In January, I became the store manager of a retail coffee shop that I've worked in since I was 20 years old (8 years ago). In those 8 years, I've had 7 managers, and every time an employee ever tried to call out sick I would watch these managers fight tooth and nail to try and force the employee to come in anyways. They would guilt trip, they would lie about CDC guidance and company policy, they would basically make the employee feel like they were being a horrible human being for having the audacity to become ill.
Now that I'm in charge, every time someone has called out the first thing I tell them is “your health is the most important thing, take care of yourself and let me know when you're ready to come back.”
Near the start of my time in this position, an employee called me in tears because they weren't feeling well enough for their shift but they were so scared they'd be fired unless they showed up. I told them we don't play by those rules anymore, if they say they can't come in then I trust their judgement 100%.
Past managers would act like we were “hurting the team” if we called out, but now I know that we have about a million other options that we can choose to make those days easier. We can pause our mobile order system, we can take our dedicated “tasker” and move them to a production spot, if I'm working on administrative tasks I can drop those to focus on customer related tasks, etc. We weren't ever hurting the team, we were only hurting our managers ability to take it easy and not work as hard as everyone else.
And the craziest part?! I now have better staffed floors than I saw in this store for years. Less call outs than ever before, and when one does happen now I have a dozen employees that are willing to pick it up immediately. Call outs are seriously a non-issue that managers try to make seem like a horrible disaster, just staff your store properly and trust your employees and your problems are solved.
I've had other managers tell me that my employees are going to take advantage of my kindness. One even suggested that I deny all time off requests for my first few months to let my employees know I'll be tough. That really opens my eyes as to how “lower level” employees are viewed. I was lower level just a few months ago, is this why I haven't been to a family Thanksgiving in 8 years? Because some manager wanted to look tough? Do they think that because they pay me more now, I'll start abusing my workers for them? All they did was give me the power I need to protect my people. In my mind, I don't understand how “believing someone can't work because they told me they can't work” is an act of kindness and not just normal human behavior.
In 4 months, I've had maybe one employee that called out more than usual but I had a conversation with them where I said “I've been noticing that you're calling out pretty frequently and I need to ask if there's anything I can do to support you better?” Dropped any pretense that they might be doing something wrong and framed it in a way where they understood I was offering help and not punishment. Turns out they were just really overwhelmed with their college classes and they were calling out to make more time to study, but they were scared that if I thought they were prioritizing school over work I'd let them go. I told them that of course they should prioritize school over this job, school is so so so much more important than a job that barely pays above minimum wage. And on top of that, they shouldn't feel obligated to use their limited paid sick time to make sure they can both be a student and afford their bills. So I adjusted their shifts so they only worked 4 days a week instead of 5, but getting the same number of hours. They haven't called out again since, and they now had the time they needed to focus on their final semester of school.
Anyways this is turning into a rant, but the point I'm trying to make is: take your time off. Protect your health, both physical and mental. If your manager tells you they can't accommodate it, they're lying to you.