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Comment by mughinn | Hacker News Reader

I think it's good the reward is small. Otherwise it would "force" employees to not call sick days to get the big reward

This way it's just a small thing to recognize someone who (hopefully) didn't get sick in any of the days thay had to work

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I don't see the point of any award for people who never call in sick as it encourages people to come in sick and spread around whatever they have, even if the award is only symbolic.

Also, not getting sick is not a personal achievement that's up to you, unless you live like Bubble Boy[1], it can happen to anyone even if you're usually healthy as a horse and take care of yourself. Accidents can happen if you leave the house and viruses spread around if you socialize a lot.

It also fosters a culture where you get looked down if you have more sick days than others, as if it's a competition, even in places where sick leave is legal.

I've lost track of how many times I got sick from someone form the office who came in coughing and sneezing, even though we live in Europe where you can take sick leave without any repercussions, but NO, they felt that their work for the company was more important than their health or the health of their colleagues and didn't want to be looked down as a weakling who takes sick leave every time they get the sniffles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Boy_(film)

The irony is that amongst food service workers, calling in sick is judged quite heavily. One or two people not showing up to a shift can completely screw up a restaurant's ability to deliver for the night. It doesn't help that calling in sick is the only surefire way to get a day off when you need one, so it's easy to assume that people are lying when they say they're too sick to work.

However, it's also pretty common for people to come to work sick, as these are jobs that don't pay you on the days you don't work, regardless of the reason. If you have a choice between taking a Sudafed and powering through, or not paying your rent that month, which are you going to choose?

The difference between how people are treated in the food service industry and tech is so stuck. I worked in the former for a decade and it eroded my self-worth. Nobody in tech would stay in a place that treated employees 1/10 as badly, not for a day.

Even worse in food service, because coming in sick doesn't only get your coworkers sick. It also gets your customers sick. And this guy works in an international airport, so those customers are then spreading that illness everywhere in the world.

I think you meant "management understaffing a restaurant can completely screw up a restaurant's ability to deliver for the night."

Sounds like a good case for nation-wide unionization of service workers.

Have fun with that. There is an army of teenagers who would be more than glad to pick up the empty positions.

No there isn't. Most teenagers don't want fast food jobs or any other job that won't help them get into college, and most of those who do already have one.

Do you have stats on that or something? When I was a teenager (late 2000s) you definitely wanted a “good on college application job”, but you probably didn’t get it. At that point you wanted a “walking around money” job like MacDonallds, but you didn’t get that either because adults were taking all the teen summer jobs since things were so tight.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/yout...

Did something change in the last decade where teenagers suddenly stopped liking having money?

Yes. It's been a gradual change, but it's become really evident over the last decade. It's not that they don't want money, but extra-curriculars have a lot more importance on college applications, and those prevent part time jobs.

Also, multi-player video games are occupying kids free time, and don't require the folding money that previous hobbies like cars did.

Yes. Places stopped paying reasonable wages as they were too busy funneling it to CXO's/shareholders while completely losing track of the plot that there is no guarantee laborers are going to back what you're doing. Frankly, I like the change.

Cheaper entertainment.

Unionization is orthogonal to labor oversupply. In fact it's who unions should be for.

Kids are no more deserving of abuse than grownups.

How many teenagers can staff a Burger King at noon on a Wednesday?

Will those teenagers hate to be paid better?

Do those restaurants know that they can just not open on a given day for technical reasons if someone becomes sick and no replacement is available?

In some cases it probably comes down to paying rent but in others probably just the owners want to squeeze out more cash by never letting the property not make money

>Do those restaurants know that they can just not open on a given day for technical reasons if someone becomes sick and no replacement is available?

Won't someone please think of the owners' profits? /s

The owner of the restaurant is the one who would make that decision. And that would be them deciding not to make money, so fat chance.

But even ignoring the owner, not opening means that everybody else who works in the restaurant also doesn't get paid. If prep for the shift has started before the person called out, what do you do with perishable product?

On top of that, closing for a night means unexpectedly having to cancel reservations which comes with a reputation hit. Sorry to cancel your anniversary plans with 45 minutes notice!

Things like this shouldn't be incentivized at all.

Imagine police giving reward for not reporting crimes or HR giving rewards for not reporting sexual harassments.

> Otherwise it would "force" employees to not call sick days to get the big reward

they are already forced to not call in sick by the fact they don't get paid sick leave

i can't believe you're sincerely making this argument i'm actually disturbed you exist. i hope you are trolling

There's no need to be so terribly offended at just a suggestion with a reasonable foundation. You know that if BK gave 50% of whatever they saved from no sick days then we'd have an npr article about how exploitative it is to incentivize these people to come into work and you'd be here severely disturbed in any event.

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