Called off work on Friday because I accidentally fucked up my back Thursday night and woke up unable to move without excruciating pain. My boss left me on read. Didn't even fucking reply.
I would like to add - fuck those managers that try to make scheduling issues around your sick days your problem. Over the last few years, I’ve heard of more and more jobs where the manager expects you, the sick person, to find coverage for your shift in order to call out. That is, you’re expected to call around your coworkers and find someone who will work your shift for you… yes, even if you’ve got no voice or are busy puking your brains out. Somehow, this practice has become prevalent in some jobs in the US. I worry about the younger workers who accept this as normal. It is not normal, and should never be normal!
The manager is paid to manage the employees - including finding coverage when someone’s sick. If you ever find yourself in a job where a manager tries to make you find your replacement before “permitting” you to call out, GTFO out of there! It’s a fucked up practice and sane employers don’t pull that shit.
(For all the Europeans reading - yes, this is real. Yes, we need better labor laws.)
I guilt myself enough as it is. My boss tells me don't worry about it and that I need rest like everyone else lol. I'm lucky, I both have my dream job and a boss that actually goes to bat for me. I wish everyone could have the same.
Shit, If a client is even just a little rude to me my boss will basically threaten to pull their account and force them to apologize.
Honestly, one would think the boss is someone with the skill and know how of at least 2 of his subordinates. Not the survivability of 5 toddlers in a trench coat
Exactly, too many times it's just because of nepotism or attrition.
It's true and i agree but it's still my coworker suffering the consequences.
Meh, they should take days off too then, don't be an apologist. Pitting against fellow workers is not the way.
TIL feeling bad for my coworkers makes me an apologist
You need to stop thinking in twitter posts and start thinking in terms of reality.
Huh. Now, I for one enjoy coming in for extra hours because MONEY but I realize that few people enjoy their jobs as much as I do D:
Hell, few people enjoy MY job as much as I do!
I work overnight dispatching at a towing company.
(I discretely sabotage certain predatory practices while I'm there, teehee~! ;3c )
Unpopular opinion here: this is true for some jobs but the more responsibility you develop in your career the more unplanned absences will be noticed.
Yes, you "deserve" sick days as well as all the other supports employees are entitled to in a modern well managed organisation, but quite obviously if you do important stuff then on some days you just won't be around to do those important things.
Like this guy Jason Call for example, I presume that if he's elected is supposed to show up to congress and debate or vote on new legislation. How would you feel if he just didn't do that because he was... you know... off sick? What if he was genuinely unwell a few times when important legislation was passed and then another occasion comes around and he feels like he's coming down with something? He should just be able to take the day because his manager should have just hired more people right? No. Sometimes you've just got to grind it out.
There will be times in most professional jobs when taking a day off because you're unwell is going to let the team down. In my experience, you tell the team what's going on and see what can be done to reduce what's required of you. For example if you're meeting with an important client or whatever then maybe others can help with the prep and you show up late and leave early.
If your absence would break the company, then they need to be compensating you accordingly and have a backup plan.
I've worked heavily in the upper eschelons of BOH for nearly two decades now. I set very very clear boundaries. There are emergency protocols should shit break while i'm on leave.
Scheduled leave is a different proposition entirely.
I didn't say someone's absence would "break" a company, I'm really pointing out that if you have a lot of responsibility in your work then there will be days when your unplanned absence will effect team.
Sure, and you should be compensated appropriately for that responsibility.
And you should be able to take sick leave if you're sick.
He did not, in fact, get elected. He is a Green Party candidate and he typically comes in 3rd right behind the Republican in the primaries, or has his last few losses.
There's also a real limit to how many staff a given schedule can support. You don't hire people that don't have any work that they're needed to perform.
Put yourself in the shoes of that example person. You were hired but as long as everyone else is healthy and functional, you're always superfluous. Your hours will be cut repeatedly to avoid wasting labor costs, but you'll still be expected to be available. If you're instead on call, you will be expected to be available for all days you agreed to be on call for - you can't work a different job or get wrapped up in personal things that you can't set down or pause.
There's a difference between a full staff and a skeleton crew staff. But in both cases, a sudden unplanned absence like illness or injury will require someone to work extra hours or the business will have to do without that person. A fully staffed property, like a hotel for example, might have two desk agents that typically work together for the same shift to ensure customers never have to wait too long for service. The job can be done with just one person, at cost of customer experience, and that's what you'll see from places running a skeleton crew.
What you won't see, however, is there being a third staff member who is there purely to cover for one of the other two. That's already handled by the supervisor (if one exists) or manager.
The only thing you do by keeping things running through heroic effort is to send a message to management that they can lower the priority of dealing with the issue.
Managing upwards (getting management to make decisions in your favor) means that you can't let yourself be the reason they don't feel the pain of a problem like poor staffing. Sure, you can step in and save the day if you really, truly, need to build up your reputation as dependable/hero, but it's a thin thin line.
One thing I often do as well is try to look at people in other departments and their general attitudes towards time off, vacations, having to leave for Dr's appointments, that sort of thing.
I'll be damned if I'm going to live in a constant crunch time situation, feeling like I need to take lunch at my desk, and put off things I need to do for me.
Especially while other teams are having regular team building outings during work hours on the company dime, one guy takes a long lunch and to go to the gym, and two others were clearly taking the video call meeting while out walking their dog.
Everyone deserves consideration of the fact that they are human, and everyone deserves the kind of flexibility that often is only for business side "important" people.
Overtime solves this issue pretty effortlessly. They call you and offer a shift of overtime to cover someone that's unexpectedly absent. If you're willing to sacrifice your normal time off, you get time and a half in exchange. If you're not, then either another person will or the manager/foreman on salary handles it. That is, after all, one of the reasons they're paid more (and on salary.)
In my opinion, at a healthy workplace, someone taking time off shouldn't be noticed
In a "healthy" capitalist environment, they take note of who can leave without any bumps in the road and lay them off
I used to have this boss who would get mad if anyone asked for 2 weeks off. She would say, "if you think the business can survive without you for that long, why do we pay you? Don't bother coming back then"
That boss was a short-sighted moron. (I assume we all can see that). I hope that role is as high up the food chain as the Peter Principal will allow them to go.
1). Hiring is expensive, scouting, ads, interviews, and paying HR do process their onboarding and benifits. The rule of thumb Ive see previous managers use is the total cost to hire someone is 2-2.5 times their annual take-home. Not to mention the effectivness of a new hire learning the role costs the company real resources, time and effort to bring up to speed.
2). Your PTO is part of your compensation, and can be used within policy as you see fit. Failure to allow its appropriate use could be viewed as wage theft and there are very powerful leagl avenues (depending on location) to take if the case is big enough to bring against the employeer.
Within policy does a lot of heavy lifting.
It's generally very simple (by intent) for the employer to deny PTO requests "within policy."
Have you never been in a position of management? You think absences should never be noted or logged?
You might need to reconsider this.
The issue arises when multiple people all get sick at the same time, which is much more common than random chance would have it due to how contagious cold & flu (and COVID) are. A workplace that can handle half the staff gone for a day without falling behind is gonna struggle to find stuff for people to do when everyone is there.
This is reason for having more lenient sick policies, not less. Generally only symptomatic people are contagious (COVID being an exception). Even mildly sick people should be encouraged to stay home until fully recovered to lower the risk of spreading it to the rest of the office.
By the way, this also applies for "unforeseen problems" which "made the project go behind schedule" and "now we're going to work extra hard" (meaning overtime without pay).
It's up to management to not only account and prepare for Known Unknowns (problems known to happen but not if, when and how severe - for example employee sickness), but even have margin for Unknown Unknowns (problems that nobody expected).
In fact, half way competent managers will do enough analysis and research upfront to transform many otherwise Know Unknowns into Known Knowns (we know this will happen) and Unknown Unknowns into Known Unknowns - sometimes things are only "totally unexpected" because the necessary upfront research and preparation hasn't been done.
Managing this is literally the core job of low-level and mid-level managers, so if they try and dump on you the responsibility for it or try and extract from you out of contract work to make up for it, they are literally acting in the most selfish personal upside maximizing way possible and just covering their own incompetence.
It is not up to you to make sure an incompetent asshole gets a bonus for doing a shit job and overpromising.
This is literally they kind of situation where, unless you're for example reciprocating equivalent leeway from said manager towards you in the past (say, the kind that'll actually quietly let you go home early if you're having a bad day), you absolutely have the moral high ground to leave it to them to sort it out with whomever THEY are accountable to (be it a client they made deadline promises to based on a plan that would only ever work in the perfect zero-problems situation or their own manager).
This is so different industry by industry. Some can build in redundancy to cover employee leave yet still have something to do when everyone is healthy.
For many other companies, particularly in reference to hourly employees, having too many employees in the same position to cover call outs means scheduling gets diluted among them, which leads to lower earnings for all employees and higher turnover.
I pro worker and anti abusive management, but vague generalized posts like these feel disingenuous or at least not well thought out.
This kinda shit only gets written and spread by people who either have never been management or are really shitty management.
There's way too many nuances to being a "good boss" to sum up in one dumb tweet.
also, by going to work sick, you are unnecessarily endangering your coworkers, your customers, and yourself.
What do you mean you "deserve" sick days? Aren't you legally given those?
For instance, I can call in two days a month and say "I'm sick, staying home, not working". If I'm not that badly off, then I can call in as much as I want (within reason) and say "I'm sick but working from home". At any point, I can say "I'm sick, going to hospital".
Few American employers provide actual sick days. Instead you can pull from your pool of paid time off (which doubles as vacation for many jobs, although some do have a separate vacation pool that can only be used for scheduled time off) or just have an unpaid absence.
No. We are not given those.
The people who we trust to secure those rights for us that you take for granted are useless unless they're blocking progress.
No. I don't get any sick days at all for any reason. There are two kinds of leave at my job: scheduled, and unscheduled. If it was preapproved 2+weeks in advance by you submitting a slip and the boss signing it and then getting back to you, then it was scheduled. Anything else is unscheduled, and technically I can be disciplined for it.
That fucking sucks mate.
It's true and i agree but it's still my coworker suffering the consequences.
Eh, it can definitely be abused. Worked a union job and we were allowed so many sick days which you were supposed to accumulate so that if you like, broke your leg you could potentially have like 6 months of sick time to recover.
But one guy would just call in sick every Friday basically and we had to cover his extra duties. He wasn't sick, just abused the system.
Why didn't you do the same? I would have.
Us workers need to have some solidarity for each other otherwise employers will take advantage.
At the end of the day we are all but numbers in some assholes spreadsheet, they would reduce the numbers in a heartbeat. It business. The sooner you understand that the easier it will get.
Because your coworkers have to work harder in your absence? Stop being such a selfish prick.
Because it wasn't some million dollar corporation exploiting employees. Some jobs actually have decent employers and I knew all it would do is make work harder for my coworkers. Personally I view it as a dick move to do.
It was a non profit animal sanctuary so not only do the workers get shafted the animals the guy was supposed to care for also got shafted.
Not every employer is bent on exploiting employees, but when employees treat every employer as if they are it makes it harder for the good ones to provide decent working conditions.
Employees can absolutely take advantage of employers and I think its silly that people think all employers all evil and all employees are innocent victims that should exploit everything.
So you're saying the system was abused because someone used every sick day available to him?
Here in Australia the underlying legislation and case law only allows you to take personal leave in specific circumstances. Generally, because you're unwell, an immediate family member is unwell and you're caring for them, or due to an emergency. Specific companies might relax those requirements but they can't make them more arduous.
Employers can ask for reasonable evidence that you met one of these criteria. For example, they can ask you to obtain confirmation from a Dr. If you go to a Dr and ask for confirmation and merely say "I feel a bit worn out and just really needed a few hours to unwind", they will give you the confirmation.
With all this in mind, yes, taking leave regularly when you're not really sick is abuse of the system.
Why not let that be a problem for the management and enjoy your fair sick days?
Because the intention is to use the time when you are actually sick not use it to work 4-day work weeks. And using it like that means when the guy actually needs 6 months off for an emergency he won't have the sick time to use, so basically puts all that work back on us double. And people who use it in the unintended way are why a lot of workplaces don't offer lots of sick time for emergencies. Instead eventually we will only get the minimum 5 days per year that resets annually instead of accumulating and then they hire another worker with the savings.
Yes that helps with the workload but the rest of us get screwed since we won't have an emergency backup of sick time to use anymore because someone used it in an unintended way.
the reason bosses suck is the workers actually
stop victim blaming boot licker
Typical Redditor mentality.
An employer here can send a doctor to your home to check if you're really sick if they're suspecting you to abuse the system. If you're not at home then you're in trouble. It can backfire of course. My dad got a visit from a doctor hired by his boss when he was really sick, the guy did his diagnostic, and gave my dad a few extra days of sick leave because the doc found sending him back to work on schedule was not a good idea.
Manager: "Ya know, you're really putting me in a tight spot here....."
Me: "Oh, yeah, I know all about tight spots. Kinda like how every day I work my ass off, and at the end of the month barely have enough money to keep my head above water, all without having medical coverage. I make too much for medicaid, but I definately can't afford a doctor. Which is kinda scary and all. You know.....since I just over beating cancer in 2023. Not like cancer ever comes back, or has post complications......"
And then I walk away from the conversation.
I've found at places of employment, the best way to not get walked all over, is to be a reflection of how big of an asshole THEY are being in the moment. They can't call me out onit, because it's exactly their behavior. They won't fix the issues, because the issue is them, or above them. So it ends up being more of a headache than it's worth to talk to me.
Now I just get called into an office.
"Did you do the new company policy?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because fuck that shit. I can achieve the same goal you're telling me to work at for an hour, in about 15 seconds. All the extra bullshit is just busy work, and I don't do that."
Long pause
sigh "Just get back to work....
Guys, I'm telling you. All you gotta do is be an immovable rock in your stance, and work a job that would be really hard to replace you. Then just be dependable. Show up to work every day. Don't be late. Do the work. But don't take shit.
They'll be presented with "do I really fire a worker who shows up and works the shifts no one else wants? Can I replace him?"
The answer may be yes, but it's still a hell of a process that's already solved by simply NOT firing you.
You'd get fired pretty fast from a lot of places for that behavior. That made up scenario just reeks of Reddit.
You're not as hard to replace as you think you are.
I know this doesn't happen often in practice, but I absolutely cover my teams time off (for what ever reason). Our clients don't pay us enough to have extra staff standing around when everyone is healthy, so I'm the coverage plan. 😕
💯
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
