In this world of Covid, many businesses are changing their views somewhat. In our, for instance, if you call off sick, you are required to call HR to let them decide if the symptoms are potentially Covid related or not. They may keep you from returning for a quarantine period or until you can show a negative test and/or are symptom free for a period of time. That is so that more people don’t get sick and there are more people having to take time off.
But in general, taking Covid out of the equation, there might be companies that start getting a little prickly about taking multiple days off in a row. There are a couple things to consider. You have to look at this from the company’s point of view. First off, they are dealing with a large group of people. In every job I’ve ever had there were people that gamed the system, using sick days as a way to get extra days off or to get out of some particularly onerous job. So the company has to set up rules concerning sick days to help curtail some of that. One example might be asking for a doctor’s note based on the number of days off you are taking or the frequency. That helps to put a pin in someone that is gaming the system.
Another thing to consider is that the company has a duty to ensure their business runs smoothly and safely. From a smoothly perspective, every time someone calls off, that means someone else is having to pick up the slack. It costs the company in several ways: the person doing the extra work can get burned out from having to work extra. And the company typically has to pay overtime to accomplish the job that would have been done for straight time had the sick person been there. So extra days off means more intrusion into other worker’s lives and extra cost to the company. From the Safely perspective, Frequent time off for being “sick” is one of the signs that someone has a substance abuse problem. Every company I have worked for has worried about this. If someone has a substance abuse problem exists, it could result in a work place accident hurting that person or others. So the company has to be aware of potentials for this.
At the last company I worked for, when I first started as a supervisor, one of the things I did early on was to review the files for all the employees that reported to me. One of the things I did was to look at attendance. I looked at the past 6 months. One employee had no sick days, another had 1, another had 1….then I came to an employee that had 20. And every sick day coincided (prior to or immediately after) a weekend or a vacation. Unfortunately, the company had the view that sick days were a benefit and I wasn’t allowed to question how they used their benefits. As a result I saw several employees in our section that literally were only working 3 out of 5 days a week on a regular basis.
So while you might be a perfectly honest person that does not want to get other sick, remember that there are many people out there that are not like that.