As a German I find the concept of "allotted sick days" disturbing.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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What if I told you that it usually also takes away from your vacation days?
So if you get sick too often, no vacation for you that year.
That’s sick (pun intended). Over here it’s the other way around: When we get sick during a vacation, we get the vacation days back.
Take your civilised attitude and get out of here!
Although, at least in my field of work, it's a bit frowned upon to actually get your vacation days back when you get sick.
It really shouldn't. My company has reprimanded people for not responding their vacation days. The law is very clear on this and courts have stated as well: vacations are meant for recovering your energy. Healing from an illness does not allow you to recover from work, so you must be granted that time again.
Only a refreshed worker is a productive worker.
My sick days and PTO are the same. I have a chronic illness I'm working with doctors to treat. Between occasional sick days, and doctors visits, I never get a vacation day
That really sucks. I've never had a job where they separated PTO and sick days. They just pool them together.
Damn, the US needs to get their shit together
How inconsiderate of you, think of the billionaires who would suffer!
I've been lucky enough to always have a job in the public sector and it's very common they are completely separate. Likely less pay, but far better retirement system than most private sector jobs.
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That's not the case in the UK, your annual leave is a legal entitlement, and unrelated to any sick time you may have to take.
The workers of your nation need to organise a few general strikes to get their basic rights sorted out, I don't like seeing workers abused.
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Yeah WTF, what if you get sick again? Do you tell the flu to sit it out or prepetuate the epidemic?
Yes
Believe it out not, straight to jail.
I was always told to never call in sick. If you’re sick, you go to work and only if the manager says to go home should you leave work.
Again, WTF?
Shit that doesn't even save you at some places. I was working and started feeling shitty ended up having a 103° fever, and was sent home. It still counted as an absence against me during my review.
So compare that with my experience of a few years ago when one of my relatives had an accident, and I was the one who could care for them for a few weeks.
Their conversation with their boss:
- Hey boss, I had an accident, I'll be out of work for a bit.
- Oh, what happened?
- Look, I would rather not talk about it.
- When are you coming back?
- It will most likely be a month.
- Okay, see you in a month then.
My conversation:
- Hey HR person, I need two weeks of care leave to care for a relative.
- Okay, see you in two weeks!
And that was all that's legally required of us, and legally permitted to the employers. We were both fully paid for the leave, as both employers were insured for exactly this. And the sky hasn't fallen, and the GDP is up, and we still live in a prosperous first world country.
Damn that sounds nice.
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You get everyone else sick, like Supply Side Jesus intended!
wait until you see this documentary they made a few years ago, called "Breaking Bad".
Unfortunately you're likely taking unpaid time off until short term disability kicks in (usually 6 weeks)
What if I told you merging PTO with sick days was to get around the Federal requirement for employers to not use your use of sick days against you. By eliminating sick days and rolling them all into one pool, they now can use being sick as an excuse to fire you.
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I had a coworker whose kids got sick back to back and then his wife, and then he got ill too. By March, he had no PTO and had to cancel his vacation that summer. He was worn the fuck out come summer. I think he was able to flex to work "four tens" here and there, but it sucks that "sick" and "vacation" are not only the same bucket, but could get you punished.
As a European I can't grasp this concept. As if sickness is something somebody chooses by will.
No, sickness is not a choice, but staying at home to recover IS a choice.
Just came in to work, projectile vomited everywhere then passed out on the floor. Bonus if you could pull off a seizure.
It's only professional ethics to bring whatever bug you have and share it with colleagues.
Sharing is caring.
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Hit your head on the floor and claim worker's comp.
In this situaution, wouldn't you be worried about incurring medical costs if someone called for help?
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Where I work, I get 5 days worth of PTO which can be used for either sick time or vacation time. It takes (8) 40 hour weeks to generate 1 new PTO day. We're not allowed to take unpaid time off, you're required to use your PTO. If you do not have any PTO left, you go up to 40 hours negative. You are then required to work 40 weeks to break out of the negative. If you decide to quit or are fired while in the negative, that hourly difference is deducted from your last paycheck.
It didn't used to be this way. The family owned company I work for was bought out by a 500 million dollar corporation.
Shits fucked yo.
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I've worked at companies where sick days are part of PTO and others where sick days are separate. In the past 2 years, I've had 1 with pti covering it all and 2 with separate vacation and sick accruals.
Having "an amount" of sick days is absurd. I may get sick or not. If I have an amount, I may even be compelled to reach it.
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Is this one of those comics where you have to laugh otherwise you'd cry because it's so true?
I'm so glad for the German worker's rights. I practically can't be fired for being sick.
In fact you can’t be fired at all (in the sense of "leave immediately and we won’t pay you anymore“) unless you really fuck up (like, assault your superior or something along those lines).
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But that doesn't make sense even in capitalist mindset. Finding another specialist is going to take time and resources. Plus, this is apparently a very good employee, already tested. The new one will likely be not as good if this one is perfect.
I understand that this comic is a hyperbole, but seems like firing people over using their sick leave is financially detrimental.
It doesn't make sense but it happens constantly, especially in low-level environments Where Heads Are a dime a dozen, it's usually not straight out being terminated however it's done in the case of yeah you did everything perfectly but we can't financially afford to give you a higher rating than average. Which does more or less the same thing cuz it tells the employee well it's time to go elsewhere so they're going to be doing training costs anyway
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Yeah, but the new guy's gonna be cheaper than the one with experience!
I mean, think about the next quarter benefits! Stop searching for stuff like 'reliability' or 'long term'. That doesn't mean anything to the shareholders who'll jump ship the next month.
(It's definitely an hyperbole, but it does raise a good point over hyper short-termism leading to mass layoffs for 'profitability'. The sick days are just the excuse needed to part the employes that will support their hyper toxic management structures from the ones who aren't 'team players')
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It most definitely is, and it is such an idiotic mindset when actual number crunching happens.
Employee A: Been here for a year (due to getting a performance review in the comic), already trained, already knows much about the system and environment, apparently perfect Gets fired for using a sick day
Employee B: newly hired (since we fired the last guy), needs to be trained (as each work environment can be totally different even in the same field), knows next to nothing about the work flow or systems or environment, might be perfect but we won’t know for sure until next year or until they mess something up really bad Loss of money on training someone for a role that used to be filled by a person who was already engrained into the work
= a really fucking dumb way of looking at how you handle management
The new person could also use EVEN MORE sick days or whatever. Just…? Brain… are you there…?
cries in working parent
My employer gives us 8 sick days a year. When we run out of those we are supposed to use vacation time. It's downright depressing how fast we blow through the sick time in a bad winter season.
I'm very very lucky to work from home, so I can neglect my sick kid at home while getting work done and thus avoid having to burn through my vacation time as well. Others aren't so lucky.
This is pretty much illegal in most European countries btw. But not all countries assure sick children time off.
Actually I've read studies saying people who took their full PTO tended to get better year over year raises.
I would like to see how they handled companies that have "unlimited" PTO.
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I finally have a job that has good benefits, after only having contract work and unpaid internships in the past. I have unlimited pto and unlimited sick days.
I am too scared to use them because I don’t want to accidentally use too much.
Yeah it's funny, a lot of companies are switching to "unlimited PTO" because studies show the average employee ends up using less.
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