Home Sick

This is an intricate issue.

Sue recounted numerous instances in which both she and other employees showed up for work with runny noses, fevers, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, sometimes because of money concerns, and sometimes because of the fear of losing their jobs. In extreme cases, like vomiting, a manager is likely to send a worker home. But otherwise, management tends to look the other way, she says.

Either way, she says, they want a sick employee to show up to prove they’re actually sick.

“You can’t just not show up for your shift and say, ‘Oh, I’m sick,’” she says, “because you risk getting written up or potentially fired.”

The issue of workers showing up for work sick is getting a lot of attention as the nation gets walloped by the worst flu season in years, and a norovirus infection, which causes gastrointestinal distress, runs rampant.

I’m a big supporter of letting sick workers stay home when they are sick with no consequence. Nobody wants that stuff spread around. But while I think it’s a good policy for business owners, I do not think it is the role of government to mandate such policies. After all, there are wide variances in jobs and levels of sickness. For example, a food server should never go to work sick, but why can’t a factory worker on a machine all alone go to work with the sniffles? It’s a judgment call which makes it ill-suited for regulation.

But I strongly support folks who stay home when they are ill. I don’t want their germs and neither does anyone else.

Thank Hillary?

Here’s a little lesson for the politically naive. This is an email from the Democratic Party:

Friend—

Today is Hillary Clinton’s last day as Secretary of State.

She did an outstanding job representing our country for the past four years—and I wanted to thank her for her service.

Add your name to our thank-you note to Secretary Clinton. We’ll deliver your message to her:

http://my.democrats.org/Thank-Hillary

Thanks,

Debbie

Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Chair
Democratic National Committee

If you click on the link, you’ll get this page:

Do you notice what’s required? Your email address and zip code. This is nothing more than a mechanism designed to build an email list for targeted political ads.

Both sides do this. It’s safe to assume that any petition that you sign is merely designed to build a database for politicians to target. If you sign any of these, don’t complain to me about getting spammed by politicians.

Columbia

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years.

Feb. 1, the anniversary of the Columbia accident, is the day NASA chooses to remember all the astronauts who have died during missions.

Spaceflight is a risky business. Some of the accidents are well known. Others, not really. But they all illustrate just how dangerous it is to leave our planet and venture into orbit.