We have a secretary working on our ward, or maybe I should call it “working”, since she doesn’t actually do anything.
Somehow she has managed to get a secretary job where she has to do no secretary work. Her only task is to organize discharged patients files and send them to the archive (because she weasled out from the rest of the assignments). Since we are now using electronic files, she has nothing to do.
She made sure no one had the right to open her office door, and she spends her day locked in there watching youtube videos.
She also calls in sick. A lot. Like for a week, once or twice a month. No one cares because her not being there doesn’t change anything and she is impossible to fire (something with her filling a disability quota spot because of high blood pressure and her needing a stress reduced work place. Other than that she is mentally and physically healthy)
The other day she called in sick again:
Secretary: “Yeah, I’m not coming in today. I feel a bit dizzy”
Colleague: “Oh, okay! I’ll write you down as sick. You take care!”
Secretary: “NO! You can’t write that I’m sick!”
Colleague: “Eeh, okay… Do you want to take an unpaid day off, or what do you mean?”
Secretary: “You shouldn’t write anything at all!! I wanted to come, so that counts! So this counts as a work day! I WANTED TO COME!”
Colleague: “I’m sorry, it doesn’t really work that way…”
The secretary then spent hours texting our boss how her wanting to and thinking about going to work should count as if she actually showed up.
I’d be tempted to get internet access to that computer blocked, and enforce the no personal mobile device rule. If she gets paid for sick leave, im sure she’ll quickly use her quota up.
Whilst I’m not a fan of forcing staff to quit, I’ll happily make an exception here…
But… it’s the thought that counts… right? And so, if she doesn’t receive her salary but whoever is responsible for payroll assures her they wanted to pay her, she’ll accept this gracefully, riiiight?
something with her filling a disability quota spot because of high blood pressure and her needing a stress reduced work place.
What’s especially bad about this is that that position could have gone to someone who actually needed a low-stress workplace and would be willing to put in actual work.
When you’re sick, your employer have to pay 100% for 6 weeks. If you’re still sick after that, the health insurance will take over and pay 70% of the gross income (up to 3 years) This regulation covers one illness, so for example:
Someone breaks their left foot and is gone for 6 weeks. Then they break their right foot. The 6 weeks are “reset” because it’s not the same cause.
Some people abuse this system, but an employer will find a way to fire them. Unless… they’re undismissable, like in this case
I had a similar conversation with a staff member at a business I was doing some consultancy work for albeit in sort of the opposite direction.
Their management had recently started cracking down on people taking the urine out of their already fairly generous policies on annual and sick leave so that people calling in sick were actually being asked to take that day off as sick leave.
This mattered because taking x periods of sick leave inside a certain time window triggered an HR investigation. Technically this wasn’t a disciplinary but let’s just say if you hadn’t really been sick for some of your call offs there was a chance that could come out.
Anyway, I was asked my opinion on whether it was ridiculous that if an employee was up all night being sick and recovered in the morning but felt too tired to work was now being asked to take that day off as sick leave. They were quite annoyed when I and another contractor replied no.
