I came into work a couple days ago and several of my coworkers were openly ill. One of them was throwing up in the bathroom while my manager looked sick as dog, with obnoxiously loud chest coughs EVERY SINGLE MINUTE. Neither of them were wearing masks, and would frequently pass by coworkers when it wasn’t required at all. To no-one’s surprise, I am now ill and feel terrible.
Although they were acting extremely irresponsibly, I understand finances are tight right now, and I’m far more so pissed at this current standard of getting written up for being ill 3 separate times within X amount of months. Not only is this system inherently stupid because average rate of catching colds each year is 2-4 times, but it’s also completely counterintuitive from HR’s point-of-view too.
If you instead allow someone to just rather stay home and pay them their expected salary, then others within the workplace aren’t going to also get ill. This means that the overall productivity levels will stay far above what it would be when they all get inevitably ill, alongside not putting the public at risk by interacting with them.
But God forbid that you pay them a maximum of few hundred, just in case they are faking it, right? They must not be able to afford it even with the current ridiculous average disparity between income of workers and top management.
I despise this dystopian modern standard for workplace ethics and lack of regulations more than anything.