Work contacting me when off sick

[steelrose]

I work in an office, my line manager has made it clear since I started, earlier this year mid-lockdown that there is no possibility of working from home and never will be. It is a very basic admin position.

I had a positive pcr test on Saturday and frankly have been feeling dreadful, despite being fully vaccinated. When I left work on Thursday (I don't work Fridays), I had no idea that I wouldn't be back in the office for a week and a half.

On Monday, I updated my line manager with work I planned to do this week. I am getting a lot of emails and messages from them with things they can very easily sort out themselves or seemingly to just have a moan. eg, printer has run out of toner (they know where it is kept and how to replace it) There's a lot of requests for xyz building up... we've run out of product sample packs etc.

I'm probably getting 3 messages/mails a day. It is making me feel guilty and very stressed, I am genuinely unwell. Is it acceptable for them to keep contacting me like this?

Tip for the future, don't give anyone at work your personal number. They should give you a work mobile if they want you to be contactable at home. Its completely unreasonable for your work to be contacting you on a personal number unless it is purely to check you are ok healthwise.

They're messaging/emailling on my personal phone/email. I am not setup to monitor work email from home and don't have a work mobile.

How do they know your personal number and email?

How do they know your personal number and email?
From when I was interviewing.

Tip for the future, don't give anyone at work your personal number
Yes, I regret this. There's an assumption of being contactable during office hours even on your day off, I need to address this too.

All the teachers I know that have been off with COVID have had to work from home for the 10 days.
I'm not a teacher and not in a school. It's a NMW office job.

@PeachesPumpkin

All the teachers I know that have been off with COVID have had to work from home for the 10 days. They have done all the planning and often run lessons over Zoom. I think it’s pretty usual.

I can understand that happening when we were still isolating as contacts, but now you are only off if you actually have it. So is Covid not seen as a reason to be off sick? If a teacher is off with the flu are they also expected to continue working?

I'm currently off with Covid and have felt rough from day one. My boss has been a bit of a nuisance too - inc questioning my symptoms, trying to convince me they started earlier (so I could get back to work quicker...)

I've been slow responding to anything since, esp since being told I'm not getting any form of sick pay..

They’re being out of order and continuing to be so because you’ve not been assertive enough.

As a maximum, I would only contact an employee once a week if they were off sick, and that would purely be a (genuine) “how are you” call and to see if they’d been signed off longer etc.

Your manager and colleagues shouldn’t “need” to be calling or emailing you about work anyway. It suggests their processes aren’t too robust if they can’t cover across a missing admin role.

What has happened before when you’ve taken holiday? Have they bugged you on vacation?