My roommate tested positive for covid the other week, and, not wanting to expose the clients I work for, I told my supervisor. Since that day, I've been working from home.
I learned, midway through my work quarantine, I'm only working my normal full-time hours for the first 5 days. Company policy is the last 8 workdays of my quarantine, I work less than half-time (3.5hrs/day) and get paid accordingly. So for more than a week, I've taken a significant paycut. My supervisor also informed me I could use my sick time to make up for (some of the) lost hours.
Here's where the issues pile up for me: we only get a measly 6 sick days per year… so yeah, I applied all of the 3.something hours of sick time I had to the last pay period, which hardly makes a dent in the hours of pay I'm not getting.
Do I think quarantining when exposed to covid is the ethical choice? Absolutely. Do I think it should be the employee's responsibility to bear the burden of the cost of that necessity? Absolutely not. For one, (and I complained directly to the company about this when I started,) it disincentivizes honesty when being sick or needing to quarantine comes at a personal cost: you're going to get people who “can't afford” to take the L and will lie and risk everyone's health and safety because the company simply won't afford to cover the cost of that employee working from home. (As I understand it, a significant part of our nonprofit funding comes from direct staffing with the clients we serve, so it's not like I can pinpoint “greedy company” as some kind of smoking gun. But it's still a problem situation that should not exist.)
Notwithstanding the fact that I had no idea what my company's full covid guidelines were regarding WFH until midway through my quarantine, I take great issue with bearing the brunt of the cost of doing the ethical choice. I signed a contract for full-time work, and the company can't even guarantee that, even when I am serving the company and our clients by staying home and preventing the spread of covid to my coworkers and our vulnerable clients? My hourly wage just got bumped from $16.something to $18.something, which is not all that impressive on its own to begin with.
I think I got most of my thoughts in order by writing this vent, but I know this community has had some great insight to posts like this before, so anything y'all write that helps give me some perspective or insight, I'm all for it and I appreciate it.