Calling in sick

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Anyone else terrified of calling in sick? I am afraid my boss will think I'm lying. I called in sick today, because my throat feels awful, and I'm gonna see if i can get into the doctors office. I probably could have gone to work if I tried REALLY hard. I just feel so guilty .

Also when I'm sick I sound almost the same as I do when I speak normally, so it makes it harder for people to believe I'm sick.

The one time I took off time off of work because of illness, my boss REQUESTED me to. I could not see any way of NOT coming in to work, and just didn't ask.

My office says that I'm allowed 7 sick days a year.


I'm sick much more often than that (entirely due to stress, caused by the job itself/work environment and my sleeping problems (primarily caused by the sleeping environment due to insane housing costs)), so I just call in if I'm too sick to physically sit at the desk all day.

That does mean that I'll go into the office when I'm too mentally out of it to work that day. On days like that, I just struggle to get at least something to show for it, to put on the daily status reports.


It really, really sucks, but I'm determined to keep from getting fired long enough to find a new job.

i don't call in sick unless it's absolutely nessecary.

working with a sore throat won't kill me, i could do it. unless i'm thriving in deep pain, i'll probably go to work..

I go to work sick. I have worked with a cold, and a sore throat.

I only call in sick if I have a a fever, have a sinus infection, if I am in the hospital. It has to be something serious for me to call in sick.

ive pulled a sickie before, i had a christening to go to and it was almost as if they would let me have the time off to go to it.
but i have called in genuinely sick before, i had flu and the runs, nice...

For me to call in sick I pretty much have to be bleeding from the ears.

But it's an interesting conundrum:

I don't get insurance at my workplace.
But to call in sick they usually require a doctor's note to excuse the absence.

I used to be like that, until one day I had a heavy cold and went into work. 10 minutes later I was on the bus home again - my boss and colleagues said they didn't want my cold (as it happened, they got it!). Where my wife works, you can ring in sick, and the company policy is that your boss doesn't need to know what's wrong with you. She still puts on the pathetic, croacky sick voice when she rings in, though!

That happened to me except almost four hours later, I left work because I realized I couldn't work with a really bad headache and stinging eyes. I went home and slept and had to call in sick the next day because I still had that bad headache. But the next day I went to work because I felt better and my headache didn't come back after being up for an hour.


Like I say, it has to be something serious for me to call in sick that would be preventing me from working.

I've went home precisely once due to illness/injury. It was the first day I got my scooter, and on the test drive, I had a mild accident. I didn't put on the brakes when taking a corner going down hill, and due to the momentum and sudden change in direction, I wiped out on my scooter in the middle of the street. Unbeknownst to myself, right in front of a police vehicle. I got back on the scooter, and went home. The police officer pulled along side, and asked me if I was OK. Only mildly aching at that point, I told him I was and continued on home. Either the police officer knew where I lived, or it was just a strange coincidence, because he continued on, but only to the next parking lot, (which just so happened to be the gas station across the street from where I live. I pulled up to my apartment, and went in. The pain gradually got to the point that I couldn't use my right arm at all. I popped 16 aspirin that night, just to be able to somewhat use my arm. I went to bed, and hoped that I would be feeling better in the morning. Well, I wasn't any better.

When I woke up, I couldn't use my right arm at all, (not even to start my car). I went to work anyhow. When started the shift and attempted to empty my trash can for the first time, my supervisor saw me struggling with the trash can, and asked me why I couldn't lift it. I told him about my accident, and he said I could go home if I felt I needed to. I told him that I'll stay as long as I can. The only thing I could do that didn't cause an inordinate amount of pain was to pick up cigarette butts. Around 1100, even doing that started to hurt to the point where aspirin wasn't keeping up. I called my supervisor with my cell, and told him that I couldn't work anymore, as I could barely even pick up cigarette butts. I left work at 1125, and went to the doctor. They gave me an X-ray, and told me that I didn't break any bones, but I may have an AD separation and it may require surgery to fix. They gave me 20 pills of 500mg naproxen, and told me to take 2 per day for 10 days. I was also provided an arm sling, but I didn't use the sling because it interfered with my ability to work.

I went back to work the next day, even though I probably shouldn't have. The pain was knocked down to a manageable level by the naproxen, but by the 10th day, I was out of pills, so I used aspirin to keep the pain manageable. It was approximately 3 weeks before the pain subsided, and then 6 weeks later, I threw it out again by hefting a TV into the dumpster. (moved my arm at the wrong angle). I couldn't help but screaming bloody murder due to the severe stabbing pain that just happened. I cussed some, and then had a cigarette to calm down. I walked back to F102 and opened the medicine cabinet to get the pain pills that were in there. I took 4 of them, and went back to work. That time, the pain only lasted for a week, but I continued on working anyhow.

That was the only time I've left my job due to an ailment.

Not terrified, just a really bad judge of how sick I am and have a tendency not to call in (and like you, I have to tell people if I am not feeling well most of the time, I just don't show it most of the time). Having said that, I have been sent home twice because it was obvious to other people that I was having trouble functioning - once I had such a bad stomach ache that I could either stand or be in the supine position - there was no bending, it hurt too much, so sitting in an office chair was too much (although I was giving it a try anyway before they chased me out). The second time was when I came back from the dentist's office - the hygienist was a graduate from the Marquis De Sade school of dentistry, I am sure (she was rough, mean and didn't seem to care that she was hurting me and almost drowning me occasionally) , and I left feeling dizzy and nauseated because she had managed to aggravate my TMJ disorder as well. I couldn't concentrate on what I was doing once I got to work, because I was concentrating on keeping down what little lunch I did make myself eat, and finally the office manager told me I was going home.

The last time I stayed home was when I had a severe case of laryngitis from a viral flu this spring. I started to cough on a Thursday, felt weak and tired on the Friday and developed a fever, and by Saturday morning I knew Monday morning was a no-go. When I did go into work the following Tuesday, I went over to the general practitioners office next door first thing to get checked out as a patient just to make sure that the laryngitis wasn't more serious than I thought it was (rare for me to go to a doctor when I am sick - as mentioned, I am a poor judge of my own illness). By Wednesday I had lost my voice completely, and one of my bosses (a doctor) was ready to put me in the ICU if I "said" (actually, wrote - I was reduced to using sticky notes and hand gestures to communicate by then) the wrong symptom as he was giving me an impromptu examination (as it was, he hovered at my desk a lot that week, just in case I was underreporting symptoms). I couldn't figure out what the big problem was, then I did some surfing and found out WHY he was concerned - he was thinking epiglottitis, which can be fatal if left untreated (and since I had totally lost my voice, he was worried that it was more than I was thinking it was). I didn't get my voice back completely for weeks - I have to say, that was one of the few sick days I took that I felt was really justified ... !

My rule is, if I wake up in the morning feeling unwell with typical cold/flu symptoms, and I am dreading walking all the way to the bathroom, I probably should stay home. If I think I can make the 2 km walk to work, then I am well enough to work. I also have to think about our patients, if I go in sick, I can cause a lot of damage to our more elderly COPD/asthma patients by passing on a cold or flu. Its nice now that I can sort of afford to stay home for a sick day (as we get 6 complete days only a year - 1/2 a paid sick day per month - , so if I need an extra past the 6, I don't get paid for it), but there were times in the past when I went in because it was financially a bad move not to go in for me.

I can understand the fear, though - we did have one woman who was abusing those sick days by using them as weekend extenders. She was being obvious about it, though, and actually got caught being "not sick" on a sick day at the mall by an office manager. She has even come in to the office to tell us she only came in to tell us she wasn't coming in that day (?) if that makes sense Even last week when I had been caught up and was deplete of extra things to do, she suggested I call in "sick" the next day - she got a lecture from me about how wrong I thought that was. Those types tend to make it harder for the rest of us to be legitimately sick and take a day to recuperate.

I know some bosses can be sticky about sick days anyway, especially if there have been a lot of doctors appointments for a chronic condition, sigh. However, if you can't function, and they know that you have to be pretty darn sick NOT to come in and are not the type to abuse the system, then they will believe you.