Yes, I’m in the USA. The company just can’t understand why their retention of younger talent is so low. Honestly this use to be a premier job in my area, but has been watered down to average or below. Can’t wait to retire and have this mess in my rearview mirror.
My work recently changed their policy, we get 48 hours sick time a year. If you use it it’s counted as an occurrence against you. Three occurrences in a rolling year and you’re put on disciplinary action.
Here’s your new benefit …but you better not use it.
In this thread: Americans bragging that not only have they never used a sick day, they used their lunchbreak to go back and wrestle the bear for their severed arm which they then reattached with staples they paid for themselves so they could put in a full afternoon of work.
A friend was working for a pool construction company and I really wanted the job so when they finally took me on I pretty much immediately had a piece of rebar go through my calf. I asked the homeowner for some duct tape and kept working… Lol it was my first day and I wanted the job.
Obviously I didn’t get called back… Seen as a liability I suppose lol
I know this couple who contracted COVID during the pandemic but refused to report it and take sick days. He - because his workplace was offering bonuses for employees who weren’t taking sick days (don’t remember if it was monthly or annually) and he didn’t want to miss on that. She - because she already took all her sick days as PTO, without actually being sick.
I can’t help but wonder if that’s really what sick days are supposed to be…
He - because his workplace was offering bonuses for employees who weren’t taking sick days
Good god is that illegal in Europe. Employees are entitled to sick pay if they’re sick, if no reason other than to ensure they don’t come into the office and get everyone else ill as well. Also employees are actually required to take holiday pay, last year I got called into a meeting and got told I had to take more holidays because I wasn’t taking enough.
She - because she already took all her sick days as PTO, without actually being sick.
Again illegal in Europe, PTO and sick pay are independent of each other. There’s no limit on the number of sick days you can have, although if you go beyond a certain number you do require a doctor’s note, but as long as you have that you’re golden. In theory this is abusable, but because everyone gets PTO anyway, and actually get a decent number of days, there isn’t really the incentive to do that.
Also employees are actually required to take holiday pay, last year I got called into a meeting and got told I had to take more holidays because I wasn’t taking enough.
Huh. Similar thing in post-Soviet with vacations. If you are not taking vacations for too long, employer will get nervous, if you are not taking vacations for two years, employer required to send you to vacation no matter what.
Also what is holiday pay? Quick search says that it is extra pay for working during holidays. Well, here holidays are non-working days, so working during them counts as overtime.
Overtime is 1.5x the hourly wage in the U.S. This is federal law.
Holiday pay is usually 2-2.5x the hourly wage if the company requires people to work on set holidays. If it’s a day off, then it’s paid as PTO. This is not required by federal law but some states have requirements.
Shitty companies that view employees as costs, don’t pay Holiday pay. Around 20% of the workforce.
Good companies that view employees as assets have policies to keep employees. Like my companies most recent e-mail about the holiday schedule.
We will be closed from December 25th to January 1st. This is considered holiday pay and will not be deducted from your PTO.
Fo some reason have zero issues with recruiting good staff and keeping them.
Huh. I always assumed holiday pay was also 1.5x. I haven’t had many chances to earn it. I’m pretty sure it was at my last job. I haven’t found out about my current job yet.
In the US for every employer I’ve seen, holiday pay is usually 8 hours of straight time (assuming you have an 8 hour shift) plus 1.5x for the hours you worked. So if you worked your normal 8 hour shift you get 2.5x pay. But it’s not. If you worked less then 8 you get 8 hours straight plus 1.5x the hours you worked. It’s also common that if you worked 40 hours before the holiday that straight time becomes overtime. Usually only applies to Thanksgiving/black friday. And occasionally Christmas when it falls towards the end of the week.
Needless to say this varies among employers. If you have a union you likely get double or even triple time for hours worked on a holiday, but likely still the same straight time pay for the day itself. Legally the company doesn’t have to pay anything extra for holidays for time not worked.
It’s literally you just being paid even though you’re not working. Employers are required to do it in Europe. The pay is the same rate as if you were working but it’s got a different name for tax purposes so companies can differentiate between employees being compensated for working and employees just being paid to be off.
Also you have what are called “unsociable working hours compensation” Which means nights, and weekends. And “unsociable working dates compensation” which means national holidays.
Unsociable working hours is usually 1.5x base rate, and unsocial working dates is 2x base rate. So a night shift over the Christmas period would be both so it would be 2.5x base rate. So in other words if you work for 1 hour, you get paid as if you’d worked 2 hours 30 minutes.
The United States operates a different system and companies can get out of it sometimes which isn’t really possible in Europe.
Employees are entitled to sick pay if they’re sick, if no reason other than to ensure they don’t come into the office and get everyone else ill as well.
Two jobs ago (in the States) my employer was extremely stingy with any paid time away from work.
I got six days. Total. (Not counting holidays.)
Six days for any and all purposes that one might need to not be in the office.
They even had the gall to say they offered sick days, “because you can use your PTO to stay home when you’re sick”.
Fuck that.
I came to work no matter how sick I was. I knew exactly how much I made in a day, and as soon as my boss or anyone else would complain about how I shouldn’t be there, I’d ask them if they were willing to pay me my daily wage to go home. Because I only got six days, so fuck me if I was going to use any of them for anything other than my own enjoyment. If I was sick, I was miserable and less productive anyway, might as well get paid for that, and not burn any of my precious PTO.
On one occasion, I was so sick my boss actually agreed to send me home and pay the rest of my day without taking PTO…but of course the stingy bastard couldn’t just give people more sick days.
Perhaps Americans need to learn to call them wellness days and not place some arbitrarily low limit for amount of days on them. Ten or twelve to start a year seems reasonable. Americans are bizarre.
The Americans that are in power here. Sure. Why do you guys insist on pretending that we approve of it? Unless you’ve personally gone out and solved at least one injustice in your country then you really can’t talk. Shit is hard and a lot of us are trying.
Yes, but also setting the norm where it should be is something. We should expect these things. If your business is screwed because one employee calls off with an hour notice, you don’t have enough redundancy. And this isn’t just menial positions either. If Elon gets horribly sick, they postpone or have someone stand in for him. That should apply all the way down the company.
You can save on labor in the short term. You’ll pay for it another way long term, either by losing overly stressed staff or by having someone too critical call in sick at a bad time.
You can save on labor in the short term. You’ll pay for it another way long term, either by losing overly stressed staff or by having someone too critical call in sick at a bad time.
Or anything else. Perhaps they’re involved in a car accident and cannot get into work even if they’re not injured, perhaps someone critical dies unexpectedly, or they get head-hunted by another company and leave without giving you warning since they obviously don’t need the reference.
So many bad things can happen when you only have a single point of failure. Companies will pay for multiple internet lines but refuse to hire additional staff. One of those things is not like the other.
That’s true except a lot of managers have zero power over how many people they’re allowed to hire. So, again, setting norms isn’t something that we can just do. As individuals, we’re hobbled by the wealthy/corporations/government (which are all the same thing at this point of we’re being real) at just about every turn. If they don’t like something they just pay lobbyists and it goes away. To the detriment of the average US citizen yet we still manage to get dunked on constantly as if we’re not getting dragged through the wringer. As if we’re just ok with everything.
You’re taking this too personally. Setting norms isn’t something done by a manager and is absolutely just public perception. Happens in middle school constantly. Kids come in with a new, unusual haircut. First kid in earshot brands it as cool or lame. The norm is set.
This isn’t much more than saying American PTO policies are shit. That’s not an attack on you. It’s an attack on people who are okay with the status quo.
Unless you’ve personally gone out and solved at least one injustice in your country then you really can’t talk.
Lol because that’s how injustices ever get solved: by one guy.
Man, I’m an American but this “you need to be a guy who personally solved government” take is so American it’s rolling coal while blasting rounds from two ar-15s.
I mean… Isn’t that literally what they’re doing when they generalize all of us as being ok with this bullshit? The person I replied to. Yeah, it is. So why come at me if that really bothers you? Kinda hypocritical
Isn’t that literally what they’re doing when they generalize all of us as being ok with this bullshit?
No, not really. You not understanding the difference is also pretty American.
In some other countries, the people actually do address problems with the laws and make reforms. One of the main reasons we cannot is because our country is run by oligarchs and/or kleptocrats.
Having industry write government policy isn’t a universal, and shouldn’t be expected knowledge about a country that brands itself as a “democracy”. In fact, many of our own citizens don’t even know the reality of how this country runs.
So, people outside of the American system don’t know how difficult it is for “the people” (as a group) to actually wield power within it, especially if they have bought any of our propaganda about us being #1 at democracy or whatever.
They likely weren’t calling for some “rugged individual” / Superman character to fix the government. Such notions are laughable within some other countries. Instead, a lot of countries have successful protest, voting, and labor groups that help shape policy. The US just hasn’t meaningfully worked that way in a long time (though I’ve been pretty happy with recent developments in labor organization).
I don’t know what’s insulting about that but I’m glad I saved you a brain wrinkle. 🫡
Edit: I’d like someone to explain to me the online phenomenon whereby people who roll around being gruff assholes are also permitted to be pearl clutchers who faint at the slightest perceived insult.
What the he’ll are people doing that they get sick so often? I’ve used 3 in the last 8 years and one of those was a funeral. Granted I can work from home when I have a cold or whatever but I have coworkers who seem like they’re out every other week.
between migraines and colds, I’m down to just 1 sick day left. that’s despite wearing a mask, washing my hands, etc. the last cold just laid me out for a week. migraines (which at less than 3 a year are too rare for the Dr to give me meds) come with visual sparkles that make working on a computer pretty impossible. most cold meds also make me incredibly sleepy, so I can try to work through it - or I can sleep and get better faster. this was a bad year. last year I barely needed sick days, hopefully next year will be more like last year. Masks help. work from home, avoiding the public, helps. but my immune system is just kinda crap, so I just work through what I can, and call in sick when I can’t.
My coworker refuses to “waste” any days he has unless they’re for a vacation… This selfish p.o.s has gotten me sick 3 times in the last year alone, one of the times I missed Christmas with my family because of him… So I have to waste my time so that he can have more paid vacations…
You should recontextualize that for them: “when you come in sick, you are reaching in to my wallet and taking the money I should be owed, and may need, for stuff like ‘oops my entire gallbladder needs to be taken out or else I’ll die’. All because you want to be teacher’s pet: you should be handing money out like its candy (through cashapp or venmo or whatever) when you come in sick, because that’s only fair, and paying the company money from all the productivity lost by making everyone else sick. If you don’t have that money to hand out, maybe you shouldn’t be coming in sick.”
Or, y’know, if they’re so gung-ho about everyone having shared misery: maybe it’s time to advocate for a union.
That would work on someone who gave a shit. This guy cares only about #1. He laughs about the times he was thrown in prison in Guatemala for telling his superiors to fuck off when they asked him to do his job when he was in their military lol
Yeah, well fuck them. I used up my one week’s worth of sick days and all of my PTO and am now on FMLA because I’m dealing with an illness that is causing me to miss work. What the fuck am I supposed to do? They told me to go on FMLA.
I had to use FMLA leave a couple years back when I was out for a planned surgery that took about 4-6 weeks to recover from.
Technically, I think FMLA really only ensures you’ll have a job to return to. They legally cannot fire you or lay you off if you’re on FMLA.
FMLA doesn’t offer any paid time off, though, so most employers require you to use your accrued time off (both sick time and vacation time) concurrently with your FMLA leave. Once that runs out, you stop getting paid.
Why do we even hold up the charade of calling WSJ by name when it’s obviously just fox news (in ownership and content) with the lightest of filters for outright insanity?
I’ve noticed anything labeled “business” or “finance” or “money” is just as ridiculous, if not more. They really are drinking each other’s piss and thinking it’s Kool-Aid.
In Germany, you just go to any physician and tell the receptionist, you need a day off. The vast majority don’t ask questions. And if they do, you say you got a stomach bug.
I’m pretty sure that’s not right, they cannot require a doctor’s note unless it’s over a certain number of days off. If it’s just the one day it’s unreasonable to require a note.
As long as there is no consistent pattern of absences they should just accept that you are ill and leave it at that, (although if they’re feeling particularly petty, they can insist on a return to work interview). They are absolutely not supposed to ask for a doctor’s note for a single day off because it’s an enormous waste of everyone’s time, and of course if you are ill, you shouldn’t be moving around trying to get a doctor’s note.
I use urgent care for this, because my GP is impossible to get an appointment with quickly. I wait maybe an hour to get seen and get a note, and medication if necessary.
We have an app to our occupational health care provider and you just basically slide a DM to a doc if you need a note (3 days or more of sick leave iirc).
Unlimited PTO is a curse. All it does is scare you into not* actually using it (especially in my line of work where you have a billable hour requirement and every day you take off is just one less day you have to hit your goal).
I hear you and everyone who has said the same thing. But that’s just not the case with me or anyone at my company. My boss just came back from a month long vacation. I’ve already taken 3 weeks and plan to take plenty more. We’re asked to deliver on our projects and we get stuff done. I’m not afraid of taking advantage of what’s promised to me which is outlined in the contract I signed. Again, your miles may vary.
For us, if we’re on vacation we won’t get staffed on new matters so coming back from vacation, we’re essentially spending 2-3 days either trying to get back into the matters we had to let go to go on vacation or searching for new matters. Or alternatively, we work on vacation to not miss a beat. It’s not ideal haha.
Unfortunately a simple “unlimited PTO” policy is fake pro-employee policy.
Overall, studies show employees actually take less days off under that policy, likely due to the uncertainty and stress over what is “really” the expectation, and how it will affect the employee’s job security.
Employees end up working over vacations more often.
Since there are no fixed days, employers don’t need to pay for unused vacation time periodically or when an employee leaves.
It plays out in a way that actually ends up harming the employee.
Every “unlimited PTO” policy should be combined with a minimum PTO policy. If you’re wondering if a company actually cares about its employees’ mental health, that’s how you know.
We had unlimited PTO at my old job and I thought it was awesome. I’d take day off when sick, whenever I needed a break or I would pad my “annual” time off to extend my break over one extra weekend. This felt pretty standard in both places I worked with this policy. There was no question asked and no direct human interaction to take off. If people didn’t take advantage of that it is kinda on them imo. Not to remove anything from your point about forced PTO mixed-in.
Exactly, we don’t have that problem where I work. Personally, I know I don’t take enough time off, but that’s my own fault. I also lost a lot of PTO over the years when I didn’t take it.
I’ve worked at a few places with “unlimited PTO” and I totally agree.
It sounds great in practice: “as long as your work is getting done, take as much PTO as you want!” In reality, it never works out that way because there’s never a “good” time to take a vacation; if you don’t have vacation days that you have to use, you won’t use them.
This isn’t always the case, but it seems to be the majority of companies where it’s used this way. My current job truly is unlimited PTO with an unwritten “TAKE YOUR GODDAMN TIME OFF” rule.
How much PTO do you and your coworkers actually take? Most of my friends and former coworkers I’ve known with unlimited PTO end up taking less than I do.
For comparison, I am also American and don’t have unlimited PTO, but this year I’ll be taking off a total of 7 weeks, not including sick time or holidays, though two of those weeks are company chosen. My sick time is in a separate bucket and is something like 15-25 days per year.
Yep. I have 2 weeks PTO and one of those 2 weeks has to be used all together so you have a week off. That’s the only way you can use one of those 2 weeks of PTO. 40 anytime hours and 40 hours you have to take all together. It’s fucking stupid.
Bro there’s still so many idiots at my workplace working their life away for a stupid card that says “best performer of the month”. I got no problem with that but the issue that I have is they make life hard for guys like me. I know and they know that they can’t afford a shitty 4 bedroom house so why the fuck slave so hard. I really don’t get it
Assuming America it’s because there is a pervasive mentality that the poor here are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires and that through their hard work, they will be restored to their millionaire status. It’s fucking disgusting that companies take advantage of this naivety and sad to see people falling for it. These people grind themselves to dust for a pittance and the reality of the situation rarely hits them.
The whole reason sick days are a thing is that giving employees paid sick time costs you less when they don’t come in and make other employees sick. If enough people get sick in a given org, that has a way of really impacting everything about a workplace, it really is cheaper if they stay home until they’re not contagious.
The worst part of this situation, to me: that anyone is pressing for sick leave to be tightly audited, or seeking to frame its use as a sort of graft or taking from the employer, or a pretext for preemptively firing employees deemed guilty of being too sick. This kind of talk creates pressure for employees to come to work sick in order to avoid being seen as slackers or thieves, and that in turn (especially in an environment full of flu and covid variants, doubly so on the heels of a fucking pandemic so we should all know better by now) defeats the point of having sick days in the first place.
Or a really bad day. Like unbearable pain, or a massive head ache. It’s better if people take the time off and recover because they work better and make fewer mistakes. Nothing sucks more then to redo work.
I was talking about the fact that pain is not contagious … Of course pain is a valid reason to stay at home!
My reasoning was that the risk of spreading the disease can’t be the only reason for companies to let you not go to work because it only applies to infectious diseases!
I think the majority of people misunderstood my comment
Prepandemic, Fleetcor workers in their 20s and 30s took one or two sick days a year, she says. Now, it’s more like three to five.
So pandemic taught people how viruses spread and how not to spread them and coming to work sick is shameful, not a badge of honor. Still, 4 days a year isn’t enough.
I worked with a guy, Clint, who had been at the company his whole life, worked his way from the factory floor to head of accounting. The thing Clint chose to brag regularly about was that he was 60-something and had never taken a sick day. Instead, he’d roll in obviously sick, sneeze on everyone, everyone he saw that day would get sick, a few of them followed his stellar example and got more people sick. During those times, no actual work got done except Clint lamenting about how everyone was getting sick. “Must be the weather.”
I mean, it helped teach me. It’s not that I didn’t actually understand it before, it’s that I hadn’t internalized it (and how selfish it is to go around getting other people sick). My dad is one of the “I never take a sick day!” people and when you hear that enough as a kid, the “merit” of that sticks in your bones. It took me several years as an adult to really believe that I wasn’t selfish or lazy if I took a sick day.
I am interested, but ultimately it’s irrelevant, because our subjective experiences don’t really hold a candle to the entire “anti mask” movement, the culture you’re describing here, and slightly different but akin to that cultural aspect, the idea of “hustling” to chase fortune.
And that’s just the philosophy of it. There’s also the millions that most certainly just don’t understand shit about germs, mechanisms of how illness spreads, etc.
Didn’t every adult in the developed world not learn this as a child from their parents? Or failing that, at school? Are most people genuinely that stupid?
It boggles my mind that it took a world changing pandemic for people to learn basic hygiene! If people just washed their hands occasionally (start with after you go to the toilet) perhaps COVID would have never happened.
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