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Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? Many people want to have as many days off as they can. If so, you could be in the same situation, call in s

Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? Many people want to have as many days off as they can. If so, you could be in the same situation, call in saying your sick to use all your days then really get sick at the end of the year. If the answer is no, perhaps that is due to cultural differences. It's my impression that folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.

pavlov 6y ago
> “... folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.” Which is cause and which is consequence? Maybe Norwegians are more responsible at work because employers don’t exploit them so openly and the law gives them more protection.
- Pet_Ant 6y ago
  > Which is cause and which is consequence? Honestly the problem is that its a feedback loop. A trusting culture leads to people being more trustworthy... in the long run. The first company to do it will be taken advantage of. It will take a while for society to then frown on that and apply social pressure which will then in turn unlock more trust etc... but it's a process for sure
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I imagine that trust can come and go as decades turn into centuries. It seems that social trust is decreasing in a number of places...
- fpig 6y ago
  We have tons of labor protections in Croatia and people still try to game the system in any way they can. Labor laws just make this easier. Sick leave is massively abused, even though it requires a doctor to authorize it (but is unlimited). People get their doctor to authorize their fake sick leave. We’re a corrupt society on all levels and in all areas of life. Norway likely isn’t.
baobabKoodaa 6y ago
That's a pretty sweeping generalization to think that the answer is either "yes" or "no". Of course some people will lie and cheat their way through life, so yes, some people will pretend to be sick in order to use up their X sick days. And yes, we could make it harder to cheat by making rules, such as always requiring a doctor's notice for sick days. Is the problem large enough that you need to prevent people from cheating, or should you make a tradeoff where you allow some people to cheat, in order to reduce epidemics (which are excarcebated by forcing people to go to work sick)? I guess the answer depends on society.
- Gwypaas 6y ago
  Or simply add some flexibility. The rules are similar in Sweden, with the caveat that if an employer suspects that an employee actually is not sick they can demand a doctor's note which the employer then pays for. If the note shows that the employee cheated you get a warning. If the action is repeated then a doctor's note can be required from day one. Start with good faith, but add some flexibility.
  - mediascreen 6y ago
    One weird thing here in Sweden, is that you can take sick leave from your vacation. So if you get the flu during your vacation you can call in sick and not use your vacation days while you are sick. I have never heard of anyone doing this though and I would personally be too embarrassed to use the system in that way.
    - cr1895 6y ago
      It's the same in the Netherlands.
      - AnssiH 6y ago
        Finland, too, I believe.
- ghaff 6y ago
silvester23 6y ago
We have roughly the same regulations in Germany, in my personal experience people do not take advantage by prentending to be sick in any meaningful quantity. I mean there surely are people out there pushing it to the limit but it's not a problem in general. As for your point about really getting sick by the end of the year, as long as you have a doctor's note saying you are sick, you can stay at home, no matter how long or often you've been sick before that year. I guess it works similarly in Norway.
- WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
  USA workers pretend to be sick in order to: A) Take any time off at all because they do not receive sick or vacation time. B) Take time off because they do not have enough sick or vacation days and require rest from illness or work, but do not have realistic time in which to do either. This brings about the perception that US workers will "use extra days," when in reality they simply do not have enough to begin with.
- avh02 6y ago
  I've seen minor abuse from several people, and a few sarcastic "just take a sick day for <thing you want to do during a work day>" but I still think that minor abuse is worth the peace of mind it brings to me as an employee.
wincy 6y ago
I have merged PTO but generally there’s an expectation that you plan in advance for vacation. So if I’m just having a shitty day even if there’s nothing physically wrong with me I’ll take PTO and say I’m “not feeling great”. Manager has never complained about it, always a “feel better”. It’s not a lie but then the next day at standup I make sure to say how much better I’m feeling. I strongly suspect all my coworkers do this too.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  This ends up being a bigger push, but I would say that it is perfectly reasonable to take a sick day for mental health reasons. Especially in knowledge-based jobs, there's no point in me trying to push for results that will need to be re-checked the next day when in a better spot. There's also a lot of interplay between mental and physical health. For my part, it is pretty straight-forward, that if I have a more stressful day, I will get a migraine, and need to spend several hours in a dark room. If I feel the edge of a migraine coming on, it is better for me to pre-emptively cancel meetings and take a nap rather than waiting for it to be so bad that I am forced to.
pc86 6y ago
That's why it shouldn't be a pool. If you're sick, don't work. It shouldn't burn your vacation time to spend it in bed or throwing up in the bathroom.
- gowld 6y ago
  But what if you just "don't feel good"? Most people don't go to a doctor whenever they feel a bit down.
- mikem170 6y ago
  Keeping them separate as you mention benefits the company for every day of sick time someone can't justify as a day off for something they'd like to do. That doesn't make sense to me. It's better and more flexible to have 20 days to use as you want or need. let people roll over some of their unused time and everything is perfect. It seems your way benefits the company and employees who can't manage their time.
johnchristopher 6y ago
In the country I live in, for some public service employees it's a thing. And yes it's being abused, probably more by those who can't be fired than those with weaker rights. I don't know if it's abused so much that it offsets the balance too much.
Cederfjard 6y ago
Sure, it happens. I don't think it's to a degree where the cons outweigh the pros. In Sweden, the first day of sick leave is unpaid, after that it's very similar to Norway.
Delk 6y ago
The difference is probably at least partially cultural, but probably not due to some kind of a single factor such as "responsibility". I'm not from Norway, but other European countries also have systems that are more or less similar. Where I live, I think most adults would find it socially rather unacceptable to abuse a sick leave, at least on a regular or systematic basis. Getting caught would be rather embarrassing. So there's a social stigma against abusing the system. (That's probably not true of everyone, and there's always somebody abusing the system, but I believe the majority would find it socially unacceptable.) Another related difference might be that at least in Nordic countries, people place more trust in the system, and the balance between collectivism and individualism tends more towards the former. If the system is seen as more trustworthy and as more of a mutual thing, as opposed to something that everybody's trying to game anyway, cheating the system is then also less acceptable. It would be like stealing from a common coffer. (Of course not everybody sees it that way, but I think there's more of a tendency towards that in the culture. And practically nobody who's not entirely naive trusts the system unconditionally, nor should they. But many ways of gaming the system for your own benefit are less acceptable to most people than they might be in a different culture.)
- Doxin 6y ago
  Not to mention that abusing sick days is totally grounds for firing, which given the strong worker protections otherwise is a real threat.
avianlyric 6y ago
My go to answer to questions like this is pretty simple. We shouldn’t punish the majority for the indiscretions of the few. Ultimately some people will abuse sick leave, just like everything else in life. But those individuals should be dealt with on a individual basis. Otherwise you just end up treating everyone like a criminal, at which point for an individual there’s no advantage to not engaging in abusive behaviour. You’re already effectively being punished for potential abusive behaviour, might as well make the most of it and actually engage in the abusive behaviour you’re being punished for.
- mikem170 6y ago
  Who are we punishing here, though? If we gave everyone all their days off in one pool then all the days could be used. Having the extra rules about sick vs personal just benefits the company. EDIT: I guess we are saying that the company benefits if you are not sick, and the healthy people don't get more days off than sick people. For people who would have trouble managing their time, like an illness late in the year, just allow a bunch of days to be rolled over to be used before the end of the next year.
  - cr1895 6y ago
    But it's not a pool of sick days + personal days, with the "sick" days only available to you if you are sick. I imagine the situation in Norway is pretty similar to that in Netherlands, where if you're sick, you're sick- and beyond a certain point you are obliged to consult a doctor. Time management plays no role.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      I'm not sure if I follow. In some jobs workers are given 20 PTO days to use as sick or vacation as they please. In other jobs workers are give 10 vacation days and 10 sick days. I was saying that it seems better to have the PTO days to use however you want than sick days that aren't supoosed to be used for non-sickness reasons. Are you saying that it is normal for people to use the sick days when they are not really sick? You mention needing to consult a doctor at a certain point. This is not uncommon in the U.S., with the employer wanting a doctor's note after more than two days of absence. (As an aside I always thought that was a burden on the employee, to have to pay for a doctors visit because the employer doesn't trust them. Not as big a deal if the employer would pay for the visit, but they don't. Certainly not a perfect world we live in...)
hibbelig 6y ago
I think in the end, there is no way around trust. You have to trust the mechanic that they tighten the screws correctly. You have to trust the software developer that they write that does what it should and not something nefarious. You have to trust the salesperson that they don't lie to the customer. Yes, all of these can be checked to some extent, but it will not be possible to fully check everything.
- mikem170 6y ago
  When you said "trust" I wondered who benefits, and my first thought was that the company that doesn't have to deal with the sick days is the winner. The company is trusting to come to work as many days as we physically can? How is that better than just giving everyone the same number of days to manager as sick or personal for themselves?
  - hibbelig 6y ago
    Well, with ten days of vacation per year, I'd be interesting in any additional time I could take off. But if you have enough (say 25), then I as an employee don't feel that I got the short end of the stick. It's also a matter of solidarity that those who can support those who can't. In this case, the healthier employees support the ones who are ill.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      There's many ways the same support can be given. Why should employees have to support each other in that fashion? There's things like short-term disability that handle absences longer than whatever specific number of normal time off is provided. According to your logic above, why don't we get 100 sick days per year instead of 10? Some people need that many, fellow employees should support them too, right? I guess the sick vs vacation day thing becomes a more of a problem in an environment where the rule-followers see a lot rule-breakers taking advantage.
- mikem170 6y ago
  Big companies make seem more into making inflexible processes and eliminating the variability of trust. The people who do follow the rules are left feeling shorted by those that don't. That doesn't seem right. I think this happens with a lot of things. The employer can say "be trustworthy" and save money across the entire pool of employees, but the employees who follow the rules have to stand by watching other who break them. Same thing happened with marking spots in my apartment complex. They numbered the spots to go with apartments, but don't enforce it. Someone always takes my spot. According to their rules I'm supposed to park further away in the unmarked spots, or steal someone elses spot. Most people follow the rules, so the office gets less parking complaints. But now people whose spots are taken are left worse off than before.
claudeganon 6y ago
Yeah, its almost like by law in Norway, employers have to provide 25 days of paid leave, whereas in the US, people have to behave "irresponsibly" to have a semblance of a normal life, free of work.
theshrike79 6y ago
There have been studies of this in Finland. When companies require a doctor's note for any and all sick leaves, people will use the maximum amount the doctor prescribes (usually they just slap 3 days on for every sniffle). On the other hand when people can take a handful (1-5) sick days freely, they tend to use just the bare minimum. It's a matter of trust. The company is communicating to the employees that it trusts them to take the appropriate amount of sick days and conversely people don't abuse the trust.
- vageli 6y ago
  I think you nailed it. When a company stands behind "process", well, they shouldn't be surprised when employees do the same. At one of my earliest jobs, I would take a short lunch at my desk (I was very young and didn't know better). Management decided that they wanted to gauge how long I was lunching for, and insisted that I clock in and out for lunch. Well, you can be sure that I took the full time allotted to me after that.
ingvul 6y ago
> Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? How would one ever know? And what's the issue if someone pretend to be sick if they have up to X days to "be sick". I don't mind at all what my coworkers do with their lives.
rhino369 6y ago
In America they definitely do that, especially the less responsibilities the employee has. That's why Netflix or Goldman Sachs can give unlimited time off and its rarely abused. But if Walmart did it, their employees would take off 5 times a month for fake illnesses. I worked as a unionized grocery clerk and essentially everyone used all their sick time. People (including me) would call off just because they wanted to go to a party or something. Some places try to avoid this by requiring a doctors note. But that's worse. I worked for a midsize electronics company that had unlimited sick time, but I needed a doctors note for anytime. I literally ralphed in the bathroom mid-day on a friday and HR made me go to the doctor on Monday to justify it, even though I was already better. That policy is crazy because it creates a transaction cost for sick days. If I have a bad cold or stomach virus, might as well go into work than go to the doctor right?

pavlov 6y ago

> “... folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.” Which is cause and which is consequence? Maybe Norwegians are more responsible at work because employers don’t exploit them so openly and the law gives them more protection.

Pet_Ant 6y ago
> Which is cause and which is consequence? Honestly the problem is that its a feedback loop. A trusting culture leads to people being more trustworthy... in the long run. The first company to do it will be taken advantage of. It will take a while for society to then frown on that and apply social pressure which will then in turn unlock more trust etc... but it's a process for sure
- mikem170 6y ago
  I imagine that trust can come and go as decades turn into centuries. It seems that social trust is decreasing in a number of places...
fpig 6y ago
We have tons of labor protections in Croatia and people still try to game the system in any way they can. Labor laws just make this easier. Sick leave is massively abused, even though it requires a doctor to authorize it (but is unlimited). People get their doctor to authorize their fake sick leave. We’re a corrupt society on all levels and in all areas of life. Norway likely isn’t.

baobabKoodaa 6y ago

That's a pretty sweeping generalization to think that the answer is either "yes" or "no". Of course some people will lie and cheat their way through life, so yes, some people will pretend to be sick in order to use up their X sick days. And yes, we could make it harder to cheat by making rules, such as always requiring a doctor's notice for sick days. Is the problem large enough that you need to prevent people from cheating, or should you make a tradeoff where you allow some people to cheat, in order to reduce epidemics (which are excarcebated by forcing people to go to work sick)? I guess the answer depends on society.

Gwypaas 6y ago
Or simply add some flexibility. The rules are similar in Sweden, with the caveat that if an employer suspects that an employee actually is not sick they can demand a doctor's note which the employer then pays for. If the note shows that the employee cheated you get a warning. If the action is repeated then a doctor's note can be required from day one. Start with good faith, but add some flexibility.
- mediascreen 6y ago
  One weird thing here in Sweden, is that you can take sick leave from your vacation. So if you get the flu during your vacation you can call in sick and not use your vacation days while you are sick. I have never heard of anyone doing this though and I would personally be too embarrassed to use the system in that way.
  - cr1895 6y ago
    It's the same in the Netherlands.
    - AnssiH 6y ago
      Finland, too, I believe.
ghaff 6y ago

silvester23 6y ago

We have roughly the same regulations in Germany, in my personal experience people do not take advantage by prentending to be sick in any meaningful quantity. I mean there surely are people out there pushing it to the limit but it's not a problem in general. As for your point about really getting sick by the end of the year, as long as you have a doctor's note saying you are sick, you can stay at home, no matter how long or often you've been sick before that year. I guess it works similarly in Norway.

WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
USA workers pretend to be sick in order to: A) Take any time off at all because they do not receive sick or vacation time. B) Take time off because they do not have enough sick or vacation days and require rest from illness or work, but do not have realistic time in which to do either. This brings about the perception that US workers will "use extra days," when in reality they simply do not have enough to begin with.
avh02 6y ago
I've seen minor abuse from several people, and a few sarcastic "just take a sick day for <thing you want to do during a work day>" but I still think that minor abuse is worth the peace of mind it brings to me as an employee.

wincy 6y ago

I have merged PTO but generally there’s an expectation that you plan in advance for vacation. So if I’m just having a shitty day even if there’s nothing physically wrong with me I’ll take PTO and say I’m “not feeling great”. Manager has never complained about it, always a “feel better”. It’s not a lie but then the next day at standup I make sure to say how much better I’m feeling. I strongly suspect all my coworkers do this too.

MereInterest 6y ago
This ends up being a bigger push, but I would say that it is perfectly reasonable to take a sick day for mental health reasons. Especially in knowledge-based jobs, there's no point in me trying to push for results that will need to be re-checked the next day when in a better spot. There's also a lot of interplay between mental and physical health. For my part, it is pretty straight-forward, that if I have a more stressful day, I will get a migraine, and need to spend several hours in a dark room. If I feel the edge of a migraine coming on, it is better for me to pre-emptively cancel meetings and take a nap rather than waiting for it to be so bad that I am forced to.

pc86 6y ago

That's why it shouldn't be a pool. If you're sick, don't work. It shouldn't burn your vacation time to spend it in bed or throwing up in the bathroom.

gowld 6y ago
But what if you just "don't feel good"? Most people don't go to a doctor whenever they feel a bit down.
mikem170 6y ago
Keeping them separate as you mention benefits the company for every day of sick time someone can't justify as a day off for something they'd like to do. That doesn't make sense to me. It's better and more flexible to have 20 days to use as you want or need. let people roll over some of their unused time and everything is perfect. It seems your way benefits the company and employees who can't manage their time.

johnchristopher 6y ago

In the country I live in, for some public service employees it's a thing. And yes it's being abused, probably more by those who can't be fired than those with weaker rights. I don't know if it's abused so much that it offsets the balance too much.

Cederfjard 6y ago

Sure, it happens. I don't think it's to a degree where the cons outweigh the pros. In Sweden, the first day of sick leave is unpaid, after that it's very similar to Norway.

Delk 6y ago

The difference is probably at least partially cultural, but probably not due to some kind of a single factor such as "responsibility". I'm not from Norway, but other European countries also have systems that are more or less similar. Where I live, I think most adults would find it socially rather unacceptable to abuse a sick leave, at least on a regular or systematic basis. Getting caught would be rather embarrassing. So there's a social stigma against abusing the system. (That's probably not true of everyone, and there's always somebody abusing the system, but I believe the majority would find it socially unacceptable.) Another related difference might be that at least in Nordic countries, people place more trust in the system, and the balance between collectivism and individualism tends more towards the former. If the system is seen as more trustworthy and as more of a mutual thing, as opposed to something that everybody's trying to game anyway, cheating the system is then also less acceptable. It would be like stealing from a common coffer. (Of course not everybody sees it that way, but I think there's more of a tendency towards that in the culture. And practically nobody who's not entirely naive trusts the system unconditionally, nor should they. But many ways of gaming the system for your own benefit are less acceptable to most people than they might be in a different culture.)

Doxin 6y ago
Not to mention that abusing sick days is totally grounds for firing, which given the strong worker protections otherwise is a real threat.

avianlyric 6y ago

My go to answer to questions like this is pretty simple. We shouldn’t punish the majority for the indiscretions of the few. Ultimately some people will abuse sick leave, just like everything else in life. But those individuals should be dealt with on a individual basis. Otherwise you just end up treating everyone like a criminal, at which point for an individual there’s no advantage to not engaging in abusive behaviour. You’re already effectively being punished for potential abusive behaviour, might as well make the most of it and actually engage in the abusive behaviour you’re being punished for.

mikem170 6y ago
Who are we punishing here, though? If we gave everyone all their days off in one pool then all the days could be used. Having the extra rules about sick vs personal just benefits the company. EDIT: I guess we are saying that the company benefits if you are not sick, and the healthy people don't get more days off than sick people. For people who would have trouble managing their time, like an illness late in the year, just allow a bunch of days to be rolled over to be used before the end of the next year.
- cr1895 6y ago
  But it's not a pool of sick days + personal days, with the "sick" days only available to you if you are sick. I imagine the situation in Norway is pretty similar to that in Netherlands, where if you're sick, you're sick- and beyond a certain point you are obliged to consult a doctor. Time management plays no role.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I'm not sure if I follow. In some jobs workers are given 20 PTO days to use as sick or vacation as they please. In other jobs workers are give 10 vacation days and 10 sick days. I was saying that it seems better to have the PTO days to use however you want than sick days that aren't supoosed to be used for non-sickness reasons. Are you saying that it is normal for people to use the sick days when they are not really sick? You mention needing to consult a doctor at a certain point. This is not uncommon in the U.S., with the employer wanting a doctor's note after more than two days of absence. (As an aside I always thought that was a burden on the employee, to have to pay for a doctors visit because the employer doesn't trust them. Not as big a deal if the employer would pay for the visit, but they don't. Certainly not a perfect world we live in...)

hibbelig 6y ago

I think in the end, there is no way around trust. You have to trust the mechanic that they tighten the screws correctly. You have to trust the software developer that they write that does what it should and not something nefarious. You have to trust the salesperson that they don't lie to the customer. Yes, all of these can be checked to some extent, but it will not be possible to fully check everything.

mikem170 6y ago
When you said "trust" I wondered who benefits, and my first thought was that the company that doesn't have to deal with the sick days is the winner. The company is trusting to come to work as many days as we physically can? How is that better than just giving everyone the same number of days to manager as sick or personal for themselves?
- hibbelig 6y ago
  Well, with ten days of vacation per year, I'd be interesting in any additional time I could take off. But if you have enough (say 25), then I as an employee don't feel that I got the short end of the stick. It's also a matter of solidarity that those who can support those who can't. In this case, the healthier employees support the ones who are ill.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    There's many ways the same support can be given. Why should employees have to support each other in that fashion? There's things like short-term disability that handle absences longer than whatever specific number of normal time off is provided. According to your logic above, why don't we get 100 sick days per year instead of 10? Some people need that many, fellow employees should support them too, right? I guess the sick vs vacation day thing becomes a more of a problem in an environment where the rule-followers see a lot rule-breakers taking advantage.
mikem170 6y ago
Big companies make seem more into making inflexible processes and eliminating the variability of trust. The people who do follow the rules are left feeling shorted by those that don't. That doesn't seem right. I think this happens with a lot of things. The employer can say "be trustworthy" and save money across the entire pool of employees, but the employees who follow the rules have to stand by watching other who break them. Same thing happened with marking spots in my apartment complex. They numbered the spots to go with apartments, but don't enforce it. Someone always takes my spot. According to their rules I'm supposed to park further away in the unmarked spots, or steal someone elses spot. Most people follow the rules, so the office gets less parking complaints. But now people whose spots are taken are left worse off than before.

claudeganon 6y ago

Yeah, its almost like by law in Norway, employers have to provide 25 days of paid leave, whereas in the US, people have to behave "irresponsibly" to have a semblance of a normal life, free of work.

theshrike79 6y ago

There have been studies of this in Finland. When companies require a doctor's note for any and all sick leaves, people will use the maximum amount the doctor prescribes (usually they just slap 3 days on for every sniffle). On the other hand when people can take a handful (1-5) sick days freely, they tend to use just the bare minimum. It's a matter of trust. The company is communicating to the employees that it trusts them to take the appropriate amount of sick days and conversely people don't abuse the trust.

vageli 6y ago
I think you nailed it. When a company stands behind "process", well, they shouldn't be surprised when employees do the same. At one of my earliest jobs, I would take a short lunch at my desk (I was very young and didn't know better). Management decided that they wanted to gauge how long I was lunching for, and insisted that I clock in and out for lunch. Well, you can be sure that I took the full time allotted to me after that.

ingvul 6y ago

> Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? How would one ever know? And what's the issue if someone pretend to be sick if they have up to X days to "be sick". I don't mind at all what my coworkers do with their lives.

rhino369 6y ago

In America they definitely do that, especially the less responsibilities the employee has. That's why Netflix or Goldman Sachs can give unlimited time off and its rarely abused. But if Walmart did it, their employees would take off 5 times a month for fake illnesses. I worked as a unionized grocery clerk and essentially everyone used all their sick time. People (including me) would call off just because they wanted to go to a party or something. Some places try to avoid this by requiring a doctors note. But that's worse. I worked for a midsize electronics company that had unlimited sick time, but I needed a doctors note for anytime. I literally ralphed in the bathroom mid-day on a friday and HR made me go to the doctor on Monday to justify it, even though I was already better. That policy is crazy because it creates a transaction cost for sick days. If I have a bad cold or stomach virus, might as well go into work than go to the doctor right?