In fact I did have long service but I’d have to be actually sick to get my GP to sign me off sick. As opposed to busy with lots of post death admin or grieving - neither of which are illnesses. ( I’m just talking about myself here, I’m not denying that other people do suffer from clinical depression , PTSD or other illness after a bereavement ). It’s just I didn’t.
Also if you run up a bad sickness record it makes you vulnerable for redundancy every time there is a reorganisation. Rightly or wrongly, there’s more sympathy for people who have been off sick for 6 months for cancer/ major surgery / serious illness than for those who take 6 months off with “ stress” .
If I had done that I would have referred pretty quickly to occupational health - I had the worlds most unsympathetic manager. Eg once I applied for a days annual leave to attend my Gf funeral but Fiona refused as it was too short notice - all requests are only considered monthly.
So I applied for one day compassionate leave and she told me I could only have a half day because the funeral was in the afternoon. So I had to go to work from 8am - noon and then drive like crazy to get to the funeral for 1pm ( it was an hours drive from work ).
Some years later, one of my children became very ill so I had to take some compassionate leave ( I think it was a max of 2 weeks) but I needed more so had to get signed off sick ( I had mo choice, my child was terminally ill in hospital ).
BTW I had about 15 years service at that time and about one day a year sickness absence.
That same manager phoned me up at home and demanded to know when I was coming back to work. I told her that my child’s consultant had said they probably only had days not weeks left . So she phoned me up again a week later and asked again when I was coming back to work, I explained that my child was still with us but it would probably be a few days now.
She exclaimed angrily “ But you said that last week! “ .
When my child finally died, she sent me an appointment to attend occupational health a few days later ( in the week between the death and the funeral ). She said I would face disciplinary action if I didn’t attend, I got a letter saying they had offered me several appointments but they had been “ unsuitable “ ( no mention of the reason why ).
Apparently my normal sick note from GP was not enough , the GP had to send a special kind of sick note called a “ soul and conscience letter”.
I went to the appointment about a week after the funeral , the doctor at occupational health was appalled and signed me off for 3 months and then I was to go back with a phased return.
I got a job in another part of the NHS and the manager got promoted.