The flu epidemic and calling in sick to work

With the current flu epidemic, we are being told that if you are sick, you should stay home from work so as not to infect other people.  What is not being talked about is what do you do if your employer is someone who discourages use of sick time?

Some years ago, I worked for an insurance company, and I will name them as they are no longer in business - Prudential Property & Casualty.  Their sick policy was stringent, draconian, asinine.  You got 10 sick days per year, in addition to your regular vacation days (it wasn't like today, where most companies just give you one overall bank of earned time off to use for any reason, be it sickness or vacation time).  But you were allotted just two sick "occurrences" per 12 months, and the 12 months wasn't necessarily a calendar year.

Say you got sick in March, and called in, and were out just one day.  You come back to work, and everything is fine.  You catch a bad cold in November, call in sick, go back to work, and everything is fine.  But then say you catch cold again in January.  You figure no problem, it's a new year, I have a new bank of sick days, and I only used two sick days all of last year.  Wrong!  You now have a third "occurrence" within 12 months (you didn't get a clean slate just because it's January and a new year), and the Human Resources guidelines called for you to be "counseled" by your supervisor, meaning the supervisor reprimands you for having had too many "occurrences" within a 12-month period of time, and a warning is given to you.  Now the next time you call in sick would be your fourth occurrence, and if you keep having "occurrences," even if they're spaced way apart and are only a day each time, you can get written up for it, and perhaps even terminated.  It was almost impossible to get a clean slate, because who can go 12 months without getting sick?  And if you do get sick, you're put in the impossible position of trying to decide if you're sick enough to get an "occurrence," how many "occurrences" have I already had, what if I get sick again six months from now and am forced to use another "occurrence," etc.

As far as I was concerned, if you got a new bank of 10 sick days when the calendar year changed, then all your "occurrences" from the previous year should have been relegated to the past as well, and you should have a clean slate.  And if you missed only two days total for sickness the previous year, that to me is excellent attendance, not poor attendance.  (What was also bad was suppose you called in sick on a Tuesday, felt better Wednesday and went back to work, then realized you'd gone back to work too soon and felt awful and called in sick on Thursday.  Whammo, you've used two "occurrences" in one WEEK because you had that day back at work in between, so now you're sunk for the next 12 months!) 

My supervisor, Margaret (I wonder what ever happened to her, where she is today, if she's even still alive - she'd be in her 80s now, I think) told me, "It's not that we don't believe you're sick, it's that we need warm bodies at the desks doing the work."  That's an exact quote.

That was a horrible place to work anyway.  I remember one of my job duties was distributing the mail to the claims examiners each day.  I was also training a new lady named Alice.  One time I was walking around with the mail folders in my arms, distributing the mail as per my duties, and Alice stopped me as I walked by so she could ask me a quick question.  I stopped for all of 30 seconds to answer her question.  Later, Margaret reprimanded me, telling me I was supposed to be getting the mail out to the employees and not chit-chatting with co-workers.  I looked at Margaret and said, "I am also supposed to be training Alice, and she had a question for me, and I stopped for all of half a minute to answer her question; I'm sure taking 30 whole seconds to answer a question from a trainee did not impede the mail getting distributed!"  (I took that tone because by that time, I knew I'd had enough and was so fed up I was going to quit my job soon anyway.)