To call in sick or NOT to call in sick???

[I am the Lizard Queen!!]

So, I basically feel like a giant *ss about this, and I am wondering, honestly, what you guys think.

I have been fighting a horrible sore throat/sore ears/burning chest kind of thing for about 10 days. Up until yesterday the only symptoms I had were stabbing pains when I swallowed and a burning in my chest and ears and occasional coughing but not hacking all over the place. I have continued to work all of my jobs mainly because I am not sneezing or spraying mucous everywhere (sorry, sorry, gross I know) and I have been super diligent about handwashing and using sanitizer every couple of minutes.

Yesterday morning was different; I woke up with the same symptoms mentioned above, but also with body aches and a fever that was controlled by ibuprofen but returned on the dot every 3 hours or so. I also was coughing a lot more, though still not a huge amount.

My second job yesterday was at the golf course and I was working a HUGE tournament that has been planned for weeks. I decided I was going to tough it out and work the tournament, basically because I knew they would never find a replacement for me the same day. So at around 2 pm, 3 hours before I am meant to be at work, I get up to take a shower and start to get ready and that's when I realize that I just feel awful. Truly terrible. I feel dizzy, my head is pounding, my body aches and my throat hurts so much I can hardly speak. My boyfriend, who is usually my voice of reason in these situations, points out that if I can't make it through a shower I am probably not going to make it through 7 hours of heaving giant flats of beer around, and serving and clearing huge platters of food and dishes.

So I text my one boss, then text my next boss (they both will check their phones for text messages more often than voicemail) , then I phone each of them and leave them voice messages. I still haven't reached anyone so I phone the kitchen in the clubhouse and talk to the cook, asking him to pass on the message that I am too sick to come in.

Now, I do have to say that I was scheduled as a "floater" for the tournament, and was basically just there to do some of everything and help where needed, but I still felt horribly, cringingly guilty about calling in 3 hours before the event. I realize now that I should been realistic about my situation when i first work up that morning and bitten the bullet right then. But I was just so sure that if I rested for a while I would be ok!

Has anyone ever done this? Called in at the last minute, or forced yourself to go to work anyway and then regretted it? When do you guys make the decision about whether you are too sick to work?
I just hate feeling like such a flake.

[houdini]

A dose of advice from Houdini:
- You did the right thing by calling in sick. It's much better that you did call in rather than collapse while carrying something or cough all over someone...
- Yes, it would have been better if you'd called in earlier. But then it would have been even more helpful if you'd known that you'd be sick three weeks ago. I've had the sort of colds that get better if you sit down and take drugs, so you weren't to know.
- Stop feeling like a flake. Everyone gets sick and it sounds like you had a really bad dose of something!

I've called in sick to jobs that weren't the end of the world (like my current one) if I'm properly ill. I know that if I don't, I'll be sick for longer - my work would rather that I took two days off and got better rather than struggling on and then being off for a week with a really bad illness. It's not a huge pain if one person isn't in work, so we deal with it.

Hope you're feeling better? If you're not, go back to bed!

[I am the Lizard Queen!!]

Thanks soooo much Houdini. That makes me feel better. I keep reminding myself of all the times I have worked mutiple tournaments by myself and been run off my feet because people didn't bother to show up, but of course that isn't the fault of the people who I was supposed to work with last night.
Not feeling any better yet. Booooo. I am trying to be optimistic but this blows!

[auntiem]

I'm willing to bet had you dragged yourself to work they would have taken one look at you and sent you home - then you would have put yourself through all of that for nothing.
Camera phones are a wonderful thing for this - no one can argue esp. if you look worse than you feel.

[TheSHAD0W]

You're human, and when you're not firing on all cylinders (drunk or sick or whatever) you may not make the right decisions. For drunk, you're supposed to set things up beforehand so you don't have problems; when you are ill, you may not have the luxury.

[csquared]

More people need to stay home when they are sick. I would debate that you should have done something earlier so that it did not get this bad and you have a quicker recovery. That is also easy for me to say as I have paid sick leave. When you are "no work, no pay"...

I had a coworker that would come in sick and so full of meds that he was only 50% there. "I got to get this project finished." A couple days later, I would get "that" phone call. He would be out for five days.

Now go drink some apple juice and get some rest. Hope you feel better soon.

[rose_metal_nz]

You're not a flake, you pushed yourself that far without flaking out! I think you made the right call, and I'm sure by now your coworkers would've noticed you're coming down with something. So don't feel too bad!
Hope you get better soon *offers hot soup*

[I am the Lizard Queen!!]

Thanks guys!!!!!!
So, I am still feeling pretty much exactly the same, no real improvement. I took a basket of laundry down the hall last night and got light-headed, SO I am being pro-active and cancelling my shift on Saturday morning at the golf course. It's a 6am until 3pm shift and it is always notoriously busy. There is no way I can keep up with that right now. I hate to do it as the golf season is almost over and the money on Saturday's is usually pretty great, but I seriously feel like a hot circle of garbage.

[scruff]

Sometimes you just have to call in.
I saw a horrible interview with a chap a while back, where he said he'd never called in sick in decades of work. He'd had to excuse himself from paying clients to rush to the back office to throw up sometimes, but he never skipped a day of work.
*shudder*
How many clients and coworkers did he make ill?

Last recession I carried on working in a catering job despite feeling rough, next thing I know I've passed out on the kitchen floor. Took me longer to throw off that bug than if I'd had the sense to go home and rest at the start.
Current job doesn't pay sick leave (UK gov sick leave doesn't kick in til you've been off for 4 days), but I know if I'm ill, to take unpaid time off _now_, and dose up with fruit, rest and vitamins to speed up recovery, than to soldier through, make mistakes that I'll have to repair later, and take longer to get well.

[Sapphire Silk]

Has anyone ever done this? Called in at the last minute, or forced yourself to go to work anyway and then regretted it? When do you guys make the decision about whether you are too sick to work?
I just hate feeling like such a flake.

I once had a stuporvisor insist I come to work even though I had a 103.0 F fever.

This was an ER job. It was New Year's Eve, and hospital policy was you could not call out on holiday days you were scheduled for. And I already had a write up (that I had filed a grievance over, because the person who wrote me up totally fabricated what really happened); another one and I'd be on my way to termination (this place was really strict).

The stuporvisor told me I had to come in or get another write up. She was trying to fire me (we didn't get along), so I didn't dare give her any ammunition. I loaded up on Tylenol and away I went.

Five hours later, I could barely stagger down the hall way or do any kind of real patient care. Stuporvisor still refused to send me home, even though my fever kept coming back. She finally bowed to the insistence of the other staff to put me in triage, where I could at least sit down.

It was the most miserable shift of my life.

I had full blown influenza that turned into full blown pneumonia. I was sick for weeks afterwards, and kept getting secondary infections (H. pylori), and was on round after round of antibiotics. Six months later I gave up and quit.

That finally allowed my body to heal.

So no, don't feel bad for calling in sick. You did the right thing, actually.

[ozcatbug]

As someone that has twice had 4 days off in the past 3 months, when you are sick you need to stay home. I'm a casual so no work, no pay. There has been several viruses going around my work as most people would rather be sick at work than be home and not get paid. Unfortunately as I was house bound for 4 years, my immunity has taken a nose dive, so I have been catching everything. I fought with myself that I needed to work as I needed pay, but I really needed to take time off since I was sick. Then my body took my head out of the equation, and I was forced to take the time off. I could work with a sore throat, but when it felt like I was swallowing knives, and my asthma kicked in, which has been totally under control for the past 5 years, I listened to my body. The four days off (plus 2 days of weekend) really helped me recover, and on the plus side I didn't pass it on to my coworkers.

If more people listened to their bodies and took the time to recover when they were sick they wouldn't need to take extended time off, and viruses wouldn't get the chance to spread.

[Gizmo]

Don't worry about it, you did the right thing. (Including pre-warning for Saturday)

I called in once 10 minutes before I was supposed to start.

I'd gotten halfway there, felt really crappy on the bus and got off at the next proper 'station' area (in a local village/town rather than at the side of the road thru nowhere). I was then promptly.. umm.. ill.

I called in. I sat there until I could see and walk again. I went home.

The company in question were horrible (they later tried to sack me because I wasn't calling in everyday whilst having a confirmed sick note from the doctor that I'd told them about earlier in the week) so it didn't go over well. However it was still the right thing to do.

[MoonCat]

As a steward, this is what I tell people: If you are genuinely sick, call off. You will not make yourself better by going to work; you will pass it around to other people (when it's contagious stuff); you will not be able to work properly; and you will make your illness worse. Your body needs rest to fight off sickness.

So no, you should not feel guilty. Hell, you were getting dizzy? Were you going to drive to work that way? Not good.

Take care of yourself, I hope you feel better soon!