Casa De Morrill

Sean’s sick. A coworker came into work this week with laryngitis. By Friday, 5 people had called in sick in Sean’s group (there’s ~40 people in Sean’s group). Sean started feeling sick on Friday, but he still went into work. Since Friday, we’ve been on a downward trend. I made him sit out on our patio for a little while yesterday just to get some fresh air. Other than that, he didn’t leave the house.
Meals have consisted of warm foods that are soothing on the throat. Lunch was Asian chicken noodle soup. Dinner was the salsa verde braised pork. Breakfast this morning was bear mush (cracked red wheat berry hot cereal). Lunch will most likely be either mac ‘n’ cheese or more noodle soup. Hot tea, water and juice is all he’s drunken in the past 2 days.
Currently, Sean is taking Zicam to hopefully shorten the period he’s showing symptoms, generic Sudafed for the sinus pressure and congestion, and Delsym for the nasty cough that he’s got.

So, here’s the thing that gets me. Sean works in a call center. Call centers are most likely the worst place to work if you’re prone to illness because call center sick policies suck. If Sean has to call in sick tomorrow (which if I have anything to say about it, he will), he’s going to get a verbal warning. It doesn’t matter that if he went to a doctor, the doctor would recommend he stay home and rest. After this verbal warning, he can get away with calling in sick on Tuesday as well without retribution. If he calls in sick again within 60 days, he gets a written warning. If he calls in sick once more within another 60 days, he’s given a final written warning and after that, he’s gone. This rule is absolute. Even if a doctor writes a note indicating that this person has pneumonia and shouldn’t be leaving his hospital bed, Sean’s company will write that employee up. So, what does this lead to? Employees going into work sick and spreading their illness around to everyone else in the call center and then all of those newly sick people have to make the call to either a) come in and continue spreading the illness or b) stay home and get written up. There are better ways to write sick policies without leaving them open to be abused.

Excuse me as I go get a cough drop, my throat’s starting to feel scratchy.