Blessed to have sick time ... USE IT!

[NikkiNicole]

I work for the County, I am given almost 4 hours of sick time every pay check. I had accumulated quite a lot before this happened. I depleted my entire bank and ... was granted Catastrophic Leave and people in my beloved County donated 360 additional sick hours to me. They asked for donations, and my max donation amount was achieved in less than 2 days. That's incredible. I was quite moved.
I came back to work with 160 of those hours left. I've since earned about 40 more of my own. That's a pretty big amount. I'm hesitant to use them unless I need them because of what happened before.

However ... I'm not contagious. My being here doesn't put anyone else at risk. On the flipside ... people come to work with the flu or major bad colds puts ME at risk. And yet, they still won't use their sick time.

I sat here the other night with one girl on one side of me saying "Oh, it's just a bad cold. I don't need to use sick time for this" to ... "Oh man, I think I have the flu now. I just threw up in the bathroom" on the OTHER side of me.
I offered to stay at work for the both of them so they could leave. I was turned down by both of them.

Do I need to announce to the world again what goes on with me?!

I know I need a break. I desperately want my doctor to write me out for like two weeks. A week would probably even help. But, ... I'm waiting til after the holidays because everyone will accuse me of faking it to get Christmas off.

Yep.

I don't want to be out of work because I'm fighting some horrific infection that happened because of something I caught in here.

We have sick time. We work in a bubble, sharing air. Think about someone else once in awhile and STAY HOME!!!!

[drz]

This is a common problem I often observed while working. Sometimes a good supervisor would send a sick employee home in order to protect others from catching their illness they were so freely sharing.

[windchime]

Nikki I have the same problem at work. No one will stay home when they are sick. Or they will come in and work 4 hours because then they will not take a hit to their attendance. (We don't have sick time, but paid time off which is used for sick and vacation.) Plus we use a shared computer. Since I'm a massage therapist I also have the added problems of sick people that want massages seeing no problem with exposing me to their illness. Does the Dr have to take you out or can you just take the 40 hours that you have earned off with out him writing you out? Of course a couple of weeks would be better. The added stress of the holidays is most likely not helping you either. Feel better.

[Dirty Don]

Think about someone else once in awhile and STAY HOME!!!!

Don't mean to be nasty here at all...but, it goes both ways Nikki...YOU need to stay home and get well.

[Debbie C]

Nikki,that's great that all those people gathered up that sick time for you..it seems to me that you are kinda of saying thinks but no thanks, it would be like a slap in the face when they went out of their way to do this wonderful thing for you and you don't use it. Have you seen a dr. yet ? Who knows,what is going on with you may not even be the flu it may be the mtx. And WHY when YOU are so sick do you offer to stay for other people. Get the hell out of there and go home, relax and get better. And if they are that sick,maybe you should wear a mask,maybe they would get the hint.

[Alysia]

maybe you should adopt this attitude .... ?

[annekat]

Nikki, I'd encourage you to take some sick leave for your own benefit, regardless of what anyone else is doing or not doing. The people at your work are obviously clueless and you will always have the risk of catching something from them. But you will be better able to resist their germs if you take some healing time away from the stress for yourself. Otherwise, you'll just be waiting until you catch something from them and taking your sick leave then. Heck, I don't know, that's just one point of view.... I can see why this would be a hard decision to make and why you might be saving your generous gift of sick leave, or what remains of it, for sometime when you are really so sick you cannot work. But you say you have a total of 200 hours coming, so that's what, more than a month of 8 hour days? I know some of your days are a lot longer than 8 hours. But maybe you could just get in a little vacation at home, even a week, and see how it goes!

[Wegetarian]

I guess our system is completely different, how long we are paid to be sick is dependent on the contract and usually the years at the company. Didn't actually know about that before but looked it up recently. My company was super nice and has paid me full salary for all the months I've been away, even though they could have stopped after a month I guess (in which case I'd gotten sick pay from the gov't which would be less than half my salary).

My doc told me my white blood cells have been good the entire time, so I guess I shouldn't be more prone to getting something than the average person. Not sure if a flu hits me worse than others though. Everyone in my family but me had a slight flu recently, I did get a flu shot but dunno if it had anything to do with that.

I do agree that its so annoying when people come sick to work, luckily that hasn't happened with the people I work with. Certainly someone might do some work from home even though they are ill. I do remember a foreign consultant who said it was customery in his country to come to work even with a high fever, I really don't see a point in that since know I can't even think straight if I'm very ill.


I wonder if Oprah works with a cold...

[Alysia]

have a nice return to work, Wedgi, and come to visit us from time to time, maybe "sneak" here during your day, we will never tell them about it

[NikkiNicole]

I absolutely laughed out loud at that picture of Oprah! That is SO how it works in here. Someone drags the germs in and we all pass them around. I don't mind sharing, I learned that at a young age ... I don't want to share germs.