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Comment by genocidicbunny | Hacker News Reader

My PCP hated these sorts of policies, so if you needed a 'doctors note' from him, he would put down whatever you wanted. No work for a week and then no heavy lifting for a month after? Sure. Need to sleep in and start work no earlier than 11am? Sure! He'd write these out as a prescription too, which was helpful in shutting up HR after.

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I’ve seen the same. That’s the way to do it, IMO. Employer doesn’t trust employees to use sick leave appropriately, they should pay the price.

Or we could just legislate some sanity. 10 days sick and 15 days holiday minimum nationally. But that would make too much sense.

Sick days shouldn't be countable except in extreme cases. If someone is unfortunate enough to get something that requires extended time off work, losing income shouldn't be a worry.

What is needed is a national insurance scheme that pays your salary when sick beyond some minimum that your employer has to cover.

Totally agree. I was just thinking baby steps towards something reasonable.

How could it possibly be reasonable?

How could codified leave be reasonable? I’m not sure what you’re asking?

I think if you are out 2 weeks, requiring some official documentation is reasonable.

I think in most circumstances, 2 weeks illness would qualify as some level of 'extreme' -- that's rarely something not serious. So you and the parent are probably in agreement.

"The Crud", which is a southern US ailment that lasts weeks, it makes you cough and snotty, and generally lethargic. It isn't awful, but when you feel it coming on you're in for at least 2-3 weeks. It isn't serious, at all. It's just similar to or a cold that generally presents in the warm months.

Some jobs coughing and whatnot is frowned upon.

I live in the northern part of the US and it’s not uncommon for people to refer to common viral infections as crud or “feeling cruddy” regardless of what time of year it occurs. But, it’s not taken to mean anything more than another way of saying you have a cold. Though I kind of understand because the combination of hot weather and cold symptoms just makes it feel worse.

Lived in the south my whole life and never heard of this once

I've been informed that it's possible it's a Louisiana (or thereabouts) thing. And it may be the common cold (whatever that means), but the cough lasts multiple weeks, and there's no medicine for it except guaifenesin and dextromethorphan. I've lived in the PNW, i was raised in LA County, CA, and i've spent a decade and a half in the US South.

I bet there's things you've heard of in the south that i've never heard of, too.

Totally fair, I've mostly lived in one part of the south so it's likely regional.

Two weeks is extreme? Maybe if you're a healthy 30 year old without any chronic illness - and even then bone breaks can take more than a month before you can get the cast off.

I'd guess for an average person aged 40 to 60, two consecutive weeks off would be a one in maybe five years kind of event. Any minor surgery, mental health, cancer treatment, heart issue or significant infection like shingles, pneumonia, mono, hep could easily lead to two weeks off.

Two weeks definitely isn't an every year thing for most people but it's certainly not extreme.

2 weeks straight? Sure.

2 weeks total over a year? Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I’ve never actually used that much sick leave myself, but I have it if I need it. Doesn’t seem crazy to me that everybody have the same benefit (or, we could just be reasonable and not actually have sick leave and just let people stay home).

In France, the social security pays a part of your salary during the leave only if it is more than 3 days

Doesn’t FMLA come into play during those circumstances?

I had an extended leave and there was no issue once my manager worked with me to do the FMLA documentation.

FMLA isn't required to be paid. That depends on what state you live in.

Private insurance for that is relatively cheap.

(Devil's advocate) And employers will be happy to cover it for their employees, especially since they'll be paying them 10-20% less to account for their increased costs :)

If they could get away with paying 10-20% less, don't you think they'd do it now in a heartbeat?

I have seen companies, that when confronted by this, that will send the employee to a physician vetted by the company to confirm the need for accommodation.

In the end it isn’t about the loss of money, it’s the loss of power. An agreeable doctor giving you reasonable time off to mend feels like letting employees claw back power. It’s the same with work from home policies, they’re not interested in performance, it’s control.

It’s really not. It’s money. A lost employee that you still have to pay for is a huge expense.

Most companies costs are dominated by labor costs so anything that could be gamed there that would drive up that cost is scrutinized significantly.

So? Aren't these companies "good at business"? They should be able to plan around it - if they are in fact good at business.

Many of these fast food places have executives whos monthly compensation exceeds the YEARLY compensation of these front-line employees. Its for sure not a money problem - it's an allocation problem.

Being good at business means that they know where they can easily push and get away with it to get more money in the long run. Making it unreasonable hard to take time off will end up in fewer time off over time, and it only takes a couple words from management.

Being good at business means ensuring you’re not being ripped off on labor costs. We’ve come full circle.

There are like thousands of times as many front line employees as executives. Whether or not it’s right for executives to make so much, it’s easy to see why a business would be much more worried about cost increases for a role with much higher scale.

The executives are good at business so they virtually exclusively license franchises to independent owner-operators who are on the hook to meet franchise standards, pay licensing fees, pay the actual employees, and still turn a profit.

My former place required (and i heard still requires) notes from day one. Guess what? All the time, people went on sick leave at least for a week - gotta pay off the effort to get a note, right? (This was before telemed though. Loved when it became available: Just answer a few questions via forms, submit - get the PDF one hour later. Beats having to take public transport to your GP who is located 30-40min away, while feeling miserable and unfit for driving yourself)

Current place wears their reasonable pants, and this is basically standard procedure: just give a quick info if you can't work today and maybe tomorrow; notes required from day three.

Remember what is discussed in this thread. I would assume that food poisoning incidents are on another level from a few lost work hours.

But in a sense I'm sure you're right. What they fear is that if they lose control employees will go berserk with their newfound power and cost them a fortune in labour costs. It's just not a rational trade-off calculation, because then things like food poisoning and contagion would weigh much heavier than they do. Rather it's a game consideration that we mustn't appear weak here. They fear things that could be gamed because it's that sort of game to them already.

That often opens up a lot of other cans of worms for the company to deal with. I've seen and heard of it happening for some cases of workers comp or extended illnesses, but those were cases where the company was potentially on the hook for a lot of money. The pragmatic companies will usually just quietly settle the smaller claims because it's cheaper than fighting them.

My dad went through this shit at the end of his working life. Physician in the plant, guy had been kicked out of his family practice (his father started the place!) because he was a liability. His go to answer to these guys on the factory floor was, "You're not getting any younger!" He misdiagnosed his wife's breath cancer. All sorts of horrific stuff, considering he was a GP for 40+ years.

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