Off work ill

I think the sickness policy where my wife works is daft, its for one of the NHS trusts, if you come down with d&v often caught from patient contact, other members of staff or just the hospital setting (even after following all hygiene procedures), you are forced to take 48 hrs off until clear yet they have one of those three strikes and you get disciplineld policy.
 
"andy" said:
we used to have a crap sick policy. it meant people would all come in ill , make each other ill , get more ill. do naff all work

now we have a great sick policy. everyone abuses it. sometimes to hilarious extents. you can now expect courtesy call after courtesy call when your off. which i imagine is bloody horrible when your really ill (a guy was getting calls asking when he could come back while he was in intensive care !)

not sure whats worse.
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If the calls are as bad as you imply then I would be casually mentioning the words 'harrassment' and 'right to privacy'.

It's like everything in life, there'll always be those that abuse the system. Unfortunately, the people responsible for running the system don't know how to manage it and often impose counter-measures that effect everyone and not just the abusers.
 
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Dimple said:
One of our lurking members has a brother who used to work at JCB and he got a call from their HR department asking why he hadn't been in.
He then listed all his injuries from being hit by a lorry on his cycle on the way home from work which included 2 broken hips, punctured lungs and 5 cracked vertebrae which now means he's 2" shorter.
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Let me guess; HR's response was: "So, you'll be back next week then?"
 
The immune system thing is a good argument, HOWEVER, in my job theres one guy left with infant kids, and he's just distributing sickness around. I'm usually completely immune to stuff, but I can almost feel the germs come in when we have a meeting and he's coughing around. And usually bingo 2 days later 2 or 3 people are ill (sometime, even me!)
Last winter I had a 3 weeks spell of being on/off ill -- never happened to me before, and pretty much all the team went thru it. I take a cold shower every morning so usually my immunity is pretty high, but hard to beat the germ pool from the nursery.

As far as sick days are, I rarely take any -- sometime it's man flu on rare occasions, and on some other occasion I drive to work, realize I shouldn't be there and just take off and go back home. At least you can show you /tried/ and you can sleep it off in the afternoon.
 
One thing I do tho, and yeah it's probably part OCD, is that I never go to the office loo without a piece of tissue to use to open the door(s), lift the seat etc; then I wash my hands, and take another piece of tissue to open the door etc etc and toss it in my bin when I get back to my desk.

I know, OCD, blah blah, but I saw so many people not wash their hands, it's really disgusting.
At the pub I usually try to open the toilet doors with my elbows -- and that is if I MUST go take a **** :>
 
Had one instance of sickness in the 3 1/2 years i've worked at my current job and that was a few weeks ago when i gave myself the trots badly cooking out of date meat..

Certainly wasn't going in when i ****** water every 5 minutes
 
My sick pay doesn't kick in till i've had more than 3 days off. 1-2 days off then no pay, or i usually take them as holidays. Never actually taken a 'sickie' when i've been perfectly fine. Worried i'd enjoy it too much.
 
I want to bring something else to the debate how I think most people who have sick days off are genuinely 'worse' than other people. I spend every working day looking at patients hospital records and let's take two examples from Friday that made me think of this thread.
The first was a person born in 1950 and their first hospital record started from 1966 and continued until now. This person had a hospital journey nearly every 3 years ending up in surgery with something totally different and the last journey was in 2013. I turned to a colleague and said that this person had an horrendous life and of course none of it was put on because every journey was properly diagnosed and acted upon. This person was also a lifelong non smoker and a 6 unit per week drinker and never been obese.
In the afternoon I was asked to look up records of an 86 year old for an Inquest and this person had only one journey that lasted 6 hours before they died. Taken ill at home > bought to hospital > discharged (I hate that term for died).
I then thought about this thread and how some people are genuinely more sick than others and some of us should be thankful. At this moment in time I only have 3 pieces of paper in my hospital notes and all are for my hearing.

This has been bought to you from the storybook of Dimple's Anecdotes.
 
Genes first, lifestyle second. Sadly some people just have bad genes and no matter what they do their genes will take precedent.
 
In the past few years I have only had one occasion of sickness but that was only brought on by someone keep coming to work being a 'Hero' and struggling through a serious cold that required anti-biotics... this resulted in in me having two weeks off over christmas (which I already had as holiday) with a hugely bad cold with a fever and coming out in red blotches all over my body and needing anti-biotics (luckily not shingles), 3 people with serious colds ending up getting shingles and having to be off for over 3 weeks, and about 10 others having about a week off because they had not been exposed as much.

I don't think there are many if any at work who take sickies, but this 'Hero' caused all the co-workers lots of stress.
 
OpenToSuggestions said:
Most 'ill' people are not ill.
The number of times I see a 35 year old pathetic woman pretending to shiver, all wrapped up in scarves with 'flu' making no effort to cover her mouth up is hilarious.

I had flu once when I first attended University. For 4 days I felt like complete death. Standing up for >5 minutes was an effort.
She had a cold and was being a martyr.
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This is true. Very few people actually get flu. With flu you're in bed not able to move for 4-5 days minimum.
 
I spent pretty much the whole of last year taking the royal **** with work - it was bang out of order. Could guarantee I'd have a couple of days sick every month - I was living it up a bit too much and everything else suffered.

Things changed when I actually got sick sick. Was diagnosed with Pneumonia, spent a night in hospital and a week or so off sick at home. Knew that things had to change.

Since then I've had two sickdays this year, and even those I worked from home to make sure nothing was missed. That includes working through a cough that turned into a chest infection that turned into another bout of pneumonia. I've been a complete ******* and a **** taker with work in the past - so trying to sort myself out.
 
FunkyCowie said:
In the past few years I have only had one occasion of sickness but that was only brought on by someone keep coming to work being a 'Hero' and struggling through a serious cold that required anti-biotics... this resulted in in me having two weeks off over christmas (which I already had as holiday) with a hugely bad cold with a fever and coming out in red blotches all over my body and needing anti-biotics (luckily not shingles), 3 people with serious colds ending up getting shingles and having to be off for over 3 weeks, and about 10 others having about a week off because they had not been exposed as much.

I don't think there are many if any at work who take sickies, but this 'Hero' caused all the co-workers lots of stress.
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Lol, if your doctor gave you antibiotics for a cold, they need to go back to medical school ;)
 
I'd never take a sick day unless I was genuinely ill. In fact, I'd probably try to show up and see if I can work... then leave.

This stems from the fact that I'm not a douche.
 
I've only ever had a half day off work sick at my old place. And that was because I threw up twice while working so I went home after 4 hours.

At my new job I think you get about 8 paid sick days per year however you have to have been working there for 6 months to qualify which I don't yet.
 
BusError said:
One thing I do tho, and yeah it's probably part OCD, is that I never go to the office loo without a piece of tissue to use to open the door(s), lift the seat etc; then I wash my hands, and take another piece of tissue to open the door etc etc and toss it in my bin when I get back to my desk.

I know, OCD, blah blah, but I saw so many people not wash their hands, it's really disgusting.
At the pub I usually try to open the toilet doors with my elbows -- and that is if I MUST go take a **** :>
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This is soo true.
 
Guest2 said:
There are a number of people where I currently work and previous work places that seem to be constantly off work sick.

In the past 6 of years I think I have had 1 day off and this was a 'sickie' for Summer olympics when I went to London.
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Probably a case of just pulling a "sickie" if it tends to be the same people.

Guest2 said:
Do you think this is down to poor immune systems, because people are more prone to illness or just pulling sickies?

It really grinds my gears, especially when other people have to take on their workload
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Who covered your workload when you pulled your "sickie", you can hardly do what they do and then complain.

Personally i don't call in sick unless i am actually ill, being one person short really does put pressure on the rest of the people on my department.
 
teulk said:
Who covered your workload when you pulled your "sickie", you can hardly do what they do and then complain.
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This also makes me smirk when somebody says what the OP posted.
If several people can divide the workload up of one person off sick then they haven't got enough to do in the first place.
 
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