Help need a good excuse to call in “sick” to work

[colourPink]

My toddler is unwell - high temp etc. if i say I’m off to look after him I don’t get paid (and lose £130 a day!) but if I phone in sick I do get paid.

However, I’ve had to do it a few times this year and not sure what illness I can have this time. Advice? (I’ve had quite a few colds/ sickness bugs/ ruiner infections..)

This is a weird thread, if you’ve already had to do it several times why are you struggling to think of an excuse now? I know loosing the money is hard, I’m a single parent myself, it if you’ve already done it a few times it may be worth being honest this time as parental leave doesn’t count against you like loads of sick days too. Plus even if you get away with it your employer and colleagues won’t be totally thick, lots of lying won’t help your career.

You plan to lie to a company to receive money from them that you are not entitled to.. do you also steal from shops and other businesses?

OP, if you're worried about losing a day's pay, are you not even more worried about losing your job? Even if the dishonesty doesn't get found out, surely you're at risk of being sacked for poor attendance regardless.

Where is the child's father in all of this? And do you have nobody else who might be able to help?

Say you have what your toddler has, high temperature and fever. I hear you sister!!

Suggest you look for a job with better conditions. Emergency leave should be standard for situations like these.

I feel for you. It's so difficult when you have a sick child. I take it there is nobody around to help you?

I think you will have to take the odd day as unpaid if for no other reason it will make the employer more accepting more broadly

This is a very common problem for working parents.

Op can you work from home for the day? I'm certainly not a fan of if for regular childcare but sick kids tend to want to just sit on the couch anyway.

But other than that I think you have to be honest.

in my role you’d only have 3 absences in any one year before disciplinary progress starts, so my fear for using your own “sickness” for looking after a poorly toddler is are you going to find yourself in hot water later in the year if you pick a nasty bug yourself and genuinely are too poorly to be at work.

Obviously this isn't an option or the OP wouldn't be posting. I don't understand why there are always posts like this as if the OP wouldn't have thought of that already.

Take annual keave

Lots of people don’t get paid even if they are ill other than SSP

You're a teacher, aren't you? I'm guessing you've already used up your allowance for paid parental leave this year?
I don't know how many sickness absences you've had, but when you get back to work, speak to the Headteacher about your situation.

My goodness there are some goody two shoes in this thread! I’d say a vomiting bug OP, and unless you confess at a later date or start bragging to your colleagues about lying, your employer can’t ’find you out’ and would have to tread very carefully if they wanted to accuse you of such a thing without cause.

You should be able to work out your own Bradford score by googling how it works if you’re worried about it (if your employer uses this). I’m a manager and nothing is flagged on the system for my reports until they hit 50+ (I think) and even then the first action is an informal chat. I’ve not had to do it yet!

I have a new mum on my team who has a 1 yr old and she’s been sick a few times in the last 6 months, do I believe it’s her that’s sick and not the baby? Not really, but I’m going to mark it as a sickness as I don’t give a toss if it means a young mum gets still gets paid by a profit chasing multimillion pound business. The baby being sick is a legitimate reason to have paid time off in my opinion. In fact when she she ‘had flu’ I reminded her to take any days sick off in a row rather than come back in/log back in at home and go off again (highers your B score). She never took the piss before she had baby so I trust that if she needs to be off, it’s genuine.

Say your toddler had brought home another bug and you’ve caught it, you’ve got a high temperature and are shaky. Bit light headed, not safe to drive. You’ll try to get some paperwork done later if you feel better. You’re really hopeful your dc stops bringing home bugs as you end up with them coughing in your face all night and then catch it. Really sorry.

I don’t understand your point, statutory sick pay is … payment?

You can say you've caught the lurgi off your child and just give symptoms instead of an actual illness i.e feeling achy and sick and not well enough to come in. In my workplace everyone's sickness who had kids aged up to around 2 years went up in those years as people knew you just get more easily run down yourself. No one got warnings or sacked. In the following years you'll find you don't need as much time off. But also check your work policy as we can access 3 days a year paid if we need a day off to look after sick kids. It's just one of those things, it's hard going if you have to keep losing pay in this current climate

Just be honest. It's always the best policy and it is a proper excuse. It's not worth the risk of saving 130 quid oppose to potentially being found out and losing your job altogether.

The self-righteousness on this thread is impressive...

Frankly I think the OP is right to put her sick kid first, especially as she does not have anyone else who could support her at home.

OP, you could use food poisoning/a general stomach bug as the reason.

Your employer is not going to 'find out' because employees can self-certified for a week.

I think if you regularly struggle though it might be worth trying to find a more flexible job in the long term.

Covid. You have Covid and feel totally crap.

Don't feel bad about lying because you need to stay home with your sick child. Workplaces should have flexible sick/parenting/family days for parents (specially when it affects mostly women) to stay home when their children are sick without being penalised by losing money.

Small medium and still many large companies are still run by men who don't give a fuck about women and how we juggle work when we have small children that get sick way too often.

I don't understand why people are saying up look for childcare, you can't send an ill child to a nursery/childminders

You can’t keep doing this for the next decade. I would consider finding a job that is more flexible around your needs as a parent. When your child reaches school age you’ll need to figure out how to cover school holidays and INSET days as well as your child’s illnesses. Having a job where you can WFH sometimes or flex hours is going to help massively.

We don't know the number of times the op has done this and have very little other information about her suppprt networks. We also don't know if the op had also taken time off for her own sickness absence.

How many days this year @colourPink have you taken for you, the toddler and combined?

Is your line manager generally supportive?

Do you have any alternative support?

More than 4 or 5 such days in a twelve month period and I'd be having a conversation with you about your attendance and I'm a supportive manager and know my staff's circumstances. My staff with young children are very committed, go the extra mile and are in early and stay late (30/45 mins) to get stuff done or log on from home. Therefore when they have an emergency, I always support.

I have had one or two tiddle takers over the years and have had some difficult conversations "why can't your partner help in these circumstances, etc" which is fair enough of they and their partner are even Stevens.

It's hard I know from personal experience. DS was sickly as a baby and I gave up work when he was 15 months because I couldn't be reliable.

As I understand it from another thread, she is a teacher, so the holidays are covered, although INSET days may not dovetail.

Yeah! I never know what people mean when they say this! What are we supposed to do? I have no family near and friends work themselves. If they don’t, they’re hardly likely to have a sick child over to pass on a bug to their own children and mess up the school run.

Would your employer let you use annual leave at short notice so you are still paid? I used to keep a few days of leave just in case my children were ill. We only got a couple of days of paid emergency leave - and could only use one day for any episode - and then annual leave or unpaid after that.

Can you not take special leave?
At our place you'd be able to have this paid as an emergency.