When you are poorly do you take a sick day or carry on?

[C1239]

The most sensible advise is to let you body rest and recuperate im sure but I hate taking sick days, just makes me feel guilty, but I think this delays recovery and makes me more susceptible to picking up the next bug. For those of you who take a sick day do you find it helps?

I'm WFH today with a sore throat and a head cold. I generally just carry on but stick to core hours rather than long hours if I'm under the weather.

Annoyingly a colleague had a stinking cold last week and came into the office, pretty sure that sitting next to him in a meeting for three hours didn't do me much good.

I try to WFH with a cold to stop the spread.

It really depends on type of "sickness".

If it's something potentially contagious like covid or a cold or D&V bug, then I'll basically not leave the house as I don't want to be responsible for anyone else catching it unnecessarily. Easier these days as I can work from home, but pre internet, I'd have had to ring in sick and have a day or two off.

I've not really had anything else bad enough to make me take a day off work. There was a short time when I got a bit of dizziness in the night, and the GP gave me some pills which he warned me I shouldn't drive when I was taking them as they cause drowsiness, so I went to work that morning (before taking the first pill) and brought a car full of work back home with me so I could work from home for the week I'd be taking the tablets.

Occasionally, I've felt a bit "off it" generally, maybe headaches or random aches and pains, but still gone to work as normal. I don't think lounging around at home feeling sorry for yourself helps much really. I'd far rather push through it and gone on with normality as I find that helps you get through it better.

My OH has managed to work throughout his chemotherapy treatment - at certain points in the treatment cycle, it wiped him out and he says he could happily just curl up and stay in bed, but he forces himself to get up and about, just takes it easy, takes a few breaks, etc., and he gets through it. He says he feels no worse getting up and on with it, than he does on the very few occasions he didn't!

I nearly killed myself because I assumed appendicitis was food poisoning and pushed on. Collapsed a week later with sepsis and peritonitis, 11 days in hospital. Please don’t do what I did - if you feel ill, slow down, if you feel really bad, go to the doctor.

I tend to carry on and just WFH.
I don't get ill often though and, if I do, it is just a cold. I've not had anything resembling flu, for instance, in about 12 years.
If Im at home, in comfortable clothing, and able to regulate the temperature around me, I feel OK enough to do a 'basic' days work.

I'm fully home based so it depends how sick I am, if it's a bit of a cold i will carry on it I had to take a few days off recently when I had covid. I generally let my boss.know I might be reduced capacity if I am unwell and just work on high priority stuff

I find the stress of calling I'm sickakes me go to work. I usually feel a bit better once I'm there and distracted anyway

I'm really bad at taking time off!
This morning I tripped over my cat and fell. Banged my arm on radiator on the way down. Was rushing and had to leave so drove to work. Now in A&E having been brought here by a friend from work.
I should have just stopped and been late or stayed at home.

If I’m sick I still work, I’m self employed so don’t get paid if I don’t work

Of course it helps. If I'm feeling a bit unwell physically I'd go to work. NHS advice on virus & infection aside I'd only be off if I felt ill. If I had a flare up of a mental health illness it may appear to others there was nothing wrong but I would need to be off as symptoms could change quickly and cause more serious problems.

Depends how ill I am. If it's really debilitating/can't get out of bed, I will take a proper sick day. I took four days off around Christmas because I had proper flu and could barely move. That was the first sick time I've had since 2019.

Generally speaking if its a cold or something I soldier on because a) catching up after illness is so burdensome it's easier just to work through and b) not working tends to just drop the work on other people.

It's shit but it's the way it is.

Depends on how poorly I am! Probably wouldn't for a cold/sore throat as I usually feel better actually doing something, definitely if I have a temperature, definitely for D&V, definitely for eye infections as its not safe to drive. I do work in an office on my own and have limited interactions with other people, I also run the company so those two factors may affect my behaviour

Depends on the role and the sickness surely? I wfh had d and v last week worked through it but needed to because of deadlines. If I had had to be in an office or interacting with people in any other way I would have had to call in sick. I had two weeks off with shingles a couple of years ago, literally couldn't have any clothes touching the rash. I have a decent sick policy and no one takes the piss though.

If I’m running a temperature or throwing up then I’ll ring in sick. If I’m streaming with cold or coughing lots I’ll WFH rather than share whatever I’ve got (and did so pre COVID although post COVID it’s much easier). But I’ve been lucky enough to have robust health to date…so I’ve never had to worry too much, which is luck rather than judgement.

Last time I was ill was a couple of weeks ago, I had a sore throat and a cough. I went to work because I didn't feel too dreadful and it's a pain for my colleagues to cover for me. It's very very rare for me to take a day off sick.

I wfh so have to be pretty sick to take a day off. I had a chest infection for 3 weeks last March but only took one day off work because the rest of the time I could function between coughing fits. But had I worked in an office it would probably have been a week off.

These days, I take them when I need them. I never used to, though.

It really helped when I started managing people – I would often work through an illness before leading a team, but now I want to set an example and an expectation that you take care of yourself first and foremost.

And if work becomes problematic as a result of someone taking time off to care for themselves, that's a sign the business isn't working as it should, and I need to address that.