someone next to me was poorly so I understand where you’re coming from!

You can't win with cold really. If you take time off, you're soft, if you come in, you're selfish
I agree with this, certainly on MN.

Maybe you'd be better off in a working from home job.

@SnuggyBuggy that's not an option and a bit extreme isn't it. I can understand if you don't get paid and can't afford to be off, but that's not the case here. Unfortunately selfishness is the main quality of the people i share an office with.

If she is new ish she may not know she is ok to be off. You don’t know where she has worked before or their culture. If she’s managed to dress and get in then she obviously feels ok. She could have been subject to disciplinary in past or seen colleagues dismissed and be wary. She can be easily let go if there for less than 2 years.

Taking time off for illness can cause all sorts of problems with management, lead to sanctions and impact on your employability,
One of my head teachers used to stride around insisting that she’d never take time off for illness and was very critical of people who did.
I regularly got ill at the end of the autumn term with coughs and sneezes and would risk infecting hoards rather than face the backlash.
DS works in a job where too many days off means being sacked.
So tough all round really.

But germs are just a part of life and are inevitable when you work around people. I don't blame someone putting on air con if they are hot and sweaty. The office lizards can always put on more layers.

Why don't you suggest that she goes home? Put it to her that you really don't want to be poorly yourself and tell her you have her role covered seen as it's quiet anyway?

We didn’t get paid sick in my last office. People came in with everything and it spread. People would work day after surgery etc. They updated office manual to ban you coming in with infectious diseases.

Pop out if you can to get "first defence" spray and hand sanitiser!! Obviously don't know of your relationship with your manager, but at my work I would email the manager and ask them to send the sick person home. I'd never call in sick just before Xmas, so suspicious, but would expect to be sent home!

On another note, I know every job is different, in one of my previous jobs I wasn't allowed to leave while in horrendous pain with kidney infection, there was no one else to do the work and it was busy. I quit soon after that.