I think I've established through older posts that there are certain things that I miss about my old, crappy job: paycheck, coworkers, lunch plans and having adults to talk to on a regular basis.
Well, after the last two weeks, I'm now adding a new item to that list: SICK DAYS.
While freelancing is fabulous and a great fit for me, I definitely miss being able to call in sick when I am, in fact, sick. Just like there's no crying in baseball, there are no sick days when freelancing. As luck would have it, I caught a cold from the germy kindergarten class that quickly morphed into near pneumonia. Normally, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. But it just so happens that the timing was about as horrendous as getting the stomach flu on the subway.
Why was the timing so awful? After months and months of looking for freelance work, I managed to pull in 3 months worth of work in 2 weeks. So, it's been chaos for the last 2 weeks, as I haven't had time to do anything but sleep and work and cough and sneeze. Now, I love to work and I find deadlines to be a complete rush. When I'm healthy. Totally different story when I feel like a semi-truck is parked on my chest. For the first time since last year, I actually missed something that my old job offered. And looking back, I didn't fully utilize my sick days. If you have sick days, stop and think about whether or not you're getting the most out of that benefit. And if you aren't, change that, pronto!
In 15 years in the work force, I can only think of a few times that I called in sick when I wasn't actually sick. One time, I called in sick from another state, as I was just having too much fun to drive the 6 hours back home. Another time, I called in sick to watch a 90210 Marathon. And the morning after the 1998 Seinfeld finale party, I definitely called in hungover, which is a form of sick, I suppose. And I think that's it as far as abusing the sick days. Looking back, what the hell was I thinking? Sick days are use 'em or lose 'em and I so should have been using 'em!
The Husband has several very funny stories about calling in sick. He worked as a recruiter for a staffing agency for many years, so one can imagine what he encountered. He still laughs about the woman who came in to apply for a job wearing a shirt that said "I used up all my sick days so I called in dead to work." True story. Another true story is the guy who called in sick from a local strip club. Gotta love caller ID!
What's that saying, "All is well that ends well"? I guess it's true. I'm finally feeling better and 90% of my work is done and billed. Next month will be awesome when all of the checks start showing up in my mailbox. And for the record, one of the jobs I landed was the direct result of having my resume on a jobs web site. Seriously, that really works? Apparently, yes.
God bless antibiotics. Good night.
1 comment:
Interesting fact - we no longer have 'sick days' at the company known as "Famous Book Publisher in the Midwest." They converted us to "Paid Time Off (PTO)" days.
Of course, there's a catch...
Most long-timers here had 20 vacation days, 3 'personal days', and up to 8 sick days along with 2 floating holidays (and 10 calendar holidays). In all, 43 days off out of 260 work week days on the calendar doesn't sound bad, eh?
But, they studied the use of these days and found that most employees (slackers like me) didn't use all their sick days. So they switched things up and we now have 29 PTO days, up to six of which can be taken as "unplanned" -- the replacement for sick days.
For people like me who rarely took sick days (primarily because my boss lectured us yearly on when it was appropriate to take sick days and scrutinized every one we took), it was great! I basically was given six extra days off that I didn't have to justify to anyone. No more faking food poisoning, migraines, sinus infections, and other one-day ailments.
For others, it was a terrible development. They lost two days because they, like you advise, always took their full allotment of sick days. And many really got pissed at folks like me who are slaves to the grind.
So, there you go...some insight to your old stomping grounds.
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