Colleague has called in sick when they definitely aren’t!

[peedoffandtired]

My colleague has been on a fixed term contract with a plan to go into another job at the end of it. They’re not exactly the best employee at the best of times.

They got rejected from that position and asked our boss yesterday if they could stay. The boss said no.

So they just walked out. They’re not in today and to be honest I’d be surprised if we see them again. I’ve already picked up the work of one colleague who has left. Now I’m picking up this work too. AIBU to be totally peed off and fed up?!

Obviously you won’t miss them then. This is not the colleague’s problem, it is your boss’ problem.

If you are suggesting that every single person working in healthcare has a vital job that must be done urgently or people die? OP’s desk job department is understaffed and nobody is doing anything about it. That doesn’t scream to me that patients needing urgent care care will die if she doesn’t do all the work.

It is entirely possible to say you aren’t doing the work, and being in a public service with unions there to fight for your, you’re more protected than most in the private sector.

Get signed off yourself.

If you aren't ill now you soon will be.

I don't care if it's Healthcare, if operations get cancelled and wards close then thr senior management will soon buck up.

All this 'have to do it' martyrdom is nonsense.

Sorry but this is such a cop out. They need to escalate this to whoever can actually make the decision rather expecting one person to do three people's work.

This is basically what happened in my team. Things stopped being done and when it trickled up to the higher echelons and THEY were being inconvenienced by it they took action.

But there is literally the way of going to your boss and saying that you'll do what you can, but given that you can't do 2-3 people's work you'll do the work in priority order.

This is the right answer. I’m public sector too and the amount of resource is unrelated to the amount of work to do. I have lost 50% of my team and that’s because the budget is the only thing that determines the amount of employees. I refuse to do work I’m not paid to do, no overtime is available, and in any event there aren’t enough hours in the day. I escalate the risk, which is an organisational one, to the strategic risk register and do my best to do the most important work with the resource I have.

OP - YANBU to be annoyed, but it’s not going to change. The only thing you can change is what you do in response.

Tell your boss to prioritise what work needs to be first. You can't do it all. Don't be a martyr.

Don't say that ! The workplace martyr cannot countenance that truth!

I hope they will be sacked now?

Sounds like your company have treated this employee like this, so they thought fuck it and left.

you are only thinking about yourself OP

drop the rope then. Public sector? you're in a union?use it

Maybe they've been up all night worrying about finding another job in a tough job market and have a headache, maybe they're feeling stressed about the situation and not able to perform today. You don't know.

It's rotten that you are suffering the fallout when you had no say in whether the colleague was kept on, but in your colleague's position I'd feel I owed absolutely nothing to that employer - I don't blame them for walking out.

I'm tired of employers treating employees like dirt and still expecting them to be happy and motivated.

Not your fault, though, OP. You're just collateral damage.

Ain't that the truth

However by the same token OP doesn't need to be accountable for the departed one's work getting done either ... instead she can just ask the boss which part of the work they want her to prioritise while those paid to manage get on with pointless meetings sorting it out

And yet every day appointments and treatments are cancelled because there aren’t enough of the right staff available - so the attitude of ‘it has to be done’ isn’t actually doing it is it? Strongly suspect OP is not a medical practitioner so her martyring herself hasnt meant any patients are cared for.

For your own sanity, work your 40 hours. If anyone complains, ask them to tell you which is most important.
At the end of the day;
-Don’t over work yourself. If you dropped dead, they would take a few hours to advertise your job. You won’t win awards doing 80 hours.
-At the moment, you have quite a strong position . You’re the only member of staff. If they aren’t happy you can’t do 80 hours, you can always say you’ll look for a new job. They need you right now as it’s the easier option.

What does your union say about you doing all this extra work? Are you a patient facing medical professional? If not, you can start again tomorrow.

What did they say when they called in sick? What are they supposedly sick with?

Exactly what I was thinking.

So if your boss could have sacked her, you would be in the position that you are now. If she's so bad at her job, made so many mistakes and was away from her desk most of the time, surely you are better off without her there.

me too and I agree

Whether or not the manager is in charge of recruitment decisions, they are in charge of allocating work e.g. managing absences like holidays and sick leave and, if relevant, de-prioritising certain tasks because there aren't enough staff members.

Then tell him since you’re doing three people’s work, you expect three salaries !! Seriously though OP, I worked in the public sector and this sort of thing went on in every single place I ever worked, along with ‘temporary promotion’ when someone from a higher grade left, but the salary increase never materialised. That was some years ago - depressing to see it still happens.

So the company has no loyalty to the employee and you expect the employee to have loyalty to the company's workers? They're not there to help you, they're there to do a job in exchange for getting paid. Work colleagues aren't your friends. Of course they're going to do what's best for them! Your welfare doesn't come into it, you're literally nothing to do with them, you're just someone they work alongside for now and shortly won't. YABU to expect them to give one shiny shit about how you feel.

I imagine they'll be looking to sign up with employment agencies, take up any offers of interviews and apply for jobs. All of this takes time and if I had to call in sick to do it, I would, especially after being lead to believe it was a situation where the contract would be renewed (because employers inevitably make it sound like it's just a formality or purely dependent on your performance, when you start). Where they've decided not to, they never tell you with any advance notice if they can help it, trying to string you along that it'll lead to a permanent job until the very last day, giving you no time to look for or arrange anything else.