Pretext: I can’t particularly say my company frowns upon taking a sick day, however, our policy for my department (which has just been two people for almost a year at this point) changed from unlimited pto/sick to 14 days pto and 6 sick days. That’s a different story.
My co and I have been quite overwhelmed with work since our last two dipped out (fairly sure they’re the reason we lost unlimited pto but hr will never admit to it). I especially have as I’ve been working multiple departments and a very large project that has heavily impacted our client base. I’m drained and hate to admit it. This sick day served two purposes. First was to go take care of paperwork in a town 3 hours away. It had to happen. Second was a mental break (though we did have a 3 day for Labor Day). It’s just been so heavily overwhelming and it’s building up my stress. So, I did the stupid thing of scheduling a slack message to go out to my manager at a random hour middle of the night saying I had been up sick all night. Now that I look back on it, I’m fairly sure they can tell when a message is scheduled to go out. Anyway, manager just said to rest and recover when they saw the message, though it def came off as they knew I was bsing. Hit the road to go do what I need to do, and the first few hours were spent feeling guilty AF about what I did. I just couldn’t shake the feeling and I hated it. So much so I wrote back later in the day building on to the lie, saying I got treated and should recover soon. None of this necessary of course, but I had a smooth brain moment and did the dumb thing. “Nice!” Was the response. Definitely knows I’m bsing. Still feel shitty about it and just couldn’t shake the guilt feeling. Then, after having a nice meal, it dawned on me: my co always starts later than they’re supposed to (still does their fair share of work but it’s rough taking the brunt of the workload solo), my manager took an extended vaca after a company event at a bad time, and as manager still has unlimited pto and def takes advantage of it. So after mulling it over I said fuckit and the guilt mostly went away. I think now is mostly shame from being stupid enough to schedule a message rather than just send one when I woke up, then build on to the stupidity with a follow up later in the day. Fuckit. I’ve been busting my ass for them, annual review came and passed and I got all high marks and I have a gut feeling there’s no raise to come with it, so absolutely fuckit. They’re throwing a small bonus for our hard work, which is great, but absolutely pales in comparison to a proper raise.
/rant
Edit*: a word