Money Moral Dilemma: Should you risk spreading the lurgy to colleagues?

inca_2

If I have a cold I go in simple as, I've probably already infected people at work well before the symptoms showed anyway. Also, sickness is very much frowned upon where I work as it is in many places. I don't have my boss in the same office as me so it's not as if he can ever see how ill I am. The only exception to this was when I had a vomiting bug and was being sick very frequently, there was no way I was going to be going up and down 40 steps to the loo every few minutes. I was sent home once when my boss came in to spend the day with me and I was feeling pretty ill and looked it, he just told me to go home without question.

I always send my staff home however if they seem to be too ill to be at work but that's because they don't take the p*** and if I send them home it doesn't have to be recorded and therefore won't cause them any problems. I'd much rather they went home and got themselves better than run themselves down and be ill for even longer.

I'm quite lucky though because it's very rare that I get a cold and equally as rare that I get ill enough to feel that I can't work. I wouldn't feel comfortable with sitting at home knowing that I didn't feel so ill that I couldn't do my job, whilst still getting paid.

Cloudane

In some ways I can see where the Americans are coming from. I'm guessing that paid sick leave is against the "American Way" and probably unheard of there - if you're weak you don't deserve to live and all that. Well not quite to that extreme, but some of them seem to have that extreme 'survival of the fittest' attitude. And hey... no paid sick leave means people would only be off sick when absolutely necessary.

I still prefer to think that people can be trusted not to take the p*** as long as you're not breathing down their neck. Mutual respect. When you're being trusted, it seems all the more compelling to encourage that sense of trust by showing that it's warranted IMO.

All my colleagues are busy trying to give me the lurgy it seems, there are lots of people visibly and audibly suffering, so I'll feel no remorse when time for revenge comes

ljbnotts

I worked as a matron in a boarding school and in my first 6 weeks i was really ill, i never had any sick time off. At the end of that 6 weeks i had glandular fever(only diagnosed a few months later when i could hardly stay awake over Christmas! I was literally awake for about 5 hours a day for 3 weeks!) I worked all through it (working 6AM until 10PM with 2 hours off and then on night call till next morning, 6 days a week). I made myself even worse and suffered from viral fatigue that has taken 3 years to get back to normal! I wish i had taken a week off, recovered and not felt like death for the next 3 years! Why didn't i take time off? Because it was frowned upon and i didn't want to let anyone down! So my advice is if you take a day or so to get back to a healthy level it may help in the long run!

Badger_Lady

I did exactly that, Ljbnotts, and I actually got called into a room and told off for "not being cheerful any more". I had glandular fever and struggled to even stay awake! I used to go "to the toilet" and curl up round the bowl for quick 15-minute naps without anyone knowing. When I tried to use my illness as a defence to "not being cheerful" it was dismissed - if I was ill, why was I at work in the first place?

Sylvester

I would go in if I could.

The biatches would only moan they had more workload if I didn't, so either way, I couldn't win.