To be shocked at how much time off sick some people have?

[Enfys1982]

I work in a school and since I started in the sector it’s been a bit of eye opener to me how much sick time some people seem to take, and it always seems to be the same people. Days here and there, sometimes weeks on end then they come back for a bit go off again. As I said always the same people.

The last time I was off was last year when I had Covid, and I was only off because then you still legally had to isolate if positive. I actually felt well enough to go in. Before that I genuinely can’t remember when I was off sick. If I feel bad I just dose myself up and get on with it.

AIBU to think it displays a lack of resilience?

The problem is I'm not now because I have a diagnosis - and once the c word is mentioned people go very quiet. But there were three or four months off sick before a diagnosis where even a nurse in my GP told me I wasn't really that sick and accused me of health anxiety. And about six months before that of periodic absence because I was getting ill so often and so easily. I probably feel better day to day now than I did then because I actually have meds.

"Tired all the time" is a symptom of an awful lot of things but it looks just like a lack of resilience and whining. Its hard to explain that by "Tired" you mean "I can no longer bend and pick up the saucers to feed the cats so I'm buying pouches I can empty into them whilst standing" and not just "well everyone gets tired".

Same happened at my FIL's workplace. They started hiring people through agency (and we know how shit their sick pay policy is), because people were exploiting sick pay policy,i.e. for hangover 🙄

Aye that would be me except I have asthma.

A simple tiny wee cold would exacerbate my asthma. I would have to use my reliever inhaler, up my preventer inhaler (high dose enough to need to carry a steroid card) and I'd still need 5-7dys prednisolone at 40mg and a higher dose antibiotics (last one was 3000mg a day of amoxicillin for a week then 200mg a day of Doxycycline for another week).

My airways are always more sensitive than non asthmatics it's why some things can trigger an attack. When I say colds/respiratory bugs exacerbate my asthma I'm talking about needing to throw everything including the kitchen sink to not get to the point of having a severe attack.

Not sure if people are aware but steroids tend to work by dampening down your immune system because asthma exacerbation is an overreaction to something. So to calm that down it needs to shut down the immune reaction. But you also have a respiratory bug/virus/cold /flu etc so your body then is fighting them off with one arm behind its back.

I had a colleague like you. Every time I went back she refused to speak to me, bitched behind my back and told me to my face that asthma was. Pathetic excuse for being off sick and I needed to be more resilient.

Yet she never twigged that her coming in sick and powering through might just be making me sick in first place. I mean have you ever considered you might be making people around you sick with your powering through your "just a cold"?

If we take out long term sickness and are talking about general coughs, colds, sore throat etc, then I do agree with you. I had horrendous tonsillitis in the winter and could have easily stayed in bed for days. It took everything to force myself out but felt so much better for it. I do think some people will keep going and others will be in bed for a sniffle.

Personally, I have to feel I absolutely cannot do my job in anyway to stay off and even then im racked with guilt. I average 1-2 days a year with an exception for Covid (which is the longest ive ever stayed off when we had to and that was a week).

However, any of us could be struck down with something very serious at anytime, so you cant generalise all sickness.

Perhaps if you read a little more, you'd understand the drivers behind increasing rates of disability.l and sickness absence. For example:

• many people are experiencing long-term ill health because under- resourcing the NHS is leaving people with untreated conditions

• many people are experiencing unmanageable levels of stress and mental ill health, after struggling through the pandemic and then working on with high workloads and staff shortages, for wages that are increasingly inadequate.

• a worryingly large number of people have long covid.

I fall into both the last two categories and I'm indirectly affected by the first. Since catching covid when I was utterly burned out by my public sector job (and caring for my husband who can't get the mental health support he needs). I've been bedbound with long covid for months.

Hardly any of my colleagues knew how poorly I was until I simply couldn't work. At this point, my priority is whether I'll have an independent life again, not what some shitty gossip-monger at work might think.

It's always hard to know someones individual circumstances and I tend to believe people when they phone in sick. Unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise. One of my colleagues was off sick for months and months and appeared on a tv show during that time (while prerecorded, we knew when it had been filmed) Without going into too much detail it was obvious his symptoms weren't as he had claimed. He didn't come back to work.

Yes, my psychopathic un empathetic ex line manager said the same about me . I " put it on" apparently. Christ, I must be some actress if I can con a cardiologist and various invasive tests. I'd been having a run of heart attacks - they present differently sometimes in women. Instead of getting Occupational health involved once I was diagnosed she put me on a performance plan. Obviously she was under the impression that I could just will my heart to work properly and was not trying hard enough. HR did get involved but by god, she wade a worrying time truly shitty.
NEVER assume that someone is swinging the lead.

Sure if you can.

There's a cost of living crisis on if you haven't noticed. Switching jobs frequently puts people in a worse financial position. Going onto disability definitely does. Starting a new job means you can be sacked within two years for any non protected reason which if you think you're likely to have a poor sickness record is a big risk. And people may have something like income protection insurance which won't pay out for resignation but will for being sacked on medical grounds, or a pension which would only take early retirement on medical grounds if you don't resign first.

This is probably all true. But it's not going to be easy to switch jobs if your sickness level is high. If you quit your job you can't claim benefits straight away so unless you've got a ton of savings/ another income you can't quit (I had to wait to be sacked, which looks worse on my CV quitting for health reasons, but meant I could afford to live)
Disability benefits are really hard to get. I was turned down despite being so ill I hardly ever left the house. Apparently the fact I could plan a bus/train journey and go to church once per week (a friend used to collect me) meant I wasn't anxious enough.

@kizziee thank you. I'm well enough now that I'm starting to look for a part time job. I want to take it slowly and not go full time straight away.

Every day you are absent with a GP note, you are costing your employer money. And yes you may have chronic illness/MH conditions, whatever genuine reason for that absence but the reality is that only larger organisations can effectively absorb this cost. As a small business owner, it is a huge cost to us. Someone off recently was costing us over £800 a month with the cost of their SSP, NI, pension contribution and accrued leave but with zero work output. We've been hit by massive price hikes in energy, supplies, wages and running costs and yet being signed off is seen a massive right for a lot of people especially on MN.

If I get a heavy cold I need a couple
of days to sleep it off and regroup. If I carry on working it trends to get worse and tune into a sinus infection and need a week off. So I’ve learnt to take a coupe of days instead. Maybe let other people sort themselves out. We aren’t robots.

And this is totally backed up by a Winter full of every type of bug going at our school (and every other school hearing from friends). Theres bugs still going round now and this is meant to be the time everyone’s well, sunshine, loads of Vit D! The kids hadn’t mixed in the same way for the last few years, so everyone got everything going. Hopefully they can all start to build up stronger immunity again and it can be a less germ ridden winter! 😅

Being signed of sick and getting SSP is a massive right and one that was hard fought for.

What's the other option? People starve if they break a leg?

I absolutely agree. There are some chancers around who will grab any chance of a few duvet days when there is nothing wrong with tnem. And leave others to pick up the slack. No conscience whatsoever.

You’re absolutely right. It’s people who are genuinely struggling that we should all support and you should have gotten that support from the beginning. Weirdly, it’s the ones who are putting on who get the support and the ones like you who actually deserve it who don’t. It’s very unfair. My mil once made a speech at church, yes church, where she complained about people who “claim to be tired” and I think she meant me. She had no idea what I was going through because I’m a private person. I do think people find out who really cares about them and who doesn’t, by how they’re judged.

I agree. There are of course people who have chronic conditions, depression and a bad run of illness but there are also a lot who take the piss. I think it's a real societal problem at the moment. It's great because at last people are understanding of mental health but now it means a lot of people ride along on that wave..it's a shame because it means there will be a backlash at some point and it takes sympathy away from.those that need it.

Oh yeah I forgot everyone with cancer or long term health conditions wears a sticker... Oh wait no they don't. So how do you know who you're talking about?

I was so healthy until I had children. No days off in about 5 years not because I was particularly resilient but because I was genuinely never ill. Now I’m sleep deprived and catch everything that comes home from nursery. I work through most of it but only because I can work from home. And you can’t really work through having a fever or norovirus. So I have had a few days off for those. I can only imagine how much worse it is if you have chronic health conditions.

Almost every time my niece phones me she's in bed with a cold,a headache or a bad back.

The rest of the time she's on a bus,having been sent home from work because she's been sick or thought she was going to pass out.

I always wondered how certain people got away with being off sick loads and not sanctioned as some of us were . They had it as unpaid leave .

Crap employer - she should have been dealt with through disciplinary! The evidence was right there!

It can be pretty fucking difficult to claim benefits for a chronic conditions, contrary to public belief. Also fairly terrifying and/or impossible to give up a steady salary to rely on your failing health to support you through self-employment, whilst WFH and flexible hours tend to be the privilege of better paid jobs. I'm afraid your response isn't quite as empathetic as you perhaps intend it to be.

Obviously you don't have the whole picture. There will be a reason. If you genuinely can't think of a reason someone might take time off work in this way, count yourself lucky.

Instead of demeaning people who may have genuine illnesses or disabilities that are unpredictable, unpleasant and may mean time off work is inevitable, why don't you just be thankful that you're blessed with general good health. Don't forget, though, you never know what your own health will be like in future.

Apologies, @Swg, that was meant for @TickyTok.

Tired day, time for another nap...