> The bar for taking a sick day is getting lower...
> For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health.
It's sad that we're still so far from viewing mental health as any where near as "real" as other physical health issues (because after all, ultimately mental health is physical). People are visibly under greater mental stress than anytime I can recall in my working career, it's a good thing if more people are taking time to care for this.
Imagine if the article had subtly criticized people for taking more time off to address cardio health or kidney health, it would sound completely ridiculous.
As a boss, I encourage anyone on my team to take time off whenever they need it for mental health or stress reasons. I also tell them that they do not need to tell me or any other team members the reason behind why they're taking time off. Privacy and trust are important.
I also make all team meetings optional. If you're not feeling it, don't show up. This has a two fold effect of keeping people well rested/motivated and not having negative energy in meetings from people who'd rather not be there.
This has resulted in a very high performing team. Well rested, trusted, not burnt out. Comfort leads to creativity.
Society at large is doing this to themselves. Let me explain:
It’s currently popular to post about mental health issues on social media, like TikTok and Instagram. People dramatize their issues for views and likes and attention. So, you have a lot of people “self-diagnosing” mental health issues that aren’t actually clinical disorders.
This leads to people not perceiving mental health as a serious issue. Instead, people are abusing the “mental health” status to get what they want: leniency, time off, an easier workload, what have you.
This distracts from people who actually have clinically-diagnosed mental health issues. It weakens their arguments when an actually diagnosed person needs assistance, like a day off.
So the immediate fix for this is to have a physicians note or similar for every mental health day that you need. The hope is that doctors (an impartial third party authority) would sufficiently diagnose someone’s mental health. They can separate between the actually afflicted and the “I just want an excuse / easy life” crowd.
Although if you chat with MD’s about this topic, diagnosing mental health is hard so that isn’t a silver bullet either.
The other thing that society can do: stop romanticizing mental health. Stop posting about it on social media for likes and attention. Get validation and attention from some other aspect of your life, like playing an instrument or doing something well.
No. What's currently popular is normalizing talking about mental health and wellbeing. Not everyone has the privilege to get a diagnosis, much less, get proper care or treatment. Talking about these issues on social media is an outlet for people to not feel so lonely or isolated.
The article quotes a few people. One of the quotes is, "The accounting team is not happy with me providing this time off, because it’s a liability for the company". Another quote is equating not taking sick days to having a "work ethic".
Somehow expecting someone to see a doctor and supply documentation of the result to be allowed to take off a day for a present illness seems somewhere between draconian and impractical.
How about something simple, like providing a fixed number of personal days off or making them unpaid leave instead of trying to administer an insurance system susceptible to exploitation? As a contractor I find the idea that someone should pay for my days off - for whatever the reason - to be more than a little bizarre.
>As a contractor I find the idea that someone should pay for my days off - for whatever the reason - to be more than a little bizarre.
I can guarantee you that, absent paid time off, a lot of people will come into the office every day even if it means foregoing vacation and even if they're coughing their lungs out.
Obviously if you're in business for yourself, you make your own decisions about work hours and work days. But a system where there are vacation and/or sick days, especially for salaried employees, has been the norm in many places for a very long time and is hardly bizarre.
About using mental illness as a way of gaining sympathy/popularity?
Unfortunately I have to agree with the parent, it does seem to be true.
In my own experience: my niece never mentioned depression until she saw videos about it on TikTok. Then she was always moody, and constantly stating "I'm depressed, but therapy is expensive. Can you give me money? Don't you feel bad for me?"
I see people walking around with T-shirts advertising they suffer from depression.
I don't know if social media and exposure has brought the correct view of mental illness to light.
> About using mental illness as a way of gaining sympathy/popularity. Unfortunately I have to agree with the parent, it does seem to be true.
I see this too. I know people with real mental health issues that cripple them and I know people who like to use “mental health day” as a fad excuse du jour to just take a day off because “they don’t feel like working today”. The people I know with the real, crippling mental health issues generally don’t get over it in an afternoon of watching movies and being lazy—it’s usually days and weeks of agony.
So in my mind if people are using mental health just as an excuse to take a day off they are definitely doing damage to those folks who actually suffer from crippling mental illness by minimizing what it really is…because if Sally can sort out her mental issues by binge watching a show on Netflix in an afternoon, why can’t Frank get over his inability to get out of bed for three days by doing the same thing?
“Although if you chat with MD’s about this topic, diagnosing mental health is hard so that isn’t a silver bullet either.”
What are they going to give people a quick blood test for depression? “This person has depression today, they can stay home.” Neither you nor the parent understand what the term “mental health” means. You don’t catch stress or anxiety or schizophrenia like you catch a cold. It can only ever be self-reported because that’s what it is, by definition. If there were an underlying physical condition it would be reclassified as “health” rather than “mental health” as we do for autism, stroke victims, those with brain injuries, basically any mental health problem that can be reliably diagnosed by an MD ceases to be “mental health”
Good for them. I'm glad they're looking out for themselves.
I've been in my job almost 25 years. I listened to my parents and older workers tell me not to use sick time because "you never know when you'll need it."
I've worked steadily 50+ hours a week for all that time. Most of that time I worked weekends. Yet, upon recent inspection, have used only 20 sick days over that two and a half decades. That includes a stint of 5 years where I used not one sick day.
I am burnt out, and because of my previous attitude, still find it hard to take a sick day. Every morning I wake up regretting it, I am constantly angry and everything - especially the job. I have no social life because I never took time off.
I wouldn't want anyone else to end up like this, and always relate my story. There are a hell of a lot of people out there that are probably the same.
Protect your physical and mental health folks. Use your sick time. Before you know it, one or the other is going to fail on you if you don't look out for yourself.
However, be careful, be smart. The article shows father and son at a ball game, implied on a sick day. People at my workplace abused this, and we now have managers checking at home to make sure the employee is truly sick and home.
The article mentions automakers losing a lot of money due to sick employees, if they find abuse, they could do the same. As would other employers.
<< The article shows father and son at a ball game, implied on a sick day. People at my workplace abused this, and we now have managers checking at home to make sure the employee is truly sick and home.
The hell? My former manager ( and her lead ) once called me when they thought I was calling in too often ( waaaaay back when ), but most would be too lazy to actually physically visit a suspected pretender.
I personally always found the division funny. If I want to be off, I will be off. The labels make zero difference to me. They matter to the company, but to me it is tertiary consideration.
I agree with you, naturally, but most of the time the employee is not setting the terms of what is considered acceptable.
I don't care when I call out sick, you don't care when you do, obviously. But there's someone out there to whom your unexpected absence is going to make a difference in their day.
What does 'abusing' sick leave mean though? You mention going to the ballpark using a sick day. Going to the ballpark with your son, looks a lot like taking care of your mental well-being if you ask me.
Well, that's up the employer who will come up with that definition.
I just used it as an example because it was in the article. What did he tell his employer? My job requires one to state the illness, although I understand that's not common, so this may be irrelevant.
If the guy does it every few months, no harm, no foul.
If he's taking every other weekend off and posting pics on his facebook page with a big smile, then maybe his employer may not be so happy.
I think the takeaway would be don't give your employer proof that could be interpreted as you were not straightforward.
Having to tell your employer what your sickness is in order to get sick leave approved (or not) is ridiculous at the outset. This is the exact kind of thing people are lobbying against. My employer should not have that much reach into my work/life balance. You give me PTO with minor stipulations and leave it at that.
My desire to maliciously comply with your company's policy would have me stating things like, "I have this red, oozing puss on my ass cheeks and would like a day off," or, "My balls are really itchy and red and it's spread to my fingers."
There are states where paid sick leave is mandated, and the state law explicitly lets workers take sick leave for _ANY_ reason related to health.
Feeling too tired to work? Fine to take a day off.
Stressed out because you had to take your pet to the vet? Take a day off.
> My job requires one to state the illness
Aside from being a huge red flag, what's stopping you from just putting in "mental health" and not being very specific? Does anyone even care/check? Surely HR can't be that petty?
> Aside from being a huge red flag, what's stopping you from just putting in "mental health" and not being very specific? Does anyone even care/check? Surely HR can't be that petty?
There's still a stigma attached to mental health problems. Many, perhaps most, people can't seem to differentiate between "I'm feeling really depressed" and "I'm psychotic and want to kill a bunch of people". It's very sad that this is the case, but that's how it is.
1 in 6 Americans takes antidepressants, so chances are you know quite a few people who are taking them. However, I'll bet that the only people who've ever told you they're taking them are really close friends and family.
Why? Because this stigma exists.
(note that I'm not interested in debating whether antidepressants work, or whether taking them is a good idea... that's not the issue here)
> It's not up to the employer.
> There are states where paid sick leave is mandated, and the state law explicitly lets workers take sick leave for _ANY_ reason related to health.
My comment wasn't on defining what constitutes as "sick," but the parent asked what constitutes "abuse." As there is no law which defines it, yes, it unfortunately is the employer that will determine what "abuse" means.
> Aside from being a huge red flag, what's stopping you from just putting in "mental health" and not being very specific?
Requiring doctor's certification that one was ill in my (unionized) workplace. If they don't like the explanation, paid sick leave law or not, pay is refused. Challenged in court and upheld.
I refuse to think this is the only employer in the US that does it. Cases like these however have situations that lead to them. I surely don't think it's right, but do see where if someone's not showing up to work because he's "sick" and then posting photos of having a good time, and doing it often, it doesn't look good. In fact it's stuff like that which lead to such policies where I work.
A search got me this, so obviously it is done elsewhere:
What Covid showed my household, despite me working from home, was that ALL of us being isolated at home, meant no more sickness. No longer were my kids bringing home crud from school and making me sick for weeks at a time while we all passed it around until the crud got sick of us and moved on.
This is why it still boggles my mind that companies with antiquated RTO policies aren't embracing remote when they can. There are many days I'm not feeling great enough to get dressed up and drive a couple of hours into an office, but I can get up, put on my shorts and a t-shirt, and sit down in my home office and work.
The guy's story about never taking a sick day and falling asleep at his computer while on meds, only to eventually get fired, would be a huge wakeup call. It's just not worth it to give that much of yourself to a job.
Right? It's a _job_. We are all going to die someday way earlier than we would want and we're not going to wish we had dedicated more of our lives to our jobs at that moment.
And if you never take sick leave, like I did during my almost 30 year career, the toll it takes on your health is tremendous. My employers have never cared about my high blood pressure or that I'm pre-diabetic.
This is staggering to me if I’m reading this right - only around a third of people are taking even one sick day per year, and it was substantially less in prior years. I suppose in some industries you can work from home if you’re ill. Do these stats include people who take PTO?
I’d love to see some comparable stats from other countries as well.
> only around a third of people are taking even one sick day per year
That's just people with access to paid time off, too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that in the US hourly workers are the majority, which means a large percentage of them simply don't get paid if they don't work, and they often can't afford to not get paid.
US federal laws do not require employers to offer paid sick leave. In my experience, paid time off is pretty rare on the lower end of the hourly pay scale.
The only exception is for employers with 4 or fewer employees and net income less than $1 million (but they must still provide 40 hours of unpaid sick leave).
In my previous career before I worked for Big Enterprise who doesn't track sick days, my job had (for employees under 5 years) a separate pool of 2 weeks "vacation", 5 days "sick", and 2 days "personal" time off.
In a very controversial move they changed policy to pool them together in just "PTO" of two weeks. Probably a pretty common story. Lot of people were mad at losing the dedicated sick time because they would cash out their unused vacation at the end of the year.
People don't want to take a "sick day" if they don't feel debilitatingly sick because they might feel like they're cheating.
People don't want to take a "wellness day" because their work environment makes them feel pressured to not throw a whole work day away just because they "feel like it". I.e. they feel that one should consolidate those into longer planned-well-ahead vacations, otherwise they may feel some judgement from employers/coworkers whose work is affected by their absence.
It is of course a sign of our great cultural sickness that either of these psychological problems are even prevalent (and from my experience, they are prevalent - majority even).
For a lot of salaried workers in the US these days, there's a single pool of time that covers for vacation time/personal days/sick days.
And for people who do have some flexibility about coming into an office, it seems very common in my experience that they may do a little work and maybe drag themselves to dial into a meeting that would be hard to reschedule, but generally take the day easy if they're not feeling well.
Aside from maybe one or two medical things that really did take up a full day, I haven't formally taken a sick day/PTO because I was sick in years.
(Not US) A lot of it is mentalities fed to people from universities too. Back when I was still in uni we had a group project, and one person was having personal issues - didn't pry which but they couldn't attend for a few weeks due to what was officially listed as being sick. In exchange, other teammates picked up the slack in the meantime because y'know, trying to be a good human being to teammates is worth it on its own + mentioning this and still getting a good mark usually nets you bonus points for good teamwork (persist under challenge/pressure is a word that gets you basically free passing grades on feedback essays). She eventually returned and was able to compensate the missed work twice over for the time left in the project.
We did that in spite of the fact that one of the two guiding teachers more or less started haranguing us to put pressure on that teammate to "get back to the group work", with such charming questions being asked to the non-sick teammates (ie. Me and three others) as "how many sick days do you think are acceptable" and repeated anecdotes from the guiding teacher about how "he had taken exactly one sick day in five years". (He didn't mention that he'd also been working as a freelancer for five years so "a sick day" meant absolutely nothing to him).
In our case, the team as a whole decided that as long as we could get the work done, the teammates absence wasn't too big of a deal. This didn't make the guiding teacher happy to say the least, and I could totally have seen another team break under that kinda pressure/not have the spirit to stick up for their own beliefs in that thing.
We did end up passing the project because the result was more than acceptable at least, but it's something worth mentioning in terms of how early it starts.
Lot of healthcare services have extended hours because they are aware that their customers can’t take time out during the workday. Why would that be a surprise?
> Lot of healthcare services have extended hours [..]
Umm, OK. Not everywhere, apparently, hence my question.
> Why would that be a surprise?
For reference:
My dentist works a four day week (Monday-Thursday).
My local doctor's practice is open a whopping 23 hours per week - four mornings plus a handful of late afternoon sessions. Less than handy if you or your relatives are taken ill between noon on Friday and Monday morning.
Most folks I work with don't take PTO for short appts like that. Usually they just put it on the calendar and communicate it to the team. Or they shift the schedule for the day to start later and work later to fit in a morning appt. That said, the dentist near me is open til 7pm so after work dentistry seems to be an option too.
A lot of people just straight up don't go. If you even get dental insurance, and you need more than a routine cleaning, it barely covers it. Especially if you don't get a good plan.
Tons of hourly jobs make you work a weekend shift as well so you end up with a weekday off that you have to use for that kind of thing.
I'm sure workplaces differ but, over decades, I've never felt it was the norm to formally take time off for a 2-3 hour appointment/errand for a dentist or anything else.
>“I gave you everything, and you kicked me to the street.”
This is why my views changed too. I've worked so many jobs where I put in more than 8hrs/day consistently over months or years and didn't get raises (usually bc of a policy) or I didn't get some benefit because I wasn't friends with the CEO etc.
No more. If I'm not feeling up to working and it won't totally mess up my schedule, I'm calling off.
The reality is me coming in sick also costs the business. I spend 8hrs sitting at my computer running at 60% or less productivity, possibly extending it multiple days because I didn't rest vs them knowing I am sick and resting and being able to come back the next day and be back to 90-100%
Most of the time WSJ is a great paper, but once in a while it feels like they let a few angry CEOs get together and ghostwrite a front page article with no oversight.
From the chart: among Americans with paid leave about 33% of them took ANY sick days in 2023. In 2019 that was about 23%.
So even after a global pandemic, a WFH revolution, and an economic downturn we still have 67% of this group never ever missing work due to illness.
And we’re being called lazy!
I hope the extra sick days are people faking it so they can interview elsewhere.
Most of the examples were blue collar and it's not hard to see why there might have been more sick days the past few years.
On the other hand with more flexible working arrangements for some workers, it's also not hard to see why someone not feeling well might literally phone it in for a couple hours rather than taking a formal sick day.
Without a lot more data I'm not inclined to conclude a lot from a few numbers.
That seems like a weird system unless it's required by some law. Why wouldn't anyone just take the unmetered PTO and then cash out the sick days if they can?
The reason this is done is previously the company gave 20-30 days of paid vacation per year and those could be rolled over or paid out and now they have no such obligation.
Before the pandemic I had an officemate that didn't take sick days when he was clearly sick, it would be January in the Northeast and he'd say it was just allergies. Then the next week I was sick with the flu and TICK'd! I think it is now far less acceptable to show up sick to work and infect your coworkers.
In terms of mental health days, I worked at one place for a long time and had enough vacation days that I could use one as a mental health day. Then I changed jobs and the new place gave so few vacation days that when I thought about a long weekend to visit family I'd have to wonder whether that family member was worth spending the precious vacation day on. If the company vacation plan is sufficient then you don't need to use a sick day for a mental health day.
Sick day? What is this “sick day”? I’m a corporate employee and have been for years. What I receive is Paid Time Off. I can earn up to 160 hours per year, with additional time granted for public holidays (Christmas, New Year’s, etc.)
Call in sick? One less day available. Contract COVID and need to be out a week or more? Need time off like to convalesce a dying parent? Too bad. Adios vacation.
Yes, I’m aware there are plenty of people such military personnel, the self employed, etc. who do not receive paid time off. My point is that “sick days” have become a thing of the past.
I work in Europe. I have 26 days of PTO per year (=208 hours) and 11 public holidays. But when I'm sick and I'm on sick leave, I don't lose my PTO, these are two different things. When I'm sick, I can't work. When I take PTO, I go on holidays. These two shouldn't be confused, it's not good for both physical and mental health.
On the other hand, I probably earn less than you (6200 EUR/month after paying all taxes, i.e. ca. 6500 USD). But I very much prefer it stays that way.
> For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health.
Aren't vacations supposed to be for mental health? I think it's important and healthy to take time off, but why lump it with "sick" days? It's difficult to even pin down what qualifies as a mental health day. Some articles I read it's as general as "not being in the right headspace". I think it's categorically different than when you have an infectious disease.
It’s not difficult for everyone to tell what a mental health day is. Sometimes you can’t get out of bed. Sometimes you’re flashbacking so hard you have the capacity of a 10 year old. Sometimes someone is trying desperately to not self harm. There’s a tendency to trivialize mental health as somehow not health, I think because a lot of the time people have such trouble empathizing, as if somehow it’s not a real thing. This attitude is why so many people with mental health problems find it difficult to keep and maintain employment - so many question and trivialize any mental health problem as some inherent weakness rather than as a disease, or an injury.
Vacations are for life itself! Some people are super happy working every day, that's their life. Good on them. They might still use vacation for funerals, moving households, other needs of life. If you work to live rather than live to work, they are for doing things that make you happy. Is that mental health? I guess. But that frames the goal as maximum working not maximum life.
Think about it, seniority comes with more vacation time. As a "perk", it's desirable on its own. Unless work is inherently unhealthy, and it's a perk to be less unhealthy.
A perfectly healthy person can get a cold, need a day or two off, and then be back at 100%. I don't think a day or two off is going to take someone from the verge of a mental breakdown, to 100% mentally healthy. So they're not really equivalent.
>I don't think a day or two off is going to take someone from the verge of a mental breakdown, to 100% mentally healthy.
Fuck this attitude. I've avoided burnout by taking short-notice leave, a day at a time. I have used it to get clothes ready for the next work day, cleanup house, take care of my dog, play video games, or pursue hobbies. It keeps my mental health at a reasonable level. Maybe not 100% but you can't really put a percent on physical health either. And it's easier to take one day to recover(going from e.g. 20% to 80%) than to need months of recovery when you do get totally burned out.
That's been 100% my experience as well. The real choice for me is "do I want to sit in front of my keyboarding spiraling down further and being mostly useless (and feeling guilty about that), or do I want to spend a little time addressing the problem and come back when I can function." Often times even just 3-4 hours is enough to do that. Getting FMLA protection for my chronic health condition has been amazing for that as it removed the guilt I used to feel about taking time, and I'm more productive than I've been in years despite taking a few hours a week. Recovering from burnout is seriously hard and it honestly needs it's own DSM diagnosis at this point.
It’s painful to read this style of attitude to the organ we know so little about. “Mental” health is no different from heart health— it’s a collection of cells, some chemicals, and a bit of electricity. If any of that goes wrong in your heart, do you have the same callous attitude?
Some companies don't make a difference between personal days and sick days. Both are days where the employer is given little to no notice that you won't be at work that day. Vacation days generally should be planned ahead of time.
I think taking sick days for mental health is exactly what it's for.
And within some reasonable amount, it's not unreasonable to take it after a really awful night of sleep or crazy 18 hour shift the day before, etc.
With white collar office work we can do remotely, we've all been lulled into taking essentially 0 sick days truly off. I've probably taken an average of 0-1 per year in my career. Most of the time any of us are sick we, at most, offer that we'll be offline a couple hours and login for the rest of the day.
Our parents generation had jobs where they accrued 5-7 days/year of sick day, and actually rolled it over like vacation days.. sometimes with no limits, allowing them to retire a year early paid, etc.
We've let this all get chipped away to the point that many of us don't even have vacation days that rollover, or if they do, must be used within Q1 and then get zeroed out on March 31st.
Never mind a fixed allotment of sick days we can feel comfortable using without suspicion.
What do most jobs give for vacation time? It took me 15 years at my current job to get four weeks. Before that, two.
Assuming that two weeks a year is the norm going on other posts here, you feel it's appropriate to go say six months (evenly spacing those vacations) to work every day and the employee be at their best? What if said employee rarely gets physically ill, they should not have access to a day off here and there?
At least where I have worked, the attitude is your PTO is yours and you can use it for whatever you want, no questions asked. How can an employer be mad for an employee using the PTO they were given? It's Personal time off.
It used to be much more common for there to be a separate pool of paid "sick time" that was supposed to be used for medical reasons only. The thinking was presumably that an employee shouldn't have to cancel their vacation because they had the misfortune to come down with a bad case of the flu for a week.
It's funny saying there's a 10% reduction in worker time. Like I get that that looks bad, but they must realise that sick workers coming into work arent really doing much, the hours in office are wasted even if on paper they're working.
> ‘I Just Wasn’t in the Mood to Work.’ American Employees Reinvent the Sick Day
The title mocks on people personal problems. This is the kind of meritocratic speech we hear from millionaires and CEOs, "People worked harder back in the day".
> That confidence has only grown as record low unemployment persists.
They aren't even trying to hide anymore. High unemployment is necessary for capitalism, is what makes workers accept poor job conditions.
I don't think they ever really hid anything. WSJ articles were always pretty direct about what management and owner class wants. It is just that the pandemic really focused people on the big difference between what is and what could have been the reality a long time ago.
Having generally separate pools mostly worked in the US for decades even if some people took Monday off for a hangover now and then. Having a combined pool--especially but not exclusively a modest one (given that unused vacation does need to get paid out in many cases)--strongly encourages people to come to work sick. Which isn't an optimal outcome in general.
> For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health.
It's sad that we're still so far from viewing mental health as any where near as "real" as other physical health issues (because after all, ultimately mental health is physical). People are visibly under greater mental stress than anytime I can recall in my working career, it's a good thing if more people are taking time to care for this.
Imagine if the article had subtly criticized people for taking more time off to address cardio health or kidney health, it would sound completely ridiculous.