I remember working part time in a fast food restaurant many many years ago, and in spite of having one of the worst directors I ever had, he wouldn’t want us to come working if we were sick and contagious.

Getting a week or three days or even more time on sick leave is very easy in France, well of course, you still can have a uncompassionate doctor who won’t do it, but most of the time, they’ll give those three days to you even if you’re not sick enough, and sometimes, not sick at all.
So there are abuses, of course.

The other day, my friend Fabienne (so you know I’m not making her up) had to go to the doctor to renew her sick leave, but as he was in holidays, she had to go see one she didn’t know. She was treated for depression, long story short, she had serious issues with her boss and lost her mother in between, she also has permanent asthma problems as well and the new doctor gave her what she wanted without even flinching.

There used to be a time when it wasn’t like that, but apparently there a new politic going on in the French medical world saying that doctors had to try to relieve people the best way they can.

I very rarely go to the doctor, because I don’t like that and because most of the time, I already know which pills he’s going to give me. So I buy them and wait for the flu to pass. If it’s not and things are going worse, then I go and see him. But I don’t like it. I need to be scared enough to the point I have no other choice than go, I don’t care about suffering, I can cope with pain, not so much with my imagination though.

At the end of August I fell on one knee pretty hard and god it hurt, really really much. I put ice on it, I put salves on it, bandaged it, and it got better, so I didn’t go to the doctor or the hospital. Unfortunately, when I came back to work, which is kind of physical, it started hurting again, not as much as before, but the pain is still there, I can feel it right now, but I still haven’t gone to the doctor.

At my current job, the ‘official’ rule is, if you mess up with them, they’ll mess up with you. When I was new, I was sick once, and phoned to say I was going to the doctor. The call wasn’t passed to the boss and it created a whole big mess. I, wasn’t aware of that, and went to the doctor and as I refused the 3 days leave, he didn’t do any sickness certificate. The next day I went to work and hell fell on me. And it got serious enough that I was taken in an office and interrogated like a criminal or a terrorist. They didn’t believe me until I went back to the doctor and asked a certificate for the day I had missed to prove I was really where I said I was.
Now, things are different, I’m not new anymore and they believe me when I say I’m sick and stay home for the day, and don’t ask for any proof…

I’ll have a lot to say about germs and contamination and the current phobia people are going through at the moment but I’ll keep it for me for now.

Hope you’re better by now Megan, take care. *hugs*

I remember feeling terrible at work one night, but my manager wouldn’t let me leave. Nauseous, dizzy, couldn’t focus, kept dropping things. At one point I was taking an order and had to stop in the middle of it and run for the bathroom to throw up – even then my manager held firm I had to stay for my remaining six hours. It wasn’t until threatening to quit my job that she finally let me go home.

It’s ridiculous.

….. up until the time they forget again and exploit people once more. America is really bad for not giving workers much holiday either. In the UK you start at two weeks with a new job, ad go up from there.

I’ve been working for myself full time for five years and my new designer job is only three days a week, two of them from home. They are all really nice at the company. So I’ve been very lucky too recently. Although when I was a kid paying my way through college in the UK working Burger King they had a bucket with my name on it as well once when I was ill, rather than send me home.

The usual “sickness rule” in Finland is that if you don’t have a fever it’s really difficult to get a sick leave, no matter what else you might have. Or “pain is no reason not to work” as one doctor said to me when I dislocated my knee really badly (that was later fixed with surgery with a few months for recovery…) – I had tried to explain why I wouldn’t be able to do stable work for awhile. (I did get a short leave after explaining for 20 minutes in detail what tasks were part of my work and why they would be impossible to do with the swollen, wobbly knee.) So… we live by the thermometer here. It doesn’t prevent spreading the disease, but it does protect the sick ones somewhat, because you can actually do harm to your body if you have a high fever and your work is physical.

(We also apparently have really special animals in this country, because they supposedly never get sick during weekends or outside office hours. Except for the metropolitan area, there’s no quickly available 24/7 service for them. But that’s another rant.)