Monday, February 12, 2007

Should I Go to Work When I'm Sick

During the later part of last week I started to feel a bit sick. Nothing too bad so I continued to go to work. Now I'm looking down at a Monday with several meetings and wondering if I should call in sick.

I remembered an article on this recently in the news and I dug up a copy (see here). What really got my attention is than half of all people believe they got a bug from their office. So why do we go to work when we know we are not well? In a nutshell, we feel guilty to let down our 'team.' My question are you really letting anyone down when you infect everyone else and cause even more production loss for the office as a whole?

So today I think I'm going to try and break a trend and call in sick.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having paid sick days makes a huge difference in both employee morale and productivity. Without them, people will come to work sick unless they're utterly incapable of doing so, just so that they don't lose out on that day's income.

When I'm sick, I stay home and rest. When I'm better, I go back to work. That's how it should work, shouldn't it?

Tim Stobbs said...

Anon,

That's the way it should be, but people don't think that way. Even with paid sick days they worry about being considered 'the sick guy' and that if downsizing occurs that they would be first out the door.

Perhaps I've already had too many jobs since leaving school that I just don't care about that. I rather spend a day at home and do a good job when I'm there, then waste everyone's time by being there sick.

CD

Middle Class Millionaire said...

I find it totally depends on the environment you work in. I've had jobs where everyone came in no matter what (even though we had paid sick days). The only good excuse was that someone had died! In my present job you are virtually escorted out to your car and told to go home and rest if you have anything other than a small cold.

I think if you have so much work that you can't catch up after a sick day then it's time to get a new job.

MCM,
http://middleclassmillionaire.blogspot.com