Fellow Yahoos,
Apparently some of you have forgotten about our company's most excellent "sick days" policy. It basically states that there's no fixed number of sick days that you're allowed to use per year. You cannot accumulate sick days and they don't expire. Instead, when you're sick or have a medical obligation, you stay home or otherwise deal with it.
The logical consequence of this policy, I thought, was quite simple--easy enough for a 5 year old to grasp. But you've managed to surprise me in the past, so allow me to make this explicit:
WHEN YOU'RE SICK, STAY THE FUCK HOME!!!
You see, I lost about 2.5-3.0 days of productivity this week due to getting sick. I have a very strong suspicion this has to do with coworkers around me being sick at work early in the week. The cold I picked up on the plane rides to India was almost gone, yet I managed to pick up another illness. And I'm pretty sure my cats didn't give it to me.
Thank you for your time.
Posted by jzawodn at December 13, 2003 06:53 AM
What sucks is that sometimes you can be contagious before you even know you are sick...
AMEN!
After our great "purge" in April 2001 (we missed catching the .com VC wave, and cutback from 52 employees to 15) the number of colds I've had has dropped remarkably. I think this was largely due to not having any employees with school age children. A fellow developer with 3 grade school children was a walking petri dish... when he got sick (all the time) it would quickly ripple through the rest of the developers (a sad side effect of XP-like programming practices.)
The problem is that the next crop of kids is reaching school age and I think it will be starting again. We too have a very liberal sick-day policy, yet people still drag their infected carcasses to work. One of my wife's coworkers was still coming to work with a documented case of the flu... WTF? Give that stuff to a parent with a young child, and it could kill them.
The funny bit is, that it's not the "superhero" workers that feel compelled to come to work sick... it's the bottom-rung, deadweight, wouldn't miss you if you never came in people that do it most often.
(Got my cold last week.)
Next week: employee screening for carriers who never show symptoms...
:)
Awww, somebody needs some cheese with that whine. Here, lemme get my violin...
Yesterday we were asked if we had gotten our flu shots yet.
"Eh." came the reply.
"But it's 'an epidemic'!"
"Eh."
What do you want to bet that he returns to work before getting completely well??
Why would someone want to give up the chance to stay at home sick? I am so confused. Give me all the sick days I can take!!
I once had a customer that sneezed wetly into his hand, and then walked right up to me and extended it for a handshake.
So let me add: use a kleenex, and WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS once in a while.
I don't have time to be sick now. There's a deadline on Monday. Everyone can be sick on Tuesday, but only if we pass our milestone. Wednesday or Thursday would be better days, especially since there's a limit on how much vacation our company allows us to carry over, so after Wednesday I have to take the rest of the year off.
Very smart log, my friend. Most people try and accumulate sick days and vacation days to try and have one big vacation time...but the impact to the office of losing more employees to sickness, needs to be considered. Perhaps, bosses should send people home who they suspect are sick???
It's only since talking to Americans that I've heard that sick days can be rationed, hoarded, traded, and accumulated.
What sort of society is so dedicated to squeezing effort from their workers that they don't recognise that, by its very nature, sickness is unpredictable, unknowable in advance, and hence unsuitable to parcelling into 'three days a year of entitlement'?
At least Yahoo! seems to get it.
Too bad you don't work for a company where all an employee needs to do the job is an Internet connection and maybe a telephone.
Oh wait ...
> What sort of society is so dedicated to squeezing effort from their workers that they don't recognise that, by its very nature, sickness is unpredictable, unknowable in advance, and hence unsuitable to parcelling into 'three days a year of entitlement'?
You little socialists will do anything to get out of doing actual work.
"... and kindly keep away from public transport too."
No. Just die, you, suckers.
Shit. I'd love to work for a place where an actual reasonable policy like that was implemented. I've literally been confined to bed with severe chicken pox and had my boss phone me up to tell me the good news that everyone else in the office has already had it so I can come in. Fucking lovely.
I have a manager who passed a new policy around the office yesterday stating that we are allowed 3 days sick leave a year before (even with doctors excuses)we will face "disciplinary action". After the 3rd day we have to write a report about "how we are going to keep ourselves well" and are on "probation". And you wonder why people drag their sick asses in to work???
Oh yeah! At my work place, I can only afford twele french leaves through out the year and that is incase I need those severly. Otherwise I'm abliged to deal with it. :(
