7 ms·

> It was a big relief that I could take a sick child with me to work (of course only when the illness was not serious). Please don't bring a sick person into t

by ng12 10y ago

> It was a big relief that I could take a sick child with me to work (of course only when the illness was not serious). Please don't bring a sick person into the office for any reason. This is why work-from-home policies are so important.

mason240 10y ago
My daycare has a policy where kids have to go home if their temps are over a certain number, and can't come back for 24 hours, even if they are not sick. I have to take a handful of days off a year to stay home with a kid who isn't sick. You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. Both of our kids went to daycare at about 6 months, both were frequently sick for that first month with things there were exposed to for the first time.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  This just isn't true. Kids' developing immune systems enable them to pick up things that we would be immune to, then cultivate those things until they reach a basically a weaponized status. Kids are all kinds of infectious to adults.
  - x0x0 10y ago
    I've never in my adult life been sick so frequently as when I shared an office with a parent who'd moved his young school age kids from the east coast to the west. I really liked him, but the experience was awful. Every 8 weeks I was sick.
- maccard 10y ago
  > You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. And they also spread things that many adults (and children) are severely impaired by. A "mild" chest infection to you or your child is a cough, to me it's a week in bed and antibiotics.
- jedberg 10y ago
  As a person with a child and many small nieces and nephews, and multiple teachers in the family, I will tell you that you're wrong. The disease they bring home may be something you were exposed to but it will ~~mutate~~ grow stronger in the child as the weak ones are killed off and infect you anyway. And there is a reason you can't come back for 24 hours. Many diseases are still contagious after your symptoms have cleared. If you throw up and feel better, it doesn't mean the disease is now gone. So please respect the science and herd mentality and keep sick kids away from kids and adults for at least 24 hours after symptoms subside, or at least make sure the other adults are explicitly ok with you being around them.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    >The disease they bring home may be something you were exposed to but it will mutate in the child and infect you anyway. Not true, viruses do not mutate at such a rapid pace. If they did vaccines would be entirely ineffective. >And there is a reason you can't come back for 24 hours. Many diseases are still contagious after your symptoms have cleared. If you throw up and feel better, it doesn't mean the disease is now gone. With influenza and the common cold children are no longer contagious after the symptoms have faded. Anything else that is infectious should be treated by a doctor and you should ask him. "How long can I spread it? About a week. You’re contagious from 1 day before you have any symptoms. You stay that way for 5 to 7 days after you start feeling sick. Kids may be able to spread the virus for even longer, until all of their symptoms fade." http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/how-long-flu-contagious http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/how-long-flu-contagious
    - jedberg 10y ago
      Look at the sentence you posted. You are contagious for one day before you have symptoms and then you are contagious until all the symptoms go away. Usually the sick day that you stay at home for is the second day of seven. So really, you should stay out for the week. But 24 hours is a nice compromise. Also, how do you know they influenza and not something else? And as to mutation, you're right, they don't actually mutate. But what happens is the weaker bacteria/virus will not affect you but will affect your child. After a while, the child starts to kill off the weaker ones and then the concentration of strong ones increase, and those are the ones that neither you nor your child can fight, and that's when adults get sick too. Most laymen call that mutation which isn't correct, but it's still correct to say that the bacteria/virus that are stronger increase their concentration in the child until it is potent enough to infect the adult too.
- mikestew 10y ago
  You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. Which would explain why every parent I know is sick certainly more often than my wife and I are with no kids, and usually sick every time the kids drag something home.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    This doesn't sound like my experience. New parents maybe, but with 3 kids, I have taken literally 0 sick days in the past year (I did WFH 1-2 days last year where I wasn't sure but turned out I could even workout on those days). Back when we had a single kid we did get sick more FWIW.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Seriously. Ask any elementary school teacher you know how often they and their families get sick - it might well be an order of magnitude more than other people. It's pretty possible to avoid (contagious) illness for a year at a time if you don't have kids and don't spend time at schools/campuses/conventions. Change one of those things and you'll be sick in a month.
  - mason240 10y ago
    Yes, I get sick more often now that I have kids (once or twice a year instead of none) - but they still get sick 10 times more than I do.
- r00fus 10y ago
  This is why we send our kids to a home daycare (mixed with a couple days a week at a more formal french immersion preschool). Our home daycare teacher is fine if they've got a bit of a temp or sniffles, and I think my kids are stronger for it (other kids there get sick too, but we haven't had many bigtime infections passed around).
- DanBC 10y ago
  > You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. ...but also things that could kill my elderly parent.
- balls187 10y ago
  oh man, my little kid is a biological terror. He got my parents sick. then He got my wife sick. then He got me sick. then He got the nanny sick. It's going to be a long 20+ years.
- satysin 10y ago
  When you employee others you do so on the understanding that if they have kids then they are going to take a bit more "sick" leave than someone without a kid. That is just life. Actually saying "if they have kids" isn't actually correct, it is if they have any dependants. Almost everyone has dependants at some point in their lives and you have to accept that.
mikestew 10y ago
of course only when the illness was not serious Yeah, it's "just a cold", not tuberculosis. Stay home, that's why you have sick days.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  If you can work at work with a sick child, you can work at home with a sick child. (For the record, I've had to stay at home with my sub-year-old kid for several days, and I cannot work from home even if she's well. I can't imagine getting anything done with her at the office, either.)
  - jon-wood 10y ago
    Exactly. Anyone suggesting you can work while looking after a small child has clearly never looked after a small child. I can barely make an occasional cup of tea and put some laundry on when looking after our toddler, the thought of doing productive work is hilarious!
- LVB 10y ago
  Having worked both at places with "sick days" (tracked or not), and lumped-all-together PTO policies, I loathe PTO arrangements. Extremely ill people dragging themselves into work because they have no PTO or feel the reasonable need to preserve it... It places an unfortunate choice on the employee.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    I loathe PTO arrangements. Oh, thanks for picking that scab. Worked at a place with the "all-in-one-bucket" PTO. Hated it for the exact reason you outline. I rarely get sick (about once a year), and it seemed like I was sick on a monthly basis working there.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      Wait a minute: If you have 10 sick days, then (in theory) you can only take them if you're sick. If you have 10 PTO days, you can take them for any reason, including if you're sick. Isn't that more flexible? EDIT: Ahh, good point, thanks repliers! I forgot the case where PTO comes out of your vacation days (which I have been subject to in several jobs). Yea, those jobs suck.
karmel 10y ago
As a mother with children, the idea of a sick room is terrifying. It's bad enough to bring a sick kid (or even post-sick kid) into an office full of otherwise healthy people, but the idea of my kid then being incubated in a room with everyone else's sick-kid germs, touching things and sleeping in the same sleeping bag... ick. As a manager, my policy is that the worse thing you can do is infect us all. If you are sick, please, quarantine yourself! Work from home. You will not be dinged for working at home, but if I end up sick, I will be grumpy indeed ;)
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  This was my first thought also. Dealing with illness is always hard, but the idea of having a room full of hard-to-sanitize objects like sleeping bags, specifically for sick people, is downright alarming. Daycares, schools, and hospitals are already excellent at spreading illness. Setting aside a non-sanitized room for sick kids (or adults) seems like a way to ensure that everyone leaves sicker than they came in.
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    You guys are looking at it all wrong. A sick kid room is like a little workout gym for their immune systems. EDIT: while this is somewhat true, I was trying to make a joke
    - ch4s3 10y ago
      And like lifting weights, if you go too hard too fast you'll get yourself into trouble. Except lifting doesn't make your neighbors' muscles sore.
    - Buttons840 10y ago
      Yeah. It's like a trading card game except the cards automatically copy themselves and make people miserable. "I'll give you my strain of the cold if you give me your strain of the flu." It seems people think that if you're already sick you can't get another illness added on top.
satysin 10y ago
If someone I work with brings their sick kid to work then I am working from home. Honestly wtf kind of idiot thinks bringing a sick person into an office is a good idea??
- pklausler 10y ago
  One person's toxic biological WMD is another person's precious unique snowflake.
jacobr 10y ago
How about a dont-work-when-your-child-is-sick policy.
glandium 10y ago
I'd probably go a step further. If you have a sick child with an infectious disease, and even if you have arrangements that would allow you to come to work, don't come to work. Work from home. Why? Because you can be an asymptomatic carrier. 15 years ago, I caught chicken pox thanks to someone whose kid had it coming to work. (and chicken pox is more severe and dangerous in adults... it was a "fun" week)

by ng12 10y ago

mason240 10y ago

My daycare has a policy where kids have to go home if their temps are over a certain number, and can't come back for 24 hours, even if they are not sick. I have to take a handful of days off a year to stay home with a kid who isn't sick. You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. Both of our kids went to daycare at about 6 months, both were frequently sick for that first month with things there were exposed to for the first time.

dbg31415 10y ago
This just isn't true. Kids' developing immune systems enable them to pick up things that we would be immune to, then cultivate those things until they reach a basically a weaponized status. Kids are all kinds of infectious to adults.
- x0x0 10y ago
  I've never in my adult life been sick so frequently as when I shared an office with a parent who'd moved his young school age kids from the east coast to the west. I really liked him, but the experience was awful. Every 8 weeks I was sick.
maccard 10y ago
> You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. And they also spread things that many adults (and children) are severely impaired by. A "mild" chest infection to you or your child is a cough, to me it's a week in bed and antibiotics.
jedberg 10y ago
As a person with a child and many small nieces and nephews, and multiple teachers in the family, I will tell you that you're wrong. The disease they bring home may be something you were exposed to but it will ~~mutate~~ grow stronger in the child as the weak ones are killed off and infect you anyway. And there is a reason you can't come back for 24 hours. Many diseases are still contagious after your symptoms have cleared. If you throw up and feel better, it doesn't mean the disease is now gone. So please respect the science and herd mentality and keep sick kids away from kids and adults for at least 24 hours after symptoms subside, or at least make sure the other adults are explicitly ok with you being around them.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  >The disease they bring home may be something you were exposed to but it will mutate in the child and infect you anyway. Not true, viruses do not mutate at such a rapid pace. If they did vaccines would be entirely ineffective. >And there is a reason you can't come back for 24 hours. Many diseases are still contagious after your symptoms have cleared. If you throw up and feel better, it doesn't mean the disease is now gone. With influenza and the common cold children are no longer contagious after the symptoms have faded. Anything else that is infectious should be treated by a doctor and you should ask him. "How long can I spread it? About a week. You’re contagious from 1 day before you have any symptoms. You stay that way for 5 to 7 days after you start feeling sick. Kids may be able to spread the virus for even longer, until all of their symptoms fade." http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/how-long-flu-contagious http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/how-long-flu-contagious
  - jedberg 10y ago
    Look at the sentence you posted. You are contagious for one day before you have symptoms and then you are contagious until all the symptoms go away. Usually the sick day that you stay at home for is the second day of seven. So really, you should stay out for the week. But 24 hours is a nice compromise. Also, how do you know they influenza and not something else? And as to mutation, you're right, they don't actually mutate. But what happens is the weaker bacteria/virus will not affect you but will affect your child. After a while, the child starts to kill off the weaker ones and then the concentration of strong ones increase, and those are the ones that neither you nor your child can fight, and that's when adults get sick too. Most laymen call that mutation which isn't correct, but it's still correct to say that the bacteria/virus that are stronger increase their concentration in the child until it is potent enough to infect the adult too.
mikestew 10y ago
You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. Which would explain why every parent I know is sick certainly more often than my wife and I are with no kids, and usually sick every time the kids drag something home.
- r00fus 10y ago
  This doesn't sound like my experience. New parents maybe, but with 3 kids, I have taken literally 0 sick days in the past year (I did WFH 1-2 days last year where I wasn't sure but turned out I could even workout on those days). Back when we had a single kid we did get sick more FWIW.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Seriously. Ask any elementary school teacher you know how often they and their families get sick - it might well be an order of magnitude more than other people. It's pretty possible to avoid (contagious) illness for a year at a time if you don't have kids and don't spend time at schools/campuses/conventions. Change one of those things and you'll be sick in a month.
- mason240 10y ago
  Yes, I get sick more often now that I have kids (once or twice a year instead of none) - but they still get sick 10 times more than I do.
r00fus 10y ago
This is why we send our kids to a home daycare (mixed with a couple days a week at a more formal french immersion preschool). Our home daycare teacher is fine if they've got a bit of a temp or sniffles, and I think my kids are stronger for it (other kids there get sick too, but we haven't had many bigtime infections passed around).
DanBC 10y ago
> You also have to remember that little kids frequently get sick from things adults are already immune to. ...but also things that could kill my elderly parent.
balls187 10y ago
oh man, my little kid is a biological terror. He got my parents sick. then He got my wife sick. then He got me sick. then He got the nanny sick. It's going to be a long 20+ years.
satysin 10y ago
When you employee others you do so on the understanding that if they have kids then they are going to take a bit more "sick" leave than someone without a kid. That is just life. Actually saying "if they have kids" isn't actually correct, it is if they have any dependants. Almost everyone has dependants at some point in their lives and you have to accept that.

mikestew 10y ago

of course only when the illness was not serious Yeah, it's "just a cold", not tuberculosis. Stay home, that's why you have sick days.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
If you can work at work with a sick child, you can work at home with a sick child. (For the record, I've had to stay at home with my sub-year-old kid for several days, and I cannot work from home even if she's well. I can't imagine getting anything done with her at the office, either.)
- jon-wood 10y ago
  Exactly. Anyone suggesting you can work while looking after a small child has clearly never looked after a small child. I can barely make an occasional cup of tea and put some laundry on when looking after our toddler, the thought of doing productive work is hilarious!
LVB 10y ago
Having worked both at places with "sick days" (tracked or not), and lumped-all-together PTO policies, I loathe PTO arrangements. Extremely ill people dragging themselves into work because they have no PTO or feel the reasonable need to preserve it... It places an unfortunate choice on the employee.
- mikestew 10y ago
  I loathe PTO arrangements. Oh, thanks for picking that scab. Worked at a place with the "all-in-one-bucket" PTO. Hated it for the exact reason you outline. I rarely get sick (about once a year), and it seemed like I was sick on a monthly basis working there.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Wait a minute: If you have 10 sick days, then (in theory) you can only take them if you're sick. If you have 10 PTO days, you can take them for any reason, including if you're sick. Isn't that more flexible? EDIT: Ahh, good point, thanks repliers! I forgot the case where PTO comes out of your vacation days (which I have been subject to in several jobs). Yea, those jobs suck.

karmel 10y ago

As a mother with children, the idea of a sick room is terrifying. It's bad enough to bring a sick kid (or even post-sick kid) into an office full of otherwise healthy people, but the idea of my kid then being incubated in a room with everyone else's sick-kid germs, touching things and sleeping in the same sleeping bag... ick. As a manager, my policy is that the worse thing you can do is infect us all. If you are sick, please, quarantine yourself! Work from home. You will not be dinged for working at home, but if I end up sick, I will be grumpy indeed ;)

Bartweiss 10y ago
This was my first thought also. Dealing with illness is always hard, but the idea of having a room full of hard-to-sanitize objects like sleeping bags, specifically for sick people, is downright alarming. Daycares, schools, and hospitals are already excellent at spreading illness. Setting aside a non-sanitized room for sick kids (or adults) seems like a way to ensure that everyone leaves sicker than they came in.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  You guys are looking at it all wrong. A sick kid room is like a little workout gym for their immune systems. EDIT: while this is somewhat true, I was trying to make a joke
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    And like lifting weights, if you go too hard too fast you'll get yourself into trouble. Except lifting doesn't make your neighbors' muscles sore.
  - Buttons840 10y ago
    Yeah. It's like a trading card game except the cards automatically copy themselves and make people miserable. "I'll give you my strain of the cold if you give me your strain of the flu." It seems people think that if you're already sick you can't get another illness added on top.

satysin 10y ago

If someone I work with brings their sick kid to work then I am working from home. Honestly wtf kind of idiot thinks bringing a sick person into an office is a good idea??

pklausler 10y ago
One person's toxic biological WMD is another person's precious unique snowflake.

jacobr 10y ago

How about a dont-work-when-your-child-is-sick policy.

glandium 10y ago

I'd probably go a step further. If you have a sick child with an infectious disease, and even if you have arrangements that would allow you to come to work, don't come to work. Work from home. Why? Because you can be an asymptomatic carrier. 15 years ago, I caught chicken pox thanks to someone whose kid had it coming to work. (and chicken pox is more severe and dangerous in adults... it was a "fun" week)