The "Sick Leave" Ambush

Reason #3,628 to not work for someone else:
The "Sick Leave" Ambush

Will someone please explain to me the logic behind "sick leave?" I've found this concept to be a complete trap. Make no bones about it, everybody gets sick. Some get sick more often than others, but we all have those days when we'd rather just stay in bed and feel miserable all by ourselves than come in and LOOK miserable in front of everyone else for 8 hours.

The theory behind sick leave is well enough intentioned. When we're first hired on with a new company, most of us attend some type of orientation where a million different policies and procedures are fired at us. By the time we leave this "orientation" meeting, however, most of us feel much more disoriented than when we went in, despite the HR rep's reassuring, "Don't worry, it's all laid out for you in the handbook!" While drinking from this fire hydrant of information, you might hear them whiz through some policy regarding paid time off. This, for the average working American, is the needle in the haystack. The light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the one piece of this meeting that gives us something to look forward to. Don't kid yourself, you're already looking forward to the next paid holiday, or vacation that you qualify for. After all, not many of us are working just for fun. Ahhh...time off. But I digress...

Let's say, after you've been with a company for a probationary period of 30 days, that every pay period you now accrue 3 hours of "vacation time" and 3 hours "sick time." Now, let's say that you've been working for this company for about 6 months and have never taken a day off. Assuming it were possible, you would now have about 36 hours (nearly 4.5 days) of each. Ever wonder what would happen if you used all your vacation time at once? Probably nothing more than a little extra paperwork to catch up on by the end of your vacation, right? On the flip side, however, what if you were to call in sick every day for a entire work week? What would happen then? Chances are, your boss would start to make negative assumptions about you, don't you think? "He's faking it to make a vacation out of the long weekend!" "He's got interviews with other places on COMPANY time!" "He's milking the company!"

Although it is never said aloud, most people know that "vacation time" can be used without any worry about their reputation. Why is it then that those 3 hours of time, when used as "sick time," will usually negatively affect the way your employers judge you? The only difference between "vacation time” and "sick time", after all, is the amount of time we have to notify our employers that we'll be using it...right? Aren't vacation hours and sick time hours both GIVEN to us to use? Why then, for the love of Pete, should we feel guilty or looked down on when we actually DO use it...even if we use ALL of it?!

Although I've got a great boss now, and this isn't a current issue, in the past I've actually been dangerously close to getting canned just for using the sick time my company has allotted me. This doesn't make any sense to me. If I were to ask my previous boss whether or not the sick time I had acrued was actually mine to use, surely he would say, "yes"...wouldn't he? It's not like I had ever dipped into borrowed time off in order to be out sick.

I suffer from migraine headaches. I generally get a really bad one about once per week, and almost always have about 3 or 4 less severe, but nagging headaches during the rest of the week. Sometimes they're just annoying enough to make me miserable while I'm at work, while other times they're capable of forcing me to stay at home where it's quiet and dark. Someone like me can't just NOT work. I've got to make due with what I've got...

With the last company I worked for, which will go unnamed, this happened a lot. However, because I usually wake up with my headaches, I would pop a pill in the early morning, call in sick, and then lay down to sleep it off. More often than not, I'd feel well enough within a few hours, and be able to make it into work by about 11:00 am or noon. Granted, with a situation like this, the biggest problem is that my employer is expecting me to be at work until he gets my message. With vacation time, it would have been planned in advance. I can understand that. But they did GIVE me those hours to use....didn't they? I mean, they are allowed, right? It doesn’t make much sense to me to give someone "time off" hours (regardless of what you're calling them), and then get disgruntled when you take them up on their offer to actually use them.

Even the actual call-in to the boss is a joke. I've had a boss actually tell me, while briefing me on their call-in-sick protocol, "When you call in, you don't need to try to sound sick. Just say you’re using sick time." I had to laugh at that one. Obviously, that employer was tired of employees faking a desperately frail whimper in order to sound legitimately sick. I'll admit it...I've done it before. I'd venture to say that most of us in the working class have done it at one time or another; You know, when you called in sick, and, at the risk of sounding too healthy to be taken seriously, gave an academy award-winning sick voice performance. Psshhh....we've all done it, dude.

Listen, not much is worse, in my world, than having to call some other human being (who is only my boss because they got there before I did) and inform them that I'm not feeling well. Nothing else makes me feel as inferior and enslaved as having to call-in. Whether I'm truly sick or just want the day off. That, for me, is a great reason to work towards my goal of working for myself.

I've learned
That if you ever feel like you need to take a vacation from your work, you're in the wrong field. Those who truly love what they do, never really work a day in their lives, and subsequently never need (or even want) to take a vacation from it. To them, vacations are just interrupting them from doing what they enjoy.

I'm glad
That the general public has not caught onto the great investing secret of precious metals yet. I've still got some time. Gold and silver are both performing terrifically, and folks are bound to notice it soon. By the time they do catch on, it'll mean it's too late to buy it at a good deal.

I wish
I was able to consistently focus on just ONE of my ideas and get it totally finished. This is my greatest challenge as an aspiring entrepreneur. I can't seem to just put new ideas aside until after I've finished previously conceived ideas. All of them seem viable, and none of them seem unimportant enough to prioritize lower.

I will
Have to push a lot harder if I'm going to finish the Virtual Vault before the baby-boomers retire. They'll start within this year. I think they'll be my target market with all the pensions, investments and assets they'll need to manage during their retirement years.