Aw, how sweet… She thinks she can use sick days. Clearly, she must be a newbie.
That is how use sick days. You call in sick. What’s the joke?
J-L has it. You don’t get sick days in retail and isn’t it the darnedest thing when the newbies don’t know that.
No, no, you people are all too cynical (whereas Retail apparently is not cynical enough — maybe that’s why some of us have problems with its simplistic “aren’t people stupid?” theme: we’re looking for more informed and nuanced criticism — but I digress); the joke is the newbie came into work sick, and then asked about how to use sick days, missing the whole point that sick days are there to keep you from spreading the sickness by keeping you home. Ha ha! Of course, this naive view falls flat on its face because in reality retail workers are corporate peons who get worked until they burn out, at which point they hire the next batch to burn out — it’s all a race to the bottom folks! You can’t put a human face on it, retail is soul draining, and this strip often comes across as either written by PR shills, or hopelessly naive robots.
Both J-L’s and larK’s explanations make sense. If either is the intended joke, the writer didn’t make it clear enough. Of course, if the writers did consistently make their jokes clear, CIDU probably wouldn’t exist.
My MIL worked for many years at a large insurance company office. For every sick day you used, they took off TWO. How’s THAT for screwing the employees (who were mostly women, BTW).
I did a project in a hospital. They wouldn’t let me come to work when I was sick. (I caught a cold the week I was supposed to start.)
I used to work in a hospital, and they instituted a really strict sick-day policy, even though we were supposed to get 11 per year. I didn’t take off often, but when I did, they demanded a doctor’s note. Well, I wasn’t going to spend half a day getting a note for the flu, so I went to work. I was there about ten minutes when I had to throw up, so I went to the supervisor who had demanded a doctor’s note, and threw up on her shoes.
They dropped the whole doctor’s note thing after that.
I never had a sick day at work. If I was sick I just worked at home – even when I was not self-employed,but worked for another accoutant. I remember one time setting up a small(very small) table in the bathroom at home so I could work when I could not leave it.
What was really bad was when I worked with/for my dad if I called in sick (and working at home) I had to deal with my mother calling me to see what was wrong and telling me what to do.
oh, and maybe she is suppose to let them know online.
Chak — I would be incredulous that a HOSPITAL of all places would be so happy to spread illness, except, well, I have too many friends who have worked in hospitals, and, yeah, more than half the time, it’s like that.
ianosmond, darn, I was hoping they were a one-off.
I like your avatar, with your master on your shoulder.
Current job has unlimited sick time. Which of course makes one loath to use it for fear of appearing to malinger. I work from home anyway, so it means little to me, except times like today when I just had wrist surgery and will nap without guilt!
Glad to see it wasn’t your ‘mousing wrist’ that had surgery.
At Megacorp, if you left the job in good standing (i.e. not fired for cause) you would get half of your sick leave paid to you at your hourly equivalent pay or some cap level like $30, whichever was lower. I always took sick days whenever I thought it appropriate, but still had a lot of hours accumulated over the 36.75 years I had been there.
Brian in STL: You could accumulate sick days year after year? That’s pretty cool, at Omnicorp, where I still work, our vacation and sick days expire.
I, OTOH, suffered so frequently with migraines that after 30 years and with 11 sick days/year, I had none left when I retired. My remaining vacation days were paid into an IRA, which is still accumulating interest.
I was blessed with generally good health for most of the first four and a half decades of my life; most of my sick time used was used for dental appointments. I had two occasions to miss work with actual sickness… one involved a cold that spread to give me multiple itises… sinusitis, laryngitis, otitis, and bronchitis, all at once. The second one was an outbreak of shingles. I could have worked, but you’re contagious to people who’ve never had chicken-pox when you have shingles, so I stayed home.
Later on, it turned out that I’ve had a heart condition at least since I was a teenager. I spent a weekend in cardiac intensive-care, and now I’m medicated.
Phil Smith III – I hope you are feeling better.
The agency Robert worked for gave 2 weeks sick days which could be paid out at the end of the year (year ended August, so paid in September. At first we used to take them to pay for vacation. Then he when he found out he was Diabetic and used some of them, we started booking them until we had as many as he was allowed to book – just in case. We then went back to paying for vacation with them (and by then, bank banking the money over the vacation costs). When he left and the days were paid out it was nice to have the extra money to put into savings plus they were paid out at his final salary rate and we made a bit on that as many of them were booked into his account when he was only a counselor.
Andrea/Meryl A: Thanks! Healing gradually. No Percocet last night, which is a good step I think. Wife won’t let me drive even 12 hours after a wee one–today I should get out on my own! I’M FREE!!!
“Brian in STL: You could accumulate sick days year after year?”
Yes. Vacation had a cap of twice your yearly accrual, then went into “use it or lose it”. Sick days accumulated. It was a bit more complicated for some of us. I started with a company that merged with another to form Megacorp. My original company was not a fan of sick leave. You never had any official amount and they had various programs to discourage taking sick days.
The main company that was the core of the new Megacorp had the policy I mentioned. When they asked my old company for the sick leave totals for those “heritage” employees, there weren’t any. So they invented a new category of sick days, “preload”, that was based on the number of years of service[1].
Those were NOT eligible for cash-out. The idea being that you would use those instead of “real” sick days, which would then accumulate. Over the course of 20 years of working after the merger, I did finally use up the preload. It was available for family leave situations, so when my mother had cancer I used a bunch then.
1. As I recall, I had 320 hours, which would have been 20 hours per year of service. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing at the time. In the final ten years there, I became much more interested and knowledgeable about benefits. One of the big ones that I wish I’d known about earlier was the so-called Mega Backdoor Roth. That is a way, if your 401(k) supported it, to stuff a lot more money than just the yearly contribution into a Roth IRA.
Brian in STL: When you first described it, I thought it was nice that you could accumulate sick days and get reimbursed for not using them. But now that I think about it, incentive-wise it’s roughly equivalent to first giving you a raise, and then docking your pay for using sick days. I guess it’s all in how you frame things.
You end up with more money if you never take sick days, because they accumulate. If they allowed you to accumulate vacation to that extent they it would be even better, as the pay for that is your normal rate and you get full credit. But for eight weeks of vacation (for me), the same applied. If I took a vacation day, I got “penalized” for that because it wasn’t there to be cashed in when I left
However, when I take a sick day or vacation day, I am (or was) getting paid to not work that day.
Phil Smith III – Husband hurt his shoulder/left arm on Oct 3. After we spent 8.5 hours in the emergency room determining that it was an injury (muscle) and not a heart attack he had to start taking an antiinflammatory and a muscle relaxer. We spent the rest of the week and the weekend in the house with me running out to buy the lunch we have daily at Wendys and bring it back for him as he was in too much pain to drive (he suffers from motion sickness – and I also suffer from his motion sickness).. Dinner was Chinese takeout or W dinner (as we eat out on weekends at 1 or another Asian buffet,Ikea or W). On Monday (Columbus Day) we went to W for lunch. On that Tuesday to W for lunch and to the PO to check our box and mail out. As of last weekend we actually went to the regular places we eat lunch and dinner out and to the movies (normally an every Saturday night thing). Since he has been able to open/close the car door, put his own seat belt on, carried his tray when eating out last weekend, and open the doors to Ws on his own, I went to work today. Suddenly he is worse than when I left him. Biggest problem is that the seat belt sits on the exact spot on his shoulder that hurts.
Doctor says another 2-4 weeks and he should be okay. He has been taking Extra Strength Tylenol for pain. I haven’t been able to changing the bedding as he needs his pillows to remain exactly as they are.
Originally he blamed me. I went to my embroidery meeting and it was over 80F in the bedroom so I put on the a/c for him when I left and he figured his neck got too cold. When I insisted on helping with a project of his (he was going to hook up the old turntable to his computer to copy LPs not available on CD) I went to the basement to get the turntable out for him. This involves movements similar to those in a 1960s heist movie where the lead has to climb over and under invisible beams of light without setting them off. As I pulled out the turntable he said “hmmm. maybe I had been trying to get the turntable out the night before I was hurt and maybe I hit my shoulder on the handlebar of my exercise bike and that is how I hurt myself”.
So,again,feel better soon.
Meryl A: Oy. That’s a mess! Thanks for the kind words–I’m about 90% already, two weeks out. I heal fast. Hope your husband does!
This might be a case where something like Soma or Flexeril might help. The muscle spasms make things worse.
Can I again put in the word about magnesium for preventing spasms? It’s like a miracle cure! If you have a problem with muscles spasming, it’s probably because of electrolytic imbalance, ie: you don;t have enough magnesium (possibly potassium). Worked fantastically for me!
If I don’t eat at least 1/2 banana every day, I get leg cramps and spasms. Relatively easy and cheap cure.
larK, I take magnesium before bed and eat a banana (or two) every day, but I still occasionally get a spasm. When I do, I walk it off while eating a banana. :-)
Comics I Don't Understand 
“How do I use my sick days?”
Aw, how sweet… She thinks she can use sick days. Clearly, she must be a newbie.
That is how use sick days. You call in sick. What’s the joke?
J-L has it. You don’t get sick days in retail and isn’t it the darnedest thing when the newbies don’t know that.
No, no, you people are all too cynical (whereas Retail apparently is not cynical enough — maybe that’s why some of us have problems with its simplistic “aren’t people stupid?” theme: we’re looking for more informed and nuanced criticism — but I digress); the joke is the newbie came into work sick, and then asked about how to use sick days, missing the whole point that sick days are there to keep you from spreading the sickness by keeping you home. Ha ha! Of course, this naive view falls flat on its face because in reality retail workers are corporate peons who get worked until they burn out, at which point they hire the next batch to burn out — it’s all a race to the bottom folks! You can’t put a human face on it, retail is soul draining, and this strip often comes across as either written by PR shills, or hopelessly naive robots.
Both J-L’s and larK’s explanations make sense. If either is the intended joke, the writer didn’t make it clear enough. Of course, if the writers did consistently make their jokes clear, CIDU probably wouldn’t exist.
My MIL worked for many years at a large insurance company office. For every sick day you used, they took off TWO. How’s THAT for screwing the employees (who were mostly women, BTW).
I did a project in a hospital. They wouldn’t let me come to work when I was sick. (I caught a cold the week I was supposed to start.)
I used to work in a hospital, and they instituted a really strict sick-day policy, even though we were supposed to get 11 per year. I didn’t take off often, but when I did, they demanded a doctor’s note. Well, I wasn’t going to spend half a day getting a note for the flu, so I went to work. I was there about ten minutes when I had to throw up, so I went to the supervisor who had demanded a doctor’s note, and threw up on her shoes.
They dropped the whole doctor’s note thing after that.
I never had a sick day at work. If I was sick I just worked at home – even when I was not self-employed,but worked for another accoutant. I remember one time setting up a small(very small) table in the bathroom at home so I could work when I could not leave it.
What was really bad was when I worked with/for my dad if I called in sick (and working at home) I had to deal with my mother calling me to see what was wrong and telling me what to do.
oh, and maybe she is suppose to let them know online.
Chak — I would be incredulous that a HOSPITAL of all places would be so happy to spread illness, except, well, I have too many friends who have worked in hospitals, and, yeah, more than half the time, it’s like that.
ianosmond, darn, I was hoping they were a one-off.
I like your avatar, with your master on your shoulder.
Current job has unlimited sick time. Which of course makes one loath to use it for fear of appearing to malinger. I work from home anyway, so it means little to me, except times like today when I just had wrist surgery and will nap without guilt!
Glad to see it wasn’t your ‘mousing wrist’ that had surgery.
At Megacorp, if you left the job in good standing (i.e. not fired for cause) you would get half of your sick leave paid to you at your hourly equivalent pay or some cap level like $30, whichever was lower. I always took sick days whenever I thought it appropriate, but still had a lot of hours accumulated over the 36.75 years I had been there.
Brian in STL: You could accumulate sick days year after year? That’s pretty cool, at Omnicorp, where I still work, our vacation and sick days expire.
I, OTOH, suffered so frequently with migraines that after 30 years and with 11 sick days/year, I had none left when I retired. My remaining vacation days were paid into an IRA, which is still accumulating interest.
I was blessed with generally good health for most of the first four and a half decades of my life; most of my sick time used was used for dental appointments. I had two occasions to miss work with actual sickness… one involved a cold that spread to give me multiple itises… sinusitis, laryngitis, otitis, and bronchitis, all at once. The second one was an outbreak of shingles. I could have worked, but you’re contagious to people who’ve never had chicken-pox when you have shingles, so I stayed home.
Later on, it turned out that I’ve had a heart condition at least since I was a teenager. I spent a weekend in cardiac intensive-care, and now I’m medicated.
Phil Smith III – I hope you are feeling better.
The agency Robert worked for gave 2 weeks sick days which could be paid out at the end of the year (year ended August, so paid in September. At first we used to take them to pay for vacation. Then he when he found out he was Diabetic and used some of them, we started booking them until we had as many as he was allowed to book – just in case. We then went back to paying for vacation with them (and by then, bank banking the money over the vacation costs). When he left and the days were paid out it was nice to have the extra money to put into savings plus they were paid out at his final salary rate and we made a bit on that as many of them were booked into his account when he was only a counselor.
Andrea/Meryl A: Thanks! Healing gradually. No Percocet last night, which is a good step I think. Wife won’t let me drive even 12 hours after a wee one–today I should get out on my own! I’M FREE!!!
“Brian in STL: You could accumulate sick days year after year?”
Yes. Vacation had a cap of twice your yearly accrual, then went into “use it or lose it”. Sick days accumulated. It was a bit more complicated for some of us. I started with a company that merged with another to form Megacorp. My original company was not a fan of sick leave. You never had any official amount and they had various programs to discourage taking sick days.
The main company that was the core of the new Megacorp had the policy I mentioned. When they asked my old company for the sick leave totals for those “heritage” employees, there weren’t any. So they invented a new category of sick days, “preload”, that was based on the number of years of service[1].
Those were NOT eligible for cash-out. The idea being that you would use those instead of “real” sick days, which would then accumulate. Over the course of 20 years of working after the merger, I did finally use up the preload. It was available for family leave situations, so when my mother had cancer I used a bunch then.
1. As I recall, I had 320 hours, which would have been 20 hours per year of service. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing at the time. In the final ten years there, I became much more interested and knowledgeable about benefits. One of the big ones that I wish I’d known about earlier was the so-called Mega Backdoor Roth. That is a way, if your 401(k) supported it, to stuff a lot more money than just the yearly contribution into a Roth IRA.
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/After-tax_401(k)
Brian in STL: When you first described it, I thought it was nice that you could accumulate sick days and get reimbursed for not using them. But now that I think about it, incentive-wise it’s roughly equivalent to first giving you a raise, and then docking your pay for using sick days. I guess it’s all in how you frame things.
You end up with more money if you never take sick days, because they accumulate. If they allowed you to accumulate vacation to that extent they it would be even better, as the pay for that is your normal rate and you get full credit. But for eight weeks of vacation (for me), the same applied. If I took a vacation day, I got “penalized” for that because it wasn’t there to be cashed in when I left
However, when I take a sick day or vacation day, I am (or was) getting paid to not work that day.
Phil Smith III – Husband hurt his shoulder/left arm on Oct 3. After we spent 8.5 hours in the emergency room determining that it was an injury (muscle) and not a heart attack he had to start taking an antiinflammatory and a muscle relaxer. We spent the rest of the week and the weekend in the house with me running out to buy the lunch we have daily at Wendys and bring it back for him as he was in too much pain to drive (he suffers from motion sickness – and I also suffer from his motion sickness).. Dinner was Chinese takeout or W dinner (as we eat out on weekends at 1 or another Asian buffet,Ikea or W). On Monday (Columbus Day) we went to W for lunch. On that Tuesday to W for lunch and to the PO to check our box and mail out. As of last weekend we actually went to the regular places we eat lunch and dinner out and to the movies (normally an every Saturday night thing). Since he has been able to open/close the car door, put his own seat belt on, carried his tray when eating out last weekend, and open the doors to Ws on his own, I went to work today. Suddenly he is worse than when I left him. Biggest problem is that the seat belt sits on the exact spot on his shoulder that hurts.
Doctor says another 2-4 weeks and he should be okay. He has been taking Extra Strength Tylenol for pain. I haven’t been able to changing the bedding as he needs his pillows to remain exactly as they are.
Originally he blamed me. I went to my embroidery meeting and it was over 80F in the bedroom so I put on the a/c for him when I left and he figured his neck got too cold. When I insisted on helping with a project of his (he was going to hook up the old turntable to his computer to copy LPs not available on CD) I went to the basement to get the turntable out for him. This involves movements similar to those in a 1960s heist movie where the lead has to climb over and under invisible beams of light without setting them off. As I pulled out the turntable he said “hmmm. maybe I had been trying to get the turntable out the night before I was hurt and maybe I hit my shoulder on the handlebar of my exercise bike and that is how I hurt myself”.
So,again,feel better soon.
Meryl A: Oy. That’s a mess! Thanks for the kind words–I’m about 90% already, two weeks out. I heal fast. Hope your husband does!
This might be a case where something like Soma or Flexeril might help. The muscle spasms make things worse.
Can I again put in the word about magnesium for preventing spasms? It’s like a miracle cure! If you have a problem with muscles spasming, it’s probably because of electrolytic imbalance, ie: you don;t have enough magnesium (possibly potassium). Worked fantastically for me!
If I don’t eat at least 1/2 banana every day, I get leg cramps and spasms. Relatively easy and cheap cure.
larK, I take magnesium before bed and eat a banana (or two) every day, but I still occasionally get a spasm. When I do, I walk it off while eating a banana. :-)