Reason I am asking for consequences is because I know it is easy to fire people in the US without cause, so it is an open question, but generally referring to expectations rather than the law.
So over here, our employers can’t really do anything about that. We can be home with sickness and after two weeks the government pays for the sick leave. So if the employer has a grocery store, he either needs to call an on-call substitute/other type of substitute, or handle the day with fewer people. And still pay your salary if you are gone for only a short period.
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you ask to stay home and if your boss says no you can get fired. If you stay home either way you won’t get paid unless your job has paid sick leave
>Reason I am asking for consequences is because I know it is easy to fire people in the US without cause
I mean, *technically* it is.
In practice, however, there are (many) reasons for which you *cannot* fire someone. And while 19-year-old Americans on Reddit may tell you otherwise, there are decades’ worth of case law centered around employers who fired someone with “no reason” or “because they didn’t like their tie” or whatever other nonsense to cover for a wrongful termination of employment. Judges and juries see through that shit easily.
You cannot fire someone for getting sick. FMLA outlaws that.
My brother had covid and his boss made him work or lose his job. He went to work and lost his job in about 14 days. His boss/owner died from covid. I wonder where he got it from.
I have a bank of sick days. If I’m sick, I use one. All I have to do is ping my boss with a ‘Sick, no workie today’
Where I worked before I retired I had a certain number of paid leave days each year that encompassed both vacation and sick time. If I was sick, I took a paid leave day. If I wanted to go on vacation, I took a paid leave day. If I had to attend a parent-teacher conference, I took part of a leave day. If someone had used up their leave time got sick, they could take leave without pay, if necessary, or work out an arrangement to make up the time at a later date.
I think it would be highly unusual for a business to fire someone, particularly a good employee, for staying home for a day or two when they were sick. It *could* happen, and it would be legal, but it would also be dumb and a good indication that you wouldn’t want to work for that company anyway.
When I worked at Verizon I had zero sick days, even with 15 years working there. I worked at a call center, so we had to choose our days off the November before that year. You could try to use a vacation for a sick day, but only 2 people were allowed out so it was impossible to get a day off. And they opened when I arrived. So there was no one to call to try to get the day off – you would have to commute to work and call from outside to try to get the day off.
If you were sick you need to apply for FLMA. Otherwise you got written up. One write for being late plus a sickness could mean firing.
We all just went to work (it paid well) no matter how sick we were.
Throwing up in your waste basket wasn’t uncommon. Coming to work after you got injured in a car accident on the way to work was the norm.
Not all places are like this of course, but I missed funerals and came in the day of a miscarriage so I didn’t risk getting fired.
I have never had a problem calling out sick in my 40 years of working. I call say I’m sick and that is pretty much the end of the discussion and I request to use my sick days to get paid. That being said there are a lot of places that do not offer sick pay and many people can’t afford to take even a few days off work.
I’m an educator. I get 10 sick days for the year. If I take more than 2 sick days in a row, I need to come back to work with a doctor’s note.
This school year, I’ve had two eye surgeries and my gallbladder removed. I filed for FMLA with the eye surgeries and then went out on short-term disability for the gallbladder. If you file the right paperwork, there are protections out there for serious health conditions.
It’s way more complex that “you can fired for staying home with a cold.” Federal law is pretty silent on firing people for a short illness. But there are 50 states – each state can have its own laws.
Some states have required sick leave. Some don’t.
A cold is also different from other medical conditions. The family medical leave act (FMLA) protects time off for a serious health condition and the bar for serious health condition is pretty low. Basically missed time of more than 3 days + dr visit + prescription could qualify for FMLA.
Then there’s the American’s with disabilities act (ADA). An absence or absences due to disability could be covered, but a cold wouldn’t qualify.
Then there’s the reality of how it really works. Almost no company is going to fire someone for staying home with a cold unless there’s already a serious attendance issue. Just because a company could legally do something, doesn’t make it common.
If companies routinely fired employees for being out sick, they’d have zero employees and no one one would want to work there.
I’ve been in hr for decades and I’ve never seen someone fired for a cold.
I don’t stay home when I have a cold lol
When I’m sick I take a sick day. There are no limits or consequences. I still get paid. Legally I can get fired pretty easily. I am also the only Engineer at the plant and am the only one capable of doing multiple critical tasks and my company would never fire me because even if they had a replacement it would take them 6 months to learn everything and they would be in a pretty tough spot.
It’s not easy to fire people without cause. Legally companies can do it, but the penalties for doing it make it nearly impossible for companies to justify it. I know people who should be fired but are still around despite being absolutely useless
I work for my state and text my boss that I’m sick and won’t be in. I elected for something called Annual Leave that combines sick time and vacation time so I don’t have to differentiate between the two. If I chose regular leave then I’d have sick time and regular vacation time. I lose hours combining them but you also can’t use official sick time as vacation so I went with Annual.
well we have like 80 hours of Personal Time Off. if you get sick most often needs a doctors note after 3 days.
we also have Leave of absence that is long term problems, this doe not pay you but keeps you on the company payroll for return.
as long as you don’t abuse the system, my HR will let you move vacation time over for something long term if they can. Government is not really involved on what an employer will allow.
My boss has told me if I’m sick stay home been even more strick with that since Covid. I used to get 2 weeks worth of sick days a year. Company went to a new system and now give you PTO based on hours worked which in terms of sick time I get about the same amount. However, they allow for sick time Carry over now. I had accumulated 4 weeks of sick time. Too bad I had to use it within a 3 month period as I had a tooth die on me randomly, a month later got the flu, then about 6 weeks after that I caught Covid.
Depends on the job, company, boss/employee relationship, and state.
I can tell you from the federal perspective, sick leave is accumulated at 4 hours per 2 weeks, for a total of 13 sick days a year. That seems to work well for most people, though some people with young children might have an issue if they’re kids get sick frequently.
Despite what Reddit tells you, getting fired over using a sick day is not a common occurrence, especially in the Federal sector. Because of the way OPM works, they have to be given notice of inappropriate leave use before they are written up, and only after multiple periods of leave abuse will they be fired. The only people this effects are people who “earn and burn” as we call it, and have their leave banks continually at zero.
When I’m sick, I just say that I’m sick and staying home. No one ever asks for details, and I don’t think I would work for the sort of employer who tried to judge whether I am sick enough or tells me I have to work while sick or I’m fired. I am a professional and they trust my judgment, and respect needs to go both ways. I don’t skip work frivolously. I would put the hours on my timecard as sick time.
If I had a longer term serious illness, I would need to go on medical leave, in which case I would get money from a state government program instead of my regular pay for a period of time.
For just a minor cold, though, I would probably work from home, since that’s pretty easy to do in my field most of the time.
My job is so loose, I didn’t clock in for 6 months and all they did was ask if I would ever clock in.
I work at a gas station and have no paid time off ever. I can take any day off I need to for illness so long as I contact people to fill the shift. If I start doing so too often, or have need of more than a day or two I will need to supply a doctors note. Excessive missing of shifts without a doctors note is a fireable offense.
At will employment works both ways. They can end the relationship, and you can leave at any time. There’s no obligation to work through your contract, train a replacement, etc…
Despite what movies and TV show you, few managers are going to walk up to you and say “hey, there’s some clouds in the sky. clear out your desk”. Most large employers are going to go through a process of write ups, counseling, and training prior to termination. This is to make sure the employee has time to correct the behavior, and that it isn’t being done in a discriminatory manner.
The big exception is economic downturns which do allow an employer to lay off people.
In general, temporary few day illness would be handled by company policy.
Extended leave would be handled by company policy, state law, and federal law.
The feds do require 12 weeks of unpaid leave for most large employers, and taking this leave protects your job.
I just got off a 3 week leave. My first week was unpaid (but I used by PTO) but the next two were paid by my company.
For short term illness, my company doesn’t differentiate between sick time and general time off. Which I’m fine with. I’m sure everyone who has “sick days” basically lies to use them by the end of the year.
Depends on the job. When I was at call centers usually it was very hard to get paid time off, I think I used maybe 4 days at one job and 3 at another and I worked at both of those for 18 months each. If I got sick I just called in sick and didn’t get paid. And pre-covid people would just come in sick, I remember coming into work so sick one time that I slept through the 8 hour shift (it was a slow day) and then went home and slept 12 more hours.
I have 28 paid sick days per year and the consequence of staying home with a cold is I don’t get my coworkers sick and hurt business even more. I can call out of work up to 24 hours after my scheduled shift without penalty as per our union contract.
You’re sick, you call out. There’s not consequences. If you’re so sick you’re dealing with something your sick time doesn’t cover you can work with your HR on options. Everybody is entitled to FMLA and I haven’t had an issue getting it.
Ex: I randomly went to the hospital for kidney issues and only had a week and a half left of sick time. So I filed FMLA with HR and I was out of work for 2.5 months recovering. Came back when I could.
This isn’t to say others don’t struggle btw, some horror stories are true… but I don’t know anybody who’s ever got in trouble for being sick.
The US needs a lot of work but it’s not as bad as content creators or commenters make it seem…. We have options.
When I had a W-2 job, we had PTO. It was used for sick/vacation/personal time. We had 28 days per year plus all federal holidays and birthday.
In my career in the corporate world, it’s always been a basic “hey, I need to be out today. I don’t want to infect any coworkers” with a quick response of “ok, feel better soon!”
Days where I was getting more extensive tests done or had a dentist appointment were also classified as sick days. If I was going to be late or leave early for more than 3 hours of work, it’s usually suggested I use the sick day and hang out for the remainder.
If I have to call out I’ll do that. I’m working through a temp agency, and the only times I’ve called out so far were for car trouble. Just twice, once for a full day after I spun out on a snowy road and clipped a utility pole, then for two hours late the next week while I put the car in the shop for a new tire.
The agency and the on-site management like me enough that my initial three-month contract from February 2023 was recently extended to November 2023.
Given OP’s history, this is likely not a conversation worth having.
Well, I work from home, so I’m not really worried about infecting coworkers. I’d only not work if I was too sick to actually be productive, which hasn’t happened yet.
That said, I would just let my leadership know I wasn’t able to work and I would not work. I don’t technically get sick time, just a pool of “paid time off”, though if it’s a very serious illness I do get short-term disability. I think that is 65% of my salary for six weeks? Not sure, exactly.
Europeans think that Americans get fired for everything.
For me personally? I text my boss and say “I’m not feeling well so I won’t be working today” and he sends me a text that says “okay, feel better soon!” and that’s that. Sometimes I take a PTO day, sometimes I just make it up later in the week.
In my personal experience I’ve never even heard of someone getting fired for staying home with a cold, that would be considered wildly foolish on the part of the employer considering how expensive and time-consuming it is to hire/onboard employees.
To be honest I’ve never actually known anyone who got fired except for very good reasons (*they* might not have thought it was a good reason… but then once you uncover the real story you’re like yep you 110% deserved to get fired for that). (Obviously not counting mass layoffs or a company folding as being fired since that’s completely different.) For example, a friend’s sister married a guy who will swear up, down, and sideways that he was “fired for being a coin collector”. The real story is that he was fired for pocketing coins out of the till at his job as a bank teller, on camera, because he thought it didn’t count as stealing money from the register if he wanted to *collect* the coins, not spend them. So just be aware when you see those “fired for totally bullshit reasons!” stories how much unreliable narrators can be a factor. (Obviously some of them are true, otherwise there wouldn’t have to be laws against discrimination etc, but if the story sounds too ridiculous to be true…)
It’s vastly more common for people who are vaguely incompetent and useless but never actually do anything bad enough to draw attention to remain gainfully employed for decades without actually doing anything than for good employees to be randomly fired.
My sick days have no hard numeric limit, based on good faith, though eventually it would transition to short term disability.
But since I WFH, and it’s been that way since before covid, I’d likely still put in some hours if I had a cold. On the other hand, being WFH is probably why I haven’t caught a cold in years.
I get paid a salary whether I work or not, so technically I don’t have sick days. But if I am sick – especially after COVID – I only make a quick phone call.
“I’m not feeling well. I’m gonna try to rest with my humidifier on high. Text me if you need anything.”
Usually someone calls to check in after lunch when they remember I’m not there. The next day, assuming I feel better, I simply make up for what I missed.
For me?
I just put in chat that I’m sick and won’t be online today. Some people respond with some get well messages and/or emojis.
So, almost all states have this thing called At-Will employment.
How each state really enforces/handles this vary somewhat, but it basically boils down to, the employer or employee can terminate their employment at any time, for any reason.
The thing is though, that businesses still need employees to get things done, and there’s enough training and investment into the employee that goes on that unless the employee is causing problems, employers aren’t really going to go around firing people for no reason. Kind of similarly with the employee, they aren’t going to quit for no reason, it’s usually going to be some argument with coworkers/bosses/corporate that eventually pisses them off enough to simply quit.
;;
How calling in sick for *most* companies works…
First is a probationary period as a new hire. This is usually like 3-6 months of time with the company where you’re getting your expected pay rate, but limited access to any benefits (like sick days, vacation days, etc). For a lot of places, that probationary period only gives new hires 1, maybe 2 sick days, it’s not unheard of to have zero sick days also. After probationary period, most places hike that up to 5 or 7 sick days for a full year-worth of time; with them “refreshing” a year after they are used. As in, if I called in sick on May 9th, 2023, I wouldn’t get that sick day back until May 9th, 2024.
Many businesses give exception to some consecutive days and doctors-note proven sickness, where they might roll together 2-5 consecutive days of being sick and absent into 1 “sick day” worth of time, but will usually require a doctor’s note to confirm you were sick, and not just abusing their sick day policy to take time off. As much as it will depend on the state and their own employment laws, it’s going to depend on the business/company and their own sick-day policy.
These sick days are almost always unpaid. You aren’t going to get paid for work you don’t do. Salaried workers are handled differently, though with the same basic idea, not getting paid for days they don’t work.
The general work ethic in the US is that, because the sick days are usually unpaid, for someone to call in, they better be violently ill on their death bed and going to the hospital, before they’ll miss work. COVID has changed *slightly* some of this perception, but it’s still pretty well unchanged aside from “Well, Susan is wearing a mask, I guess either she’s got something or doesn’t want whatever Jared has.”
Another response mentioned FMLA and ADA, though these benefits are much, MUCH more oriented toward serious health issues and chronic conditions, either that you suffer from or a family member in your care suffers from. As in, FMLA would give you some portion of wages for missed work when you need to take your family member in for their dialysis treatment because their kidneys have failed, kind of thing. There’s enough paperwork involved with this that most people who *would* call in sick, over a cold, aren’t going to bother with it – and even if they did, it’s *incredibly* unlikely that they’d qualify for FMLA or ADA benefits to cover wages for missed work over a cold.
If I’m sick, I send my boss am email telling her I’m sick. If I’m out for more than three days, I need a doctor’s note to give to my boss and HR. If I’m sick for a couple of weeks or months, then I will get on short or long term disability.
>I know it is easy to fire people in the US without cause,
You are mistaken, although the exact limits vary by state.
I’ve never, ever heard of someone getting fired for being sick.
Having said that… every employer I’ve had for the last 20 years or so has offered “Personal Time-off” (PTO) which consists of both sick time and vacation time. In other words, there is no sick time… you just have days you can use for time off, no matter the reason.
If you run out of PTO days then you either need to file for Family and Medical Leave ([FMLA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993)) or disability. Albiet, this doesn’t really apply to your question which was about having a cold.
I call in sick and I stay home. There are no consequences.
For me, I may use paid sick leave for illness (including contagious illnesses) or injury, either for myself or in my immediate family. I can also use sick leave for doctor’s appointments. If I am unable to come to work, I am required to notify my supervisor at least 30 minutes before the start of my shift whenever possible. I am also eligible for paid sick leave if something happens to me that would keep me from notifying my supervisor, if I have documentation of the incident (such as if I have to be hospitalized). If I am out for 5 or more consecutive days, I am supposed to provide a release from my doctor saying I am able to return to work.
While employees at my job can be disciplined or fired for using sick leave, that applies more to people with a documented history of abusing their leave. I have a chronic health condition that requires me to use several hours of sick leave every year (spread throughout the year) for screenings, tests, and treatments, and this is in addition to my regular doctor’s appointments. I have never been punished or even questioned about it. I have so much sick leave stored up that it should be obvious to the powers-that-be that I’m not abusing my time.
It varies a lot by job, but my company took away our sick days (which were previously only 5) and converted those into 5 more days of vacation time instead.
I post a message on slack, delegate anything I have scheduled for the day, put a sick day on my time sheet and that’s that. There are no consequences.
I work for a State Agency. If I get a cold (or sick for whatever reason), I stay home for a day, I’m fine. More I am out more than two (2) days consecutively, I require a doctor’s note, two original copies. I’ve been out for nearly 3 weeks for a hernia operation and for having an arthritic knee which made it difficult to walk. My job was never in danger, as I had ample sick leave, and in case of the hernia prior notice so I was able to get things lined up at work. The knee issue, nothing I could do about it. Didn’t have remote capability at the time.
At my employer, you get 1 day of sick leave per month. They accumulate without limit. I can count how many sick days I’ve taken, so currently I have about 7 months of sick leave in my bank.
If I don’t feel well, I only have to call my supervisor and say I’m not feeling so I’m not coming in. Then I get “a point.”
Any days missed related to this illness will count as the same “point”. Calling in sick for any new reason is a new point. If you get 3 points within 90 days, you’re given a warning. If you get another point in the next 60 days, you can be subject to disciplinary action, eventually up to termination.
This system comes from people abusing their sick leave. Yes they don’t want you at work when you’re sick, but when you’re not here, someone else is doing your work. If you’re using sick leave like vacation, you’re dumping your work on other people.
If you’re in a low-wage/low-skill job like fast food or a grocery store clerk, you probably don’t get paid sick leave. If you call in, you don’t get paid, but they’re probably not going to make an issue of it unless it seems to be a habit.
I have unlimited (paid) personal time – to be used for things like that. If I was going to be out for *weeks* or something they’d probably want some documentation. If it was months, obviously that would be going on disability/leave.
But beyond that, unless you’re abusing the hell out of it, no one is going to pay much attention. I don’t know anyone in a white-collar/professional job that worries too much about this sort of thing.
Entry-level service jobs with low pay and high turnover, are a different story.
> I know it is easy to fire people in the US without cause
In a law sense, sure. But skilled workers aren’t interchangeable, legal risks exist, and hiring is hard.
Reality is firing someone has the following results:
– Cost at least 6 months pay/productivity loss, and that’s *if* we manage to find a good replacement candidate quickly and *if* they turn out to be a good employee that learns quickly when hired. It takes a lot of everyone’s time to train people, to learn the systems/processes, and so on.
– Because hiring is hard, risks the new employee turning out to not be so great and then either having to start over or have a worse employee.
– If it seems like an unfair firing, will drastically increase turnover/decrease morale in the rest of the group. It’s also likely to create legal risks (people who feel they were unfairly fired are likely to look for a reason to sue), and to lead to your company getting a worse reputation as a place to work.
Anytime we’ve wanted to get rid of someone for things that weren’t egregious breaches of conduct, it took an absolute mountain of evidence of why they were bad at their job and failing to improve at it to get the ok from HR to fire them. Sometimes *years*.