Stay Home When You're Sick!

theodp writes "If you've got Google CEO Larry Page's billions, you can reduce your chances of getting sick this winter by personally providing free flu shots to all San Francisco Bay Area kids at Target pharmacies. 'Vaccinating children,' explains the Shoo the Flu initiative's website, 'will not only improve children's health, it will also dramatically reduce the risk of the flu spreading to adults.' But Tim Olshansky doesn't have Page's money, so he'll have to settle for trying to get it through people's thick heads that they really have to stay home when they're sick. 'Why do people still come to the office when they're coughing up a lung?' asks the exasperated Olshansky. 'Because unfortunately, there is a still a strong perverse culture that equates staying at home when sick with weakness. This is a flawed belief and should be questioned. Given that we have the tools now to complete most tasks from home, there is no strong reason to compel people to come to the workplace.' So, does your employer encourage employees to stay home when they're sick? How?"

Comments

Going home sick = communism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Going home sick means using sick time. Getting sick time means getting paid not not work. Getting paid to not work means socialism. Socialism = communism.

QED.

What a fucking idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who uses sick days to be sick? If I'm going to be sick and miserable, I'd rather be at work!

Re:Not everyone can work at home

[GameboyRMH]

Well, you know what you need to do...

indeed, sick days aren't for sickness

[rubycodez]

everyone knows sick days are for:
1. hangovers, or continuing benders
2. doing something important or fun that can only be done during workday
3. job interview

but as for going to work and making your boss or asshole coworkers sick, so what? fuck 'em!

Re:Flu can last a week or more

[Greyfox]

Fuck that noise! If the company policy is encouraging me to come in when I'm sick, I'm going to lick every goddamn doorknob in the building! AND set up base camp in a hotel cube smack in the middle of HR.

Re:How do they 'encourage' us to stay home?

[Rob the Bold]

I've always thought that a supervisor who insists that a sick employee come to work should talk to the employee in person. In close quarters. After they recover, maybe they'll be more generous with sick time.

Here's where you, as the employee, can take the initiative. When I worked for a supervisor that didn't like people out sick, I dragged my miserable ass to the office in the morning to pick up some work to do at home and visit the boss's office for a personal check-in -- you know, to see if there was anything special that came up that I needed to deal with before/instead of what it was understood I was working on. Maybe i had to borrow his desk phone to track him down when he wasn't right there. Proactive stuff. It's what conscientious employees do.

Now I'm an engineer, not a doctor, so I don't know if that had any relation to the boss not showing up the next week.