I have "universal time" for my vacation/sick days/personal days. No difference between sick days and vacation days. Therefore, if I take a sick day, I loose a vacation day. Stupid idea if you ask me, it encourages people to come into work when they are sick so they can have more vacation days. I'm guilty though. I'd rather be at the office with a cold then wasting my day on the couch at home.

I hate taking unplanned days off of work because that means double work and double stress when I come back.

The best solution to this is to have the ability to work at home. I have for the past four years...when I'm sick I just stay home, open up my laptop and work between blowing my nose. Nobody else gets sick and I get my work done.

How about those people that frequently call in sick when you know damn well they are not. That disguised crackling voice on the voicemail they leave 10 minutes before anyone else gets to work....."um, I'm really not feeling well, and don't think I can make it, but I'll try to get in if things get better......call me if you have any questions"............SUCH BULL*****. You know what I'm talking about.

How the hell many vacation days do you get, if you can rollover 90 of them?

FWIW, I always thought allowing this was a bad idea. People need vacations to remain sharp.

We are in the same business Vash. If I miss a day of work I might as well shoot myself because when I get back I will have 500 messages from clients, 3 more jobs starting, and missed 10 opportunities to get another client. I'm not going through that for just a sniffle.

Plus I'm a man and can tough it out. Staying home because of a cough is for sissys.:D

40 ounce bottle of germ-x hand sanitizer. 8 bucks at Wally World. Use it all day, and out here, everybody is sick. So far so good. Besides Cliff, you're PERS. PERS lets you apply sick leave to retirement. When I retire (4 months 7 days and counting) I can apply a year of sick time to my retirement check. That's 3% of my salary for the rest of my life for not using / abusing sick leave. Just my perspective. Now I gotta go wash my hands and squirt on some germ-x.

As a follow up...bell is now in the hospital. Yes, he is quite the "mean bastard" when he's sick. But I'm glad he finally gave up and let me take him to the ER. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers as he recovers.

Same small-biz story for me. Even in the extremely rare cases (probably count 'em on 2 hands for a 15 year period) that I was truly sick enough not to go into the office, I have to / do check email, make calls, etc. from home. It is masochistic and costly to not 'keep up' if I am physically able to do so. At this point my immune system must be pretty strong, as I have a 4-year old kid in pre-school and a (former) pediatrician wife who collectively have brought home every germ known to mankind for the last several years.

I am in complete agreement about not having contagious people in the office. I 'encourage' them to NOT come in unless there is some crisis or deadline that requires their presence, and have often sent people home when obviously miserable and coughing, sneezing, etc. However, obvious fakers abusing sick leave policy do not tend to stay employed for more than 6-12 months.