If my employer won't give me sick days, I'm not going to burn vacation unless I really, really don't feel like coming in.

This is how it should be, but with some employers aggressively punishing people for being sick (e.g. docking pay, forcing make-up time, outright firing people for "poor performance") there's no incentive for people to look out for anyone else.

Instead come in, muddle along, and infect everyone.

My company /says/ they don't want people coming in ill, but policies state you must get a doctor's note for even 1 day's absence (doctor's really don't like you wasting their time) and the HR portal shows you a score relating to your time off. Also, managers love coming in all to show how dedicated they are! Joy.

Productivity loss is a bad angle to argue this. Why should an individual worker put productivity of the company first if the company will penalize him for doing so?

Food service employees don't usually get sick days and sick days aren't required by law. Imagine how many people they infect.

It's not right right to put that responsibility on individual employees.

It's the employer's responsibility to maximize productivity across their work force. If they want to reduce infection to maximize productivity then it's their responsibility to make sure employees have enough sick time. If management doesn't care enough to have a reasonable policy, why should individual employees care about overall productivity?

>Please stay home if you're sick. The productivity loss due to you not coming in < the productivity loss due to you coming in and infecting your coworkers.

If my being sick is a problem with my employer, I am more than happy to let him reduce the productivity of his employees.