I took today off just because.

[MrSquished]

my company gave a guy a plaque because he hadn't taken a sick day for 40 years

wow. They should have given him a one week mandatory paid vacation. A plaque lolololol

 

[igor_kavinski]

wow. They should have given him a one week mandatory paid vacation. A plaque lolololol

Nah. Given him all his sick days back as mandatory paid vacation. Plaque? That's just telling other employees, hey, you should follow his example and help the business make more profits at the expense of your mental and physical health coz you know, we own your ass and we can fire you any time and there is nothing you can do short of quitting and being miserable somewhere else.

 

[brianmanahan]

Nah. Given him all his sick days back as mandatory paid vacation. Plaque? That's just telling other employees, hey, you should follow his example and help the business make more profits at the expense of your mental and physical health coz you know, we own your ass and we can fire you any time and there is nothing you can do short of quitting and being miserable somewhere else.

no kidding, that company had a policy where you got like 8 or 10 sick days a year

but if you took half of them you weren't eligible for a raise

and if you took all of them then you were probably fired

taking 1 or 2 a year was ok, but apparently HR kept track and didn't like it when people did it

 

[igor_kavinski]

taking 1 or 2 a year was ok, but apparently HR kept track and didn't like it when people did it

I can't get a sick leave unless I have a standardized sick leave certificate from the doctor and the doctor has to fill out a form from the local Health Authority. If he puts in more leave days than would be considered normal for the particular ailment/condition, he would probably get questioned so they are pretty stingy too. I get maybe two sick leaves a year out of a maximum 15. More than that, it gets deducted from my annual leave balance. No calling in sick for me, if I just wanna chill out at home

 

[nakedfrog]

no kidding, that company had a policy where you got like 8 or 10 sick days a year

but if you took half of them you weren't eligible for a raise

and if you took all of them then you were probably fired

taking 1 or 2 a year was ok, but apparently HR kept track and didn't like it when people did it

Wow, that's fucked up. Sounds like a shit company to work for.

 

[purbeast0]

Some of you work for some bad companies lol.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Oh, did I mention that I get only one day off?

I was gonna start losing my annual leave days coz they had already accrued up to the maximum 60. I took about 50 days vacation time coz the jerk who was gonna relieve me the past year decided to resign after coming back from his vacation which meant I couldn't go without training a new guy. Then some company project made it harder for me to plan a vacation. When I saw that project wasn't gonna get completed in the next two months due to external dependencies, I took my vacation.

My immediate manager calls me on the 4th or 5th day and says that the COO wants to talk to me. I go there and he tells me, he can hire another low paid monkey like the one I trained. I told him, sure until he gets stuck somewhere due to inexperience. Then he starts telling me crap like if an employee goes on such a long vacation, it means he isn't needed in the company. I told him that nothing would be impacted and the project wasn't gonna get completed anytime soon. He called me back to work one day before my vacation ended and tried to get back at me by berating me for stupid work stuff.

That pending Azure migration project got completed and I got credited as the Technical Lead on it so at least I have something to show for it. Didn't do much technical stuff other than point out really basic PC stuff to the people involved who were clueless about those things, like which VM types are the best, comparing application performance onpremises vs. Azure and running HammerDB comparisons to show them that IOPS are everything for DB performance. Azure "consultants" seem to believe throwing compute cores at the DB should make it run faster coz MOAR CORES!!!! Sigh.

 

[Charmonium]

I'm "off" all day, every day. Wait, what are we talking about?

 

[nakedfrog]

I'm "off" all day, every day. Wait, what are we talking about?

You can say that again.

 

[WelshBloke]

There's a lady at my work that's had been off sick for over a year (on full pay). Actually there's about 3 of them but 2 of them are proper sick.
When she came back she was eligible for a full years worth of holiday leave that had acrewed while she was off!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I like taking floaters when I have 1-2 8h shifts with days off before and after. It makes for a nice long stretch. The way the schedule worked out around my vacation I had like almost 3 weeks off recently as I only needed to take a few floaters to make it a longer stretch. Back at work now... it sucked going back lol.

 

[NutBucket]

Man, some of you guys really do have shitty employers. We generally encourage folks to take off as much as we can....and we have unlimited sick leave. Guess what, it doesn't get abused. Funny how that works.

And this coming from the guy who is getting close to the 9 weeks accrued vacation limit...

 

[Zeze]

I went to my boss one time and told her I needed to take the rest of the day off because my wife called and she wanted to take a half day off and come home and take a nap with me.

My boss laughed and gave me the time off with pay as mental health time.

I ran home and jumped into bed and 3 minutes later the wife came in and we slept away the whole afternoon.

This made me smile.

 

[Zeze]

This is absolutely horrible work ethic. Please surrender your American citizenship at once .

And give it to whom? I'm probably more American you. How do I know? I took my day off like an any red-blooded American and grilled me some steaks.

 

[Zeze]

So if Zeze is on a treadmill he takes off?

treadmill breaks.

 

[Zeze]

no kidding, that company had a policy where you got like 8 or 10 sick days a year

but if you took half of them you weren't eligible for a raise

and if you took all of them then you were probably fired

taking 1 or 2 a year was ok, but apparently HR kept track and didn't like it when people did it

I'm appalled. Is this a smaller sized company? The smallest company I worked for had 500 ppl and it was very professional.

 

[brianmanahan]

I'm appalled. Is this a smaller sized company? The smallest company I worked for had 500 ppl and it was very professional.

nah it was a quite big (over 1000 employees), old and conservative company

the sick days policy was supposedly from the 1950s and HR just refused to rewrite it for some reason

i think they eventually did after i left though, and went to a normal system where there were no sick days, just combined sick/vacation days you can take any time

 

[nakedfrog]

nah it was a quite big (over 1000 employees), old and conservative company

the sick days policy was supposedly from the 1950s and HR just refused to rewrite it for some reason

i think they eventually did after i left though, and went to a normal system where there were no sick days, just combined sick/vacation days you can take any time

"for some reason"
I think we all know the reason

 

[Red Squirrel]

We technically have unlimited, there is no set amount of sick days. Basically if you're sick, you just call in sick and still get paid. After a number of days the manager can ask for a doctor note if they want but all the managers I've had were decent about that and I've never had to get a note.

 

[NutBucket]

That type of policy is in place so management has an option to question potential abusers. If your boss trusts you then it is usually their discretion to require a note.

 

[zinfamous]

because?

 

[MrSquished]

We technically have unlimited, there is no set amount of sick days. Basically if you're sick, you just call in sick and still get paid. After a number of days the manager can ask for a doctor note if they want but all the managers I've had were decent about that and I've never had to get a note.

That is almost communism