to be annoyed that the person I share a room with at work was sick into her bin for 4 hours rather than go home?!

[ElizabethWakefield]

I'm not sure I possibly can be, but I feel like I need a rant anyway!

Colleague came in at 9am this morning feeling ill, she then proceeded to puke in her bin, on and off between sleeping with her head on her desk, for 4 hours!

I share an office with her, the office has no windows but is "climate controlled" and was stinking! I repeatedly told her she should go home, but she said she wouldn't unless someone came to collect her and she couldn't get a hold of anyone, so she continued to sit and puke (not emptying the bin at any point.

Finally I had to go and ask our acting manager to actually send her home as I couldn't stand being in the office any longer, or to at least go and sit in the sick room. But again she refused. Finally 4 and a bit after the first time she threw up, someone came to pick her up!

Now I am not the best with vomit, slightly phobic, but surely that is unhygienic and just horrible.

There were other people coming into our office finding her either puking or sleeping, which looks awful!

Colleague gets annoyed with people when they use sick leave as she feels you should be at work unless you are literally dying, I feel you should not come into work when that ill. I want someone to say to her that in future she needs to stay off when she is like that, or at least go home (work pay to send you home in a taxi if ill btw)

So am I horribly unsympathetic (to be fair i was sympathetic the first time it happened, 4 hours later, I wasn't!) and irrationally annoyed by this (as i said a bit phobic so not really rational) or do i have a fair point?

Ugh, YADDDDDDDNBU, very disgusting

Sort of reminds me when a work colleague brought in her vomiting 5YO DD who was sick in our office bin several times. She also wouldn't take her daughter home (poor kid!) as she claimed she had too much work to do, although didn't actually get much work done as she was too busy babysitting/running backwards and forwards with the bin. The woman's partner wasn't working, he had the day off, but was going somewhere in the car, and she didn't want to send her DD with him in case she was sick in the car

I very nearly wrote an AIBU at the time, but got cold feet in case she was a mnetter

Don't know if anyone's said this yet (and agree spending four hours vomiting into an office bin is bad/inconsiderate to everyone else) but I wonder how ill she was.

Maybe she was just too out of it to think her way through the logic of how to get home without someone picking her up? Maybe she wanted someone with her at home rather than to be on her own and couldn't communicate that? Maybe she was just too ill to get to the toilets/rinse her own bin out?

Maybe she felt too ill to move / travel / drive by herself..?

I am sure it must have been unpleasant for you - but probably just as much if not more so for your poor colleague - have you considered how she must have felt? I bet she would have given anything to be magically transported into the comfort of her own bed.

I guess she didn't know for definite she was going to be ill when she set off for work - and it sounds like your work culture is 'if in doubt, turn up for work'. You can't really control vomiting when you have a particularly virulent bug. Better to be sick in a bin than randomly on corridors/ colleagues etc?

Poor woman, I hope she is better soon and that empathy is not dead.

Sorry OP if that sounds harsh, but I know how I've felt when I've had these kinds of bugs, and it's not fun - and it would be a living nightmare if it occurred in a public place.

I did wonder about sympathy for her, but her crowing about others slacking off when they are ill, the office policy to pay for a taxi, her being a Health and Safety officer (responsible for just this sort of issue, no?), and her having done this before, all make me pretty sure this woman is being an idiot.

Absolutely foul and disgusting behaviour.

Complain to your manager. Now. That's an order.