A recent Wall Street Journal article — an actual article, in the workplace/lifestyle section, not even an op-ed! — laments the recent trend of horrible, lazy workers who, umm … *checks notes* … tak…
The whole reason sick days are a thing is that giving employees paid sick time costs you less when they don’t come in and make other employees sick. If enough people get sick in a given org, that has a way of really impacting everything about a workplace, it really is cheaper if they stay home until they’re not contagious.
The worst part of this situation, to me: that anyone is pressing for sick leave to be tightly audited, or seeking to frame its use as a sort of graft or taking from the employer, or a pretext for preemptively firing employees deemed guilty of being too sick. This kind of talk creates pressure for employees to come to work sick in order to avoid being seen as slackers or thieves, and that in turn (especially in an environment full of flu and covid variants, doubly so on the heels of a fucking pandemic so we should all know better by now) defeats the point of having sick days in the first place.
Or a really bad day. Like unbearable pain, or a massive head ache. It’s better if people take the time off and recover because they work better and make fewer mistakes. Nothing sucks more then to redo work.
I was talking about the fact that pain is not contagious
… Of course pain is a valid reason to stay at home!
My reasoning was that the risk of spreading the disease can’t be the only reason for companies to let you not go to work because it only applies to infectious diseases!
I think the majority of people misunderstood my comment
The whole reason sick days are a thing is that giving employees paid sick time costs you less when they don’t come in and make other employees sick. If enough people get sick in a given org, that has a way of really impacting everything about a workplace, it really is cheaper if they stay home until they’re not contagious.
The worst part of this situation, to me: that anyone is pressing for sick leave to be tightly audited, or seeking to frame its use as a sort of graft or taking from the employer, or a pretext for preemptively firing employees deemed guilty of being too sick. This kind of talk creates pressure for employees to come to work sick in order to avoid being seen as slackers or thieves, and that in turn (especially in an environment full of flu and covid variants, doubly so on the heels of a fucking pandemic so we should all know better by now) defeats the point of having sick days in the first place.
Sick days are a thing because unions fought for them.
This only applies to infectious disease
Or a really bad day. Like unbearable pain, or a massive head ache. It’s better if people take the time off and recover because they work better and make fewer mistakes. Nothing sucks more then to redo work.
I was talking about the fact that pain is not contagious … Of course pain is a valid reason to stay at home!
My reasoning was that the risk of spreading the disease can’t be the only reason for companies to let you not go to work because it only applies to infectious diseases!
I think the majority of people misunderstood my comment