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Poor sick firefighters
By adamg on Wed, 06/04/2008 - 9:38am
And such a shame so many got sick on Memorial Day when they couldn't enjoy the holiday.
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Comments
In the real world ...
At my company, if someone called in sick on the Friday before a holiday weekend or on a holiday that we don't get off, they wouldn't just get in trouble, they'd be harrassed by everyone who did come to work that day.
Oh, but unionized public servants play by a different set of rules ... except teachers, who would risk getting fired for pulling such a blatant stunt.
Get in trouble? How about fired?
The classic case is the guy who calls in sick, goes skiing, and blows a knee out. Shows up the next day in crutches and promptly gets fired.
I don't know how many times in public forums this comes up, and I say "sick days are for when you're sick - period". Guaranteed someone sympathetic to public employees will say "But they earned it". This is what you're dealing with.
Not every employer calls them "sick" days
When I worked at MGH in the 1990s, we had "accrued leave" policies. Sick leave, vacation, holidays, and personal time all rolled up together. I suspect that was because a hospital is mainly a 24/7/365 deal and it worked well in that case.
So I didn't call in sick to take a sick day, I stayed home because I was sick. When my husband had surgery, I simply dipped into all the accrued time without any hassle. At the end, I cashed out nearly two weeks of leave time. In that sense, I did earn it because of the way the leave time was structured.
I was gonna say
At my company, if I don't feel like going to work, and I don't have anything really important going on, it's not a problem with anybody. I tell my coworkers and supervisors, and put PTO (Paid Time Off) on my time card. It doesn't matter whether I'm sick or not. I can call in because of a sore throat or a nice weather forecast.
But then, I'm a professional, not a shift worker, where they try to keep a certain number on the job to respond to needs that change by the minute. In that case, you wouldn't want too many people calling in on the same day.
It does seem improper for the firefighters to call in sick if they're not. Maybe they should switch to a PTO system. If sick days are a kind of freebie, they'll be abused.