To think calling in sick for no sleep is a good enough reason?

[Rachelinaa]

I work in an office that's been open through most of lockdown due to admin we do being essential.
Recently one of my workmates has been calling in sick a lot because he hasn't been sleeping well as he's got a baby at home that won't sleep. I was shocked to hear other people at work saying they thought it was a ridiculous reason not to come to work and we've all had to come to work tired. But I thought they'd be able to see the difference between being tired and not sleeping at all. His baby has colic and the mum also works.
I've called in sick before for being too tired when my baby was a newborn and didn't sleep. I wondered what everyone else's thoughts on this was? I personally don't want someone driving to work if they're too tired to focus and I can't think that the boss would want someone in more likely to make mistakes.

It's taking the rise somewhat.
I have taken annual leave when my heartburn has kept me up at night, I would not dream of using sick leave because I'm very tired. Tiredness isn't one of the categories on the sick leave form.
Also, we're penalised if we take too many sick periods, so I only use them in genuine cases

To be fair to him we don’t know if that’s the actual reason he needed the day off. What if his wife was at breaking point? Or if his lack of sleep made him genuinely really physically sick. How would we all feel if he fell asleep at the wheel from exhaustion? Exhaustion can make people physically sick. We need sleep to survive, it could have been 1 day or 3 since he last slept. I think this country needs more compassion, especially seeing as he is a good worker who doesn’t normally take much time off.

Why do we feel as though we must work until we’re on deaths door? This attitude hurts us all in the long run.

I’m a teacher and I did this once. It didn’t go down well I’m sure although nothing was said, the head was decidedly cold on the ‘phone.
However, my DH wasn’t there as he works nights and my baby was about 6 months and not well, I had to walk up and down and cradle her all night together her to sleep, as soon as I put her down she cried. I should have just said she was unwell, which she was, but as my mum was my childminder I would happily leave a baby with a temperature with her as she cared as I did, so that wasn’t the reason, it was because I hadn’t slept all night, at all.
I think if he said it’s because he was too exhausted then that’s probably true, he could have easily made a more palatable lie.

@Thehawki

To be fair to him we don’t know if that’s the actual reason he needed the day off. What if his wife was at breaking point? Or if his lack of sleep made him genuinely really physically sick. How would we all feel if he fell asleep at the wheel from exhaustion? Exhaustion can make people physically sick. We need sleep to survive, it could have been 1 day or 3 since he last slept. I think this country needs more compassion, especially seeing as he is a good worker who doesn’t normally take much time off.

Why do we feel as though we must work until we’re on deaths door? This attitude hurts us all in the long run.

In that case he'd have just said he was sick. Telling his manager that his baby kept him awake suggests he thought that was a reasonable reason to take the day off.

Up to him I suppose, but as I have chronic insomnia I would not have a job if I thought that was a good enough reason.

@GreyhoundG1rl Maybe the sleep deprivation got to him 😂

Why do we feel as though we must work until we’re on deaths door?

Because being sleep deprived isn’t being sick. Insomnia sufferers would never be at work if we all did this.

YANBU. I had serious insomnia for years (to the extent of having to lock my office door and lie on the manky floor to get 20 mins of sleep at work because of the exhaustion). I struggled through it and I don't think I ever took a day off due to my shame around it.

I am now better, and ironically, I now understand how crucial sleep is much better than I did when I was in the thick of it. Not sleeping well happens all the time. But if someone has continuously bad sleep, absolutely they should call in sick.

Would you want your GP/aeroplane pilot/heart surgeon/bus driver/childminder/train driver to be at work if they felt like that? Methinks not.

@NearlyAlwaysInsane I certainly wouldn't gp treating me if they were so badly sleep deprived, I'm half wondering reading this thread if that is why I was prescribed a medication that can kill me this week, luckily I'm on the ball enough to check for myself and it's now resolved.

[quote Thehawki]@GreyhoundG1rl Maybe the sleep deprivation got to him 😂[/quote]

Of course it is unreasonable!! Sick days are for if you are sick not if you are tired because (shock horror!) a baby disrupts your sleep. Ridiculous. All 3 of my boys were terrible sleepers. Husband slept in other room during the week when I was on maternity leave. When both back at work we split the nights and caught up with sleep at weekends. My choice to have kids, my employer shouldn’t be impacted.

As for lack of sleep or insomia not being a good reason, I have a friend whos currently been signed off sick for 10 months with insomnia because he only sleeps 4 or 5 hours every 3 days which causes hallucinations, poor concentration, awful memory and fatigue despite being unable to sleep

This is a tricky question and a good one to debate. YANBU on a human level and compassion does play a role however businesses are rarely built on compassion and from a business perspective it is unreasonable to expect a company to fund the consequences of child rearing. A business would expect its employees to be available and productive in work and the employee is expected to put in place measures to ensure that is the case be that not going out clubbing till 5 in the morning or getting support in childcare arrangements. If they cover one lifestyle (a parents) then they have to cover the other (someone in their 20’s going clubbing on a work night). They are both choices that person has made and while it’s nice your employer has chosen not to make a big deal of it in current circumstances I don’t think it should become an expectation or the norm. On the other hand supporting fathers taking an active role is something that companies are becoming more aware of so that’s an interesting angle too.

"Because being sleep deprived isn’t being sick."

Isn't it? Exhaustion is an illness, fatigue is an illness. Tiredness leads to other illnesses, not to mention accidents.
The day I was shaking while walking, should I have gone to work? I think I would have frightened my colleagues more than anything.

Being tired is not an illness.

@wildchild554

As for lack of sleep or insomia not being a good reason, I have a friend whos currently been signed off sick for 10 months with insomnia because he only sleeps 4 or 5 hours every 3 days which causes hallucinations, poor concentration, awful memory and fatigue despite being unable to sleep

10 months? There'll have to come a time when it's apparent he simply isn't capable of doing the job.

This is what maternity leave/parental unpaid leave is for. Sick leave is for sickness not parenting tiredness.

YABU because he's not sick. He's tired because he's chosen (or his family circumstances require him) to spend the night doing things other than sleeping. There's nothing physically wrong with him. Whether he should be allowed to work in that condition is a separate question from whether sick leave should cover it. Presumably on one wants people showing up drunk, but sick leave doesn't and shouldn't cover that, either. Most people have called off for similar reasons a time or two, but the expectation that sick leave should cover lack of sleep as a matter of policy is unreasonable.

Anyone who answers YABU has NEVER suffered from insomnia.

Yeah - you might have had a couple of nights where you were awake till 4am counting sheep, whatever - sorry that doesn't count.

Sleep deprivation is a classic torture technique - keep waking someone up just as they are about to sleep. Do it for a week and it's more effective than any physical abuse.

This is a really tough one, because I sort of see both sides, because someone who is absolutely exhausted is no use half of the time anyway, and when my daughter was a newborn and my husband went back to work he had an hour's drive each way plus a 9hr work day and when we'd had awful night's sleep my nerves would be absolutely shot all day.

But, from the perspective of work colleagues it must be really frustrating. A day or two here and there isn't the end of the world, but if they know it's a problem they should be trying to work out some sort of routine between them by now.

@bookworm1632

Anyone who answers YABU has NEVER suffered from insomnia.

Yeah - you might have had a couple of nights where you were awake till 4am counting sheep, whatever - sorry that doesn't count.

Sleep deprivation is a classic torture technique - keep waking someone up just as they are about to sleep. Do it for a week and it's more effective than any physical abuse.

But how much leeway do you think your employers need to give? Like it or not, if you're not capable of showing up, you're not capable of doing the job.

@LynnShelley “And would you want a dr to call in sick because of no sleep so you miss your appointment or your surgery (yes - it wouldn't be great if he was tired, but doctors often work on little sleep...)” As someone who has been misdiagnosed by a sleep deprived doctor then I would definitely take a rearranged appointment/seeing a different one over sticking to the original plan for the sake of getting the appointment done. You’re not attending a doctors appointment to be physically in the presence of a doctor, you’re there to have a consultation with an expert who I’d much prefer to be able to think straight and be thorough. There are some jobs you can turn up and coast through the day but it worries me that you think Doctor is one of those.

16 pages in, 70% YABU of a large sample, and we still don't know how old the baby is to say whether they have gone back to work 'too soon' as in its unreasonable to expect a few hours straight of sleep at that age, or if they have got a problem sleeper.

I had two non sleeping babies. They were breastfed and I went back to work both times at about 7 months. I was DESPERATE from exhaustion. I used to cry (and I don't cry). Until you've been woken every 45 minutes a night for months on end you don't know what it's like. Waking up a couple of times is fine, but this is a different level. It does feel like you're ill- my balance and coordination would be off, I'd feel sick and hot, I'd shake.

I wish I'd done this occasionally- not least because if I had had a proper rest, I would have been 200% more efficient for the rest of the week, rather than staring at my monitor blankly. I did massive amounts of unpaid overtime for that organisation- so it balances out

I used to work for an organisation that had 'duvet days'- where you could just call in and say you weren't up for it a certain number of days a year. Excellent idea and everyone should do it.

@GreyhoundG1rl yep thats why he's on the sick, till the doctors can figure out a way to help him he has no chance of working.