Cruelest Review Ever

[jjllbb]

Therein lies the true source of suck.

These morons in management don't seem to realize that a sick employee showing up for work is a greater liability than if they called out. Sick employees are less productive, and could spread their sickness to other employees. And in this case, generate complaints from customers. But good luck convincing them.

Just like customers abuse return policies and ruin it for everyone, management has to be strict with "sick days" or any time off because of those who call out sick just because they just don't feel like coming in, etc.

[laundryhater]

Allow me to clarify further...

We are not calling the employees sucky, we are calling the management sucky for not allowing the employees to stay home with pay when truly sick.

[Anthony K. S.]

Let's leave the management out of this for a moment . . .

Over the years, I have seen the issue of employees working while sick brought up on several different Internet message forums (including, of course, right here on Customers Suck!).

One of the arguments most commonly made by those who believe that employees shouldn't be working while sick is this :


"I understand that retail workers often can't afford to just lose an entire day's pay. However, if a company offers paid sick leave to its employees, as most companies do, then an employee who is sick can take the day off from work and STILL get paid his/her regular salary for it.

Therefore, there is no reason at all for an employee who is sick to still come in to work. By calling out sick, the employee can avoid spreading his/her sickness to the customers AND still get paid for the day."


I have noticed that there are at least a few people right here on Customers Suck! who apparently believe this, as well.

Unfortunately, although this reasoning may seem logical on the surface, it is actually seriously flawed.

As others have pointed out, some managers and companies are very strict . . . and sometimes quite unreasonable . . . about when employees can and cannot take sick leave time.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's leave the management out of this for a moment.

The real flaw in that apparently logical reasoning I quoted above is that companies don't offer unlimited sick leave time to their employees.

(At least, I've never heard of a company that does. I'm open to correction here, if such companies actually do exist.)

At my present job, for example, I am permitted 24 hours of paid sick leave time each year.

Now, suppose that on a day when I'm scheduled to work an 8-hour shift, I happen to be suffering from a mild cold. Not a bad one, not enough to impair me, but I'm definitely not feeling well. I have two choices :

1. I can go to work as usual. I will get paid my regular salary for the day, and at the end of the week, I will still have 24 hours of sick leave time available to me.

2. I can call out sick. I will still get paid my regular salary for the day . . . but at the end of the week, I will only have 16 hours of sick leave time still available to me.

Since an employee who calls out sick will still get paid for the day, it is all too easy to conclude that the employee has not lost anything by calling out sick.

But, in fact, the employee has lost a day's pay. It was simply replaced by an equal amount deducted from the employee's available sick leave time.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that I need to conserve my paid time off as much as possible. The reason for that is that when I expend my sick leave time on a day when I'm only feeling a little sick . . . then I run the risk of not having sick leave time available to me on the days when I really need it.

In a worst-case scenario, I could use up most or all of my sick-leave time on three separate days when I'm only feeling a little under the weather . . . And then, later in the year, if a day comes when I'm feeling really sick, I'll be in trouble. I would be forced to choose between (1) going in to work when I'm in no condition to be working, or (2) taking an unpaid day off.

And as has been repeatedly stated on this thread, that latter choice is simply not an option for many retail workers.

That's the real flaw in the argument that paid sick leave makes it possible for employees to call out sick without losing anything.

Bad or unreasonable management can certainly make the situation worse, but the real problem is that the system itself simply doesn't allow employees to just take the day off whenever they happen to be feeling a little under the weather.


EDIT :

I want to make one thing clear. The system doesn't allow employees to take a paid day off any time that they happen to be sick . . . and it CAN'T allow that. If it did, it would open the door to massive abuse from employees who would use it take a paid day off whenever they just don't happen to feel like working. Companies HAVE to impose limits on how much paid sick leave time they give out. They have no choice. At least, none as far as I can see.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I don't have the luxury of vacation days, unless I'm really sick, I'll come in to work, I just can't sacrifice a day's pay.

[Megg]

It's really no-win. Unless I was contagious, my happy little self was at work. My doctor told me that while it wasn't always the case, generally speaking with colds/flu, if there is no fever, you are not likely to spread it. None of my co-workers ever got my germs, unless I was forced to be there.

"I know. I caught it from a customer."

This reminded me of the time I got pink eye from some stupid, entitled high school kid in my drive through. I never again slipped and touched any part of me before washing my hands if I was handling money. People are gross, and money is ten times grosser.

[PepperElf]

I agree that the customer's wording of the complaint was horrible; but, the point was still valid. If an employee is sick they shouldn't and shouldn't be expected to come into work that day. But I guess that goes back to the policies of the mangers, etc.

The woman's complaint should have ended with sick employees should not be expected to show up for work that day.

Some jobs won't let you do that. You have a cold, they say "so take a pill and get back to work."


My old job (Navy) was pretty much like that. Only the doctor or corpsman had the authority to mark someone (in writing) as being too sick to work and ... a cold won't cut it. They'd give you some pills but that was it.

And sometimes even if you were sick or contagious it didn't matter. On my first ship they were pretty strict about it. Come to think of it... the only time I ever got SIQ (sick in quarters) from them was when I came in with a stomach bug and barfed at medical. I suspect if they hadn't seen me throw up they'd have just given me some pepto and sent me back to work. I should know... they did that the first time I had a stomach bug.

But yeah, not everyone can afford to stay at home for colds. It'd be nice, but not practical.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The more I think about this, the more I think the author of that comment needs a karma stab.

Like she needs to lose whatever job it is she has, and be forced to take a job stocking shelves or running a cash register in some big-box store, because that's the only place that would hire. And then come down with a cold.

Let's see what an unpaid sick day would do to her finances, since she'd stay home from work unless she's a hypocrite. She'd have lots of fun deciding which bills get paid or not paid.

Does she pay her rent or mortgage or beg the landlord or bank for an extension? Does she live off ramen and ketchup soup until ends are meeting again? Does she pay her credit card bill in full or let that accumulate interest and slowly bury her? How 'bout her health insurance, since she must now pay for that out of her own pocket and the $400 quarterly premium is due this month? Does she pay that or let her coverage expire?

Or--better yet--when she calls in she gets her hardassed troll of a manager who tells her "Nice try Trish, if that is your real name, but either you get here for your shift on time or find somebody to cover for you. If you're not here or covered, don't bother coming in for your next shift."

It's easy to say "If you're sick you should stay home from work." In the real world it isn't that easy.

[Blade]

"I know. I caught it from a customer."

ExACTly.


The amount of times I've had my face directly breathed on, coughed into, sneezed at- it's amazing I can ever get out of bed! (and also: ewwww.)

And as far as contagion goes, these customers obviously have NO idea what kinda of cooties the rest of the store is covered in from all the coughing, sneezing, sniffling, and overall germ-spewing that happens in any public place in any given day (let alone a drug store- we probably see more sick people over a week than a doctor's office).


Picking up that Pedi-Paws that 6 other people in the last hour have picked up is more likely to make you sick than people ever want to think about... *evil grin*

[wynjara]

As far as being ill at work, I had loads of fun with a cough this winter. Just could not get rid of it, even after two inhalers and three antibiotics. The boss kept hinting that I should stay home and get better, but there were a few problems with this idea:

1. I only had 5 sick days. I had the cough for about 3 months. Last I checked, 5 =/= 90.
2. There was only one other person in my department, a part-timer who was hard-pressed to keep up with just her half of the work.

Sigh. It's not like I was coughing out the lining of my throat for fun.

[tropicsgoddess]

I understand that some people don't want to deal with a sick co-worker/employee, but that review was just beyond scathing and bitchy.

[bainsidhe]

As someone else mentioned, some employees work in a job that has sick days, but employees are discouraged from using them. A friend of mine works for the state and sick days/personal days count against you. That's right, even with doctors note. My friend got in trouble recently because she had to use personal time to leave work and rush her son to the hospital for a broken foot. Yes, this is a management and policy issue and yes, the manager is an ass.

Back to the doctors note: many companies require a note to prove you were really sick. I have a $25 copay to see the doctor. But what if I was uninsured? Personally, I'd rather come into work, get my full hours and be uncomfortable than pay to go see a doctor to be told something I already knew.

[JLRodgers]

.... than pay to go see a doctor to be told something I already knew.

That's the main reason my family always hated the whole "see a doctor" bit... Only jobs that required it didn't have health insurance, so there were three options:
1 -- go to work sick
2 -- take day off without doctor's note and get written up about it
3 -- take day off without pay, see doctor (taking at least one day's pay if not more to be told what we knew), then be told we weren't allowed to work more that week... and then get written up for not providing enough notice

Only one option involved getting to eat and not risking a job.

[Dreamstalker]

yep most retail places don't care if you are sick or not, they want you at work

I somehow rarely get sick to the point where I can't come in. When it did happen at the bookstore, I was told to go home (if the boss noticed, it was serious).

GameStore....gah. I wasn't "allowed" to call in sick, even got whined at once when I had to take off early for a semi-emergency dentist's appointment. Yet when the owner had a supercontagious nasty stomach flu, he refused to go home even though he knew I could handle things fine without him until the night person showed up. So I had to endure 2+ hours of him saying how sick he was (then GO HOME already), interspersed with him running to the bathroom to puke and then yelling at me when I dared jump in to help customers in his absence.

Yes, I caught said flu and had no choice but to call out for two days. Yes, I'm sure I got it from him. Yes, I was complained at when I got back.

[Victoria J]

Well it's not the cruellest review.

My mother sometimes works as a trainer and give evaluation sheets. Generally it goes pretty well - and course participants have on several occasions gone off at lunch time together to buy her a present because they liked her so much. But you can't please everyone.

The worst evaluation sheet she ever received was full of negatives but finally said "Was there anything you had a problem with :" to which the person had just written her name, and misspelled it.

EDIT :

I want to make one thing clear. The system doesn't allow employees to take a paid day off any time that they happen to be sick . . . and it CAN'T allow that. If it did, it would open the door to massive abuse from employees who would use it take a paid day off whenever they just don't happen to feel like working. Companies HAVE to impose limits on how much paid sick leave time they give out. They have no choice. At least, none as far as I can see.

Employers, and organisations advocating for employers, claim this - but is it actually true ?

I get decent sick pay - I have a contract modelled on the older contracts given out by local government in the UK. The local government contracts were traditionally generous - but for a short time at least we got better. (I'm also salaried and often do unpaid overtime).

Reading through this thread I'm pretty sure I take a sick day more lightly than many of you in organisations that really discourage it - but I certainly don't take them lightly or try and do the minimum work.

I know that my sickness record can have an affect if I apply for other work. I know that my time off affects my colleagues. I know that if I was found to have abused the system I could get into trouble. I know that if I lost this job I wouldn't get such good terms and conditions. I also know that my employers aren't treating me like a potential thief and I try and treat them reasonably in return.

So they lose some days - but those are days when I wouldn't have been working at full strength. It also means I'm less likely to infect my colleagues and make them either take days off or work at less than full strength. I'm not convinced my employer is losing out.

I know that people at my work place probably have above average sick leave - but I believe that is due to stress and to the time working with customers and chance of getting infected. I've heard of local government having above average - but almost everything seems to lead back to stress and poor management. The "time theft" is, like actual employee theft, lower than employers like to think.

Give people proper sick leave. Have more positive energetic people working. Help them feel better about their employers and more likely to want to do their best !

Victoria J

[Fox One]

I agree that the customer's wording of the complaint was horrible; but, the point was still valid. If an employee is sick they shouldn't and shouldn't be expected to come into work that day. But I guess that goes back to the policies of the mangers, etc.

The woman's complaint should have ended with sick employees should not be expected to show up for work that day.

Suuuuuuuuuch a can of worms. If you allow call-outs with no questions asked, you'll have a large amount of perfectly healthy employees claiming illness because they don't feel like working. Then again, if you don't, you get situations like this one. The only solution I've come across is the one in place at my store. You can call out, but it counts as an NCNS until you bring in a doctor's note. But even that doesn't work, as I've lost a coworker that way. (She was genuinely sick, but had no insurance, and couldn't afford a doctor's appointment especially after missing a day of work, so they called her a liar and let her go).