To think that public facing workers should not be at work when obviously infectious

[Maggiethecat]

I was in local charity shop recently and the woman at the till started sneezing. By the time I got to being served, her nose was dripping to the point that she was cupping her hands to catch it.

Surely she shouldn’t have been at work?

Agreed.

It could have been allergies.

But generally, we live in a society where employers don’t have to pay sick pay. I try not to judge anyone who financially can’t afford not to be at work.

Absolutely agree. However, employees are under pressure from employers. I work with vunerable limited children for whom even simple infections could be life threatening. I have a semi managerial and semi clinical role, and when I get a cold/cough/mild sore throat and well enough to do my admin/managerial tasks on a day I am supposed to do clinical, the answer is almost always no. So then I have an option of using sick leave or potentially harming my patients, I try to use the sick leave option, but with 2 primary age children bringing home bugs, I have a mild viral illness around every 2-3 weeks, and if I used sick leave every time I risk loosing my job, and my and my children's home. Employers need to be a bit more flexible, but they won't do this for fear that people will take the mick, and waiting list targets will be missed, and we will be fined, depleting our already stretched budget.

It's the public coming in with all their germs that make us sick though!

Id happily be off work whenever ill, but I've had about 8 weeks of being ill so far this winter and many of my colleagues are the same. I think the public would be annoyed if we were even more short staffed...

That said, there's ways of managing and having plenty of tissues, OTC remedies and washing hands is a must.

Did you offer her a tissue? Yuk!

Perhaps it was an allergy.

I wasn’t being judgmental but I would expect employers to try to protect the public. So if it was an allergy fine to keep working but perhaps not at the till
where the sneezing/streaming is affecting her work.

If not an allergy then she shouldn’t be working.

I didn’t have any on me!

Many people don’t get paid for being off sick.

A day off can put a massive dent in your pay.

Well, in an ideal world, they'd stay home. But in an ideal world, they'd also receive full pay when off sick, so they wouldn't have to worry about paying the mortgage or the bills or putting food on the table if they stayed at home.

Sometimes "visibly infectious" is actually allergies, or the cold air making your nose run, or a cough is the after effects of an illness and they are no longer ill or because of a long term condition...

Starting to judge who's ill because of little things like that is what made it so hard for some people to go out during Covid, fear of being judged because they looked ill when they weren't. Let's not go back there!

This lady should have been prepared with tissues and hand gel though, rather than using her hands

I still go to work with a cold because I get no sick pay, so my option is to take the day off unpaid, which I cannot afford, or take annual leave.

Part of the issue is that customers come in coughing and sneezing over me all the time. If your in a shop making a non-vital purchase and not happy about a member of staff being ill just leave the shop

I think this is on employers, who say you're responsible for deciding if you're well enough to come in, but then turn around and don't pay sick pay for the first 3 days and hand out disciplinaries like candy.

For a charity shop though, it might be an unpaid volunteer - in which case there's not an excuse really (unless it is allergies).

When I worked on the till at sainsburys I was like a sitting duck getting everyone's germs all over me..I had a constant cold from September to March. People said I shouldn't be at work but if I had stayed off I would have had to quit, sainsburys had a very patronising return to work procedure where you were told to come in with a cold to keep your attendance up

I expect she was the only paid member of staff at the shop supported by volunteers. And if she wasn't working the shop would be closed. Which is income lost for the charity at a busy time of year.

If they take a day off they won’t get sick pay, retail is low paid as it is so chances are they don’t have a buffer and every days wage helps pay the bills. I certainly don’t a day off for a cold unless it’s absolutely necessary, we just can’t afford to do that!

Charity shops often have a paid worker on each day, and volunteers to support. If the paid worker isn't in, they can't open - presumably for insurance reasons.

Complain to the employers OP. They are the ones who make taking sick days difficult. There’s nothing worse than being frontline staff when you’re feeling horrible.

Some people not salaried don't have a choice if they need the money. Salaried staff I agree.

It's not just the financial implications and the risk of disciplinary action that has a bearing on this, customers will be very vocal in their complaints about waits when somewhere is short staffed due to sickness.
When they're facing the public sharing their germs daily they're going to pick stuff up, and the choice for the customer is getting served by someone unwell, waiting to get served longer because that person is off, or not getting served at all if there's a lot with the same bug and the place closes.

None of which seems to be acceptable, so what happens then?

What are people who can’t work from home supposed to do? They are more exposed to illness in the first place, and then they have people telling them to be off sick, and face loss of income and/or disciplinary action. It’s really stressful as it’s entirely possible to pick up one infection after another and then have the constant feeling of guilt that you should be at home but also guilt they you should be in work.

I would say 85% of our teaching staff were like that this week!

Employers are the ones to complain to, I agree. Perhaps also if we all had warm homes and energy costs were the levels they are in much of Europe, people would either be less prone to infections, or be less likely to spread them.

I can't get worked up about this. When you are out and about and no doubt surrounded by other customers who have coughs and colds and have touched and picked things up and even tried things on in a shop, I don't see how it makes much difference if the shop assistant also has a cold. But then I spend my work days in rooms of 30 kids, at least a quarter of whom have colds at any one time at this time of year. The occasional cold is inevitable.

I used to be a teacher. Considering that we mixed with lots of germs all day every day, the sickness procedure was very demoralising. I was given a very strict talking to and put on monitoring because I had three separate days off in a year (three separate illnesses and one was one day away from being outside the yearly period). I felt really bitter really as every time I had been quite ill for several days and should really have taken more time off. Now my kids are older and I don't mix with kids day in day out I've not been ill or off work for a long time. So sometimes it's not a decision of the worker themselves but they may feel forced to work when sick.

In a charity shop she would perhaps be a volunteer so not the same but if there was a chance I wouldn’t be paid for missing work, I would cross a stormy sea to get there unless too unwell to get out of bed. Bills need to be paid and kids need feeding.