“I’m not paying you today. We got lots of profits and I don’t feel like wasting it on employees.”
They do this with wait servers, cooks, farm hands, and construction people. They also conduct layoffs to create more short term profits
“Thank you for doing the work. It’s done now, so I don’t need it any more, so I won’t be paying you. Also you can’t sue me because you read my magazine once back in the 80s and it’s in the fine print, but here’s a t-shirt with our logo across the front and back, and a commendation on your CV. It says, ‘good worker, no complaints.’ That’s exec talk for, ‘you can screw this guy over without worrying, so go ahead and hire him.’”
As someone chronically Ill, I feel this so hard.
Every minute that I’m not at work I’m dedicating to making sure I’m likely to be well enough for work tomorrow.
I don’t do anything after work without asking “how will this impact my health tomorrow?” and that includes things like not being able to sweep my own floor because I know I need to sweep at work and the nerve damage in my arms won’t let me sweep twice in one day without keeping me up all night in pain, and if I don’t get enough sleep, I’ll get a migraine and won’t be able to physically see anything.
Most of my days off are spent in agony trying to restore myself and desperately trying to reset my house and home life so I can keep up with work, without overdoing it on Sunday and making myself sick for Monday.
So yeah, on the one day a month where I wake up for work and I don’t throw up or almost shit myself, and my heart rate is doing what it’s supposed to do, and I can see and hear and feel my feet… The temptation to “call in healthy”, so I can actually have a day off to enjoy myself for the first time in over a month is really hard to ignore.
I actually did that this week because Wednesday was my birthday, I went to work, it was a “bad workable day” (vs a “good workable day” or a “bad unworkable day”) and Thursday I woke up feeling really good, I only had a 2 hour shift and it was just admin so I took my first sick day in 6 months and used it to do all my linens and towel laundry. It felt like a proper day off because I was healthy enough to get stuff done for myself, without being in pain or having to stop to run to the bathroom or let my heart calm down, or give up on folding because I can’t feel my arms.
I can’t do that every time I want or even need to though. My bank account is really good at forcing me to go to work, healthy, half dead, or heaving. Chronic illness is expensive, and some days trying to keep up with work feels like it costs my health more than not working. but sadly not working is not an option for me, because I’m capable of work, so I must. (and continue to push my gov for universal basic income)
For context as to how working while disabled messes you up. I got hit by a truck on the way to work last year, I got to the office and used their first aid kit to patch myself up. Booked a doctors appointment, told my boss I’d be leaving early, then kept working until my appointment.
My boss was fine with this, and then someone on reddit posted a photo of the crash and my boss saw, they realised when I said “I was hit by a truck” what I meant was “I was hit by a truck”
When asked how I was feeling, and reporting “no different to usual” my boss sent me to the ER because they thought I had a concussion and was acting confused. ER checked me out, dislocated shoulder and wrist, soft tissue damage here and there, but otherwise nothing major or serious or nothing I don’t already deal with on a daily basis. I went back to finish my shift and my boss asked what I was doing working after I’d been hit by a truck.
I feel exactly the same level of pain today as I do every other day. If I take today off because this level of pain is apparently unworkable, it’s a slippery slope, eventually I’m going to have to come back to work despite being in this exact same level of pain. This is my baseline, now I can truly compare it to being hit by a truck.
I used to be on a pension, I wanted to work because I wanted purpose in the neo-liberal hell scape of my society. but my mental health was too shot because of this deep rooted idea that I deserved rest just for being in any level of pain that was out of the ordinary, and subconsciously I would talk myself out of doing anything because I deeply believed I shouldn’t have to.
But I don’t have that luxury, my ordinary will always be “hit by a truck” level, so right now I either learn how to consistently work through it, or drop dead broke and homeless.
Company i work for kinda has that. We can call in without a reason but the time lost is deducted from a set amount of hours allocated for such things. It is set up so that even if you show up aminute late, the deduction is an hour from your “bank”
I was with you until the minute late thing. That’s crap. Grace period?
Not that I try to be late, I’m 99% early. But I’d be ticked to lose an hour because of couple minutes late on a bad morning. Though I guess some people may need that painful motivation to not abuse the system.
I call that: “I’m not coming in today.” That’s all you need to do.
If someone requests PTO, I don’t ask questions unless it’s literally in the day of or the next day.
I’ve been at companies with generic PTO and companies with explicit sick leave which is considered additional to PTO.
The theory of sick leave is that people with serious or chronic illnesses need that additional time and shouldn’t be compelled to come in at the expense of their long term well being. Also, if you’ve got the flu, don’t show up and spread it around just have some extra days to get better.
If you want to get ideological about it, this is the nut of the whole “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” thing the 19th century leftists were talking about. I do get the broader argument that we should just have more PTO generally speaking, shorter work days and work weeks, and more time for ourselves and our loved ones. But I think segregating out “sick leave” specifically for people who need additional time to recover form illness is generally better policy than handing someone a (often smaller and stingier) set of generic PTO and telling them to spend it on the worst days of their life.
You should read these memes slower so you can pay attention more. This meme is about calling in healthy on the day of. People don’t know if they’re going to be healthy in two days. So your comment has the opposite meaning of the one intended. You’re saying you do ask questions if someone asks for time off on the day, and therefore that you’re a restrictive boss who wouldn’t allow this meme.
