Minor things that bother you

[LilianaUwU]

How about we allow people to be sick without risking their job? That would be the fucking minimum, wouldn't it?

[Max Rockatansky]

How would you quantify that? 

Where I work you can take 3% sick annually.  In theory that would be a solid eight days no questions asked for a full time person.  You can even delete some of those sick days from that percentage if you submit a doctor's note to HR (which is easy to do with insurance provided Teledoc line).  Disability doesn't count towards Sick Leave percentage given that obviously comes with a medical note. 

Despite all our loopholes we have employees end up on letters of requirement for excessive sick leave usage all the time.  From there it in theory could escalate to write ups for those people (which in theory is only possible at the two year mark).  Thing is that the sick leave usage for people with requirement letters tends to almost immediately dip below 3%. 

[vdeane]

Nothing that anyone is saying, apart from being able to carry over unlimited sick days, which certainly isn't universal, has changed my mind.

In my head, instead of getting $15 cash, you all would rather have a $10 gift card to one company and a $5 to another, restricting what you can do with your funds. I don't see how that's ever better for you.

That's because you insist on looking at it that way.  In my mind, vacation is cash (well, technically personal is, but I've never had a supervisor or managers above them that actually care about the differences between the two).  Sick would be more analogous to putting money in a HSA, though since my health insurance is good enough that I don't really need a HSA or FSA, something like a 401k match resonates more in my head.

In my head, PTO defaults to vacation, so using a day because of being sick would suck.  I actually did encounter this scenario when I worked at the company that had PTO: I overate at the family picnic, and wasn't feeling well that morning.  I felt better that afternoon, so I ended up not only coming in, but staying until 8 PM to avoid giving up any PTO.  It sucked, but I didn't want to lose any PTO.  If I had had separate vacation and sick, I would have just taken the day off.

I've also read that many companies that switch from vacation + sick to PTO offer less PTO than the combined amount of vacation and sick.  Apparently some companies are even replacing paid holidays with PTO.

[JayhawkCO]

Fair enough. I guess I've just never had a job that had sick days carry over. You could always carry over a week or so of vacation pay.

[Rothman]

How would you quantify that? 

Where I work you can take 3% sick annually.  In theory that would be a solid eight days no questions asked for a full time person.  You can even delete some of those sick days from that percentage if you submit a doctor's note to HR (which is easy to do with insurance provided Teledoc line).  Disability doesn't count towards Sick Leave percentage given that obviously comes with a medical note. 

Despite all our loopholes we have employees end up on letters of requirement for excessive sick leave usage all the time.  From there it in theory could escalate to write ups for those people (which in theory is only possible at the two year mark).  Thing is that the sick leave usage for people with requirement letters tends to almost immediately dip below 3%. 

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

[Max Rockatansky]

How would you quantify that? 

Where I work you can take 3% sick annually.  In theory that would be a solid eight days no questions asked for a full time person.  You can even delete some of those sick days from that percentage if you submit a doctor's note to HR (which is easy to do with insurance provided Teledoc line).  Disability doesn't count towards Sick Leave percentage given that obviously comes with a medical note. 

Despite all our loopholes we have employees end up on letters of requirement for excessive sick leave usage all the time.  From there it in theory could escalate to write ups for those people (which in theory is only possible at the two year mark).  Thing is that the sick leave usage for people with requirement letters tends to almost immediately dip below 3%. 

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.  I do it but I can't speak for why others don't.  If I was going to speculate I would imagine the problem is laziness combined with an illogical fear of looking like a bad employee for calling out when sick.

[Rothman]

How would you quantify that? 

Where I work you can take 3% sick annually.  In theory that would be a solid eight days no questions asked for a full time person.  You can even delete some of those sick days from that percentage if you submit a doctor's note to HR (which is easy to do with insurance provided Teledoc line).  Disability doesn't count towards Sick Leave percentage given that obviously comes with a medical note. 

Despite all our loopholes we have employees end up on letters of requirement for excessive sick leave usage all the time.  From there it in theory could escalate to write ups for those people (which in theory is only possible at the two year mark).  Thing is that the sick leave usage for people with requirement letters tends to almost immediately dip below 3%. 

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.  I do it but I can't speak for why others don't.  If I was going to speculate I would imagine the problem is laziness combined with an illogical fear of looking like a bad employee for calling out when sick.

That all seems symptomatic of a broken system.

[Max Rockatansky]

How would you quantify that? 

Where I work you can take 3% sick annually.  In theory that would be a solid eight days no questions asked for a full time person.  You can even delete some of those sick days from that percentage if you submit a doctor's note to HR (which is easy to do with insurance provided Teledoc line).  Disability doesn't count towards Sick Leave percentage given that obviously comes with a medical note. 

Despite all our loopholes we have employees end up on letters of requirement for excessive sick leave usage all the time.  From there it in theory could escalate to write ups for those people (which in theory is only possible at the two year mark).  Thing is that the sick leave usage for people with requirement letters tends to almost immediately dip below 3%. 

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.  I do it but I can't speak for why others don't.  If I was going to speculate I would imagine the problem is laziness combined with an illogical fear of looking like a bad employee for calling out when sick.

That all seems symptomatic of a broken system.

Tis retail and government.  Most will be forever be afraid even there is no actual tangible reason to be.

[Scott5114]

All of your PTO is combined and you've used it all: You take two unpaid days

At my last job, you couldn't take unpaid days. No PTO? Boss won't approve the time off. You just have to call in and get in trouble for absenteeism.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.

Having to pay a copay to get a useless note that my boss won't even look at to keep from getting in trouble is an incredible waste of time and money for all involved.

(Assuming that's even an option. At my last job they didn't accept doctor notes. You had so many absences you could do a year, and after that you'd be fired, regardless of the reason.)

[Max Rockatansky]

All of your PTO is combined and you've used it all: You take two unpaid days

At my last job, you couldn't take unpaid days. No PTO? Boss won't approve the time off. You just have to call in and get in trouble for absenteeism.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.

Having to pay a copay to get a useless note that my boss won't even look at to keep from getting in trouble is an incredible waste of time and money for all involved.

(Assuming that's even an option. At my last job they didn't accept doctor notes. You had so many absences you could do a year, and after that you'd be fired, regardless of the reason.)

There isn't a copay for our Teledoc.  Thing is that one has to be have our employee health insurance to use it.  HR is the one that tracks the sick leave usage, I don't even get a tally on staff until the end of the fiscal year. 

I don't know, speaking for myself I call out usually three or four times sick a year.  Generally I don't tend to worry about the Sick Leave stats stacking up on me.  If something big happens I'll be equipped with a medical note likely excusing me from work anyways. 

The last big use of sick leave I had was in 2022 when I had to use five days for a COVID ROM.  We weren't even requiring doctor's notes or test results for those during the COVID era. 

[Scott5114]

There isn't a copay for our Teledoc.  Thing is that one has to be have our employee health insurance to use it.

Yeah, but not everyone is in the same boat.

My last employer had a pretty sweet setup before they went to the point system for attendance—you could get the absence excused with a doctor's note, and they just so happened to own an urgent care clinic two doors down. Feel sick and need to leave work early? Just hit up urgent care on the way home for a note. They were making money hand over fist off their own employees until they changed the attendance policy to do away with excused absences.

[Max Rockatansky]

There isn't a copay for our Teledoc.  Thing is that one has to be have our employee health insurance to use it.

Yeah, but not everyone is in the same boat.

My last employer had a pretty sweet setup before they went to the point system for attendance—you could get the absence excused with a doctor's note, and they just so happened to own an urgent care clinic two doors down. Feel sick and need to leave work early? Just hit up urgent care on the way home for a note. They were making money hand over fist off their own employees until they changed the attendance policy to do away with excused absences.

Sears was the last company I worked for that had one of those point systems.  I always found it amusing to see all the commission people keep track of how many days they could call out at the end of the fiscal year (which ended in January).  They used the absolute maximum of call outs during January to pad their post-holiday benefit rate.  The hook was that the points would reset at the start of the new fiscal year. 

[Scott5114]

There isn't a copay for our Teledoc.  Thing is that one has to be have our employee health insurance to use it.

Yeah, but not everyone is in the same boat.

My last employer had a pretty sweet setup before they went to the point system for attendance—you could get the absence excused with a doctor's note, and they just so happened to own an urgent care clinic two doors down. Feel sick and need to leave work early? Just hit up urgent care on the way home for a note. They were making money hand over fist off their own employees until they changed the attendance policy to do away with excused absences.

Sears was the last company I worked for that had one of those point systems.  I always found it amusing to see all the commission people keep track of how many days they could call out at the end of the fiscal year (which ended in January).  They used the absolute maximum of call outs during January to pad their post-holiday benefit rate.  The hook was that the points would reset at the start of the new fiscal year. 

Ours was a rolling period—the points would fall off one year after they were accrued.

I never used mine much (I think the highest I ever got was 11, where 20 was termination) so I had a store of what I called "fuck-you" points. Any time management got me in trouble for some bullshit reason I'd call in the next day to say "fuck you". They couldn't do anything about that because I was just using my points how I wished.

One time I was bored and I calculated the theoretical maximum number of points that could be accrued, which was 31. That involved running the score up to 19, then clocking in an hour late (which brings you to 21), then going home without telling anyone (which adds 10 points for job abandonment for a total of 31).

[bugo]

I still don't get why one would take a major well-known brand – especially one that was nearly in the realm of genericized trademark – and rename it for any logical reason other than vanity or litigation purposes. I bet the average Joe knew exactly what a "tweet" was even if they had no account on that social media site. Whereas most social media uses "posts", which is an interchangeable word for many types in of user-supplied publicly-visible information on the Internet.

Because fElon is a fucking idiot.

[D-Dey65]

I found out SunPass is doing away with P.I.N. numbers for signing in, and trading it for passwords. But when my mother tried to sign into her account for hers, they said they didn't recognize it. So she has no way of getting into her account.

Why do the people who control life keep making it impossible for the rest of us to live?!

[hbelkins]

My employer differentiates between sick leave and annual leave. Sick leave is accrued at the rate of one day per month, with a 10-day bonus applied after 10 years and another 10-day bonus applied after 20 years. Annual leave initially accrues at the rate of one day per month, and thereafter on a sliding scale after five years, 10 years, and 15 years, until after 20 years you accrue two days per month. We work a 37-1/2-hour work week. For any time we work between 37.5 and 40 hours, we accrue comp time. For all hours worked in a week beyond 40, we can choose to accrue comp time at the rate of 1-1/2 hours or overtime pay at the rate of 1-1/2 hours.

There is no maximum accrual of sick or annual leave. You cannot use sick leave for annual days, but you can use annual leave for sick days. After accrual of 240 hours of overtime, a "block 50" is triggered and you get paid for 50 hours of overtime. This is something the employer tries to avoid, so the policy is that if you are close to a "block 50," they will make you take comp time instead of sick or annual leave.

I'm not sure what the policy is upon separation, but I think that any unused sick leave is credited to your service time, and annual leave and comp time are paid out.

[bugo]

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.  I do it but I can't speak for why others don't.  If I was going to speculate I would imagine the problem is laziness combined with an illogical fear of looking like a bad employee for calling out when sick.

I got fired because I was having COVID-like symptoms and called in for a couple of days. They tell you to not come to work if you're sick, but they fire you if you don't come to work. Fuck corporate America.

[roadman65]

I found out SunPass is doing away with P.I.N. numbers for signing in, and trading it for passwords. But when my mother tried to sign into her account for hers, they said they didn't recognize it. So she has no way of getting into her account.

Why do the people who control life keep making it impossible for the rest of us to live?!

It's called " For your protection."

I don't agree with it, but is a common catchphrase these days.

[Max Rockatansky]

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.  I do it but I can't speak for why others don't.  If I was going to speculate I would imagine the problem is laziness combined with an illogical fear of looking like a bad employee for calling out when sick.

I got fired because I was having COVID-like symptoms and called in for a couple of days. They tell you to not come to work if you're sick, but they fire you if you don't come to work. Fuck corporate America.

No disagreement from me.  That's why I work in government nowadays. 

[kkt]

Sounds like a good way to spead sickness in the workplace.

It isn't too difficult to call in for a bad cold or flu and just get a note.  I do it but I can't speak for why others don't.  If I was going to speculate I would imagine the problem is laziness combined with an illogical fear of looking like a bad employee for calling out when sick.

I got fired because I was having COVID-like symptoms and called in for a couple of days. They tell you to not come to work if you're sick, but they fire you if you don't come to work. Fuck corporate America.

That completely sucks.  Sorry that happened.  Did they rehire you later?

[bugo]

I got fired because I was having COVID-like symptoms and called in for a couple of days. They tell you to not come to work if you're sick, but they fire you if you don't come to work. Fuck corporate America.

That completely sucks.  Sorry that happened.  Did they rehire you later?

Nope. I wouldn't work for them again because they treat their employees like utter garbage.

[1995hoo]

Have you ever had the sort of morning where you just feel generally down about things but you have no idea why and you can't really think of anything that should be depressing you? That's how I feel today.

[Max Rockatansky]

Boredom or not having something to occupy my brain gets me down like that. 

[SEWIGuy]

The days I am busiest at work are the days that I feel the best when going home. Tired yes...but a nice sense of accomplishment.

[Big John]

Have you ever had the sort of morning where you just feel generally down about things but you have no idea why and you can't really think of anything that should be depressing you? That's how I feel today.

French word of the day: Ennui.