Calling in Sick

I don't think there is a single working person out there who can honestly say that the only time they have called in sick at work is on a day when they were truly sick. Most of us out there have at one time or another made one of those calls or sent an e-mail detailing our illness or infirmity which is making it next to impossible to come in to work. This is in sharp contrast to those who despite coughing up lungs or bleeding from the nose, will continue to come in rather than use up sick leave or vacation time. Be that as it may, the topic under discussion here is sick leave and how some people tend to abuse those 'vacation' hours. For people who don't have kids or family to take care of (meaning running them to a doctor or taking care of them when ill), sick leave generally becomes leave that may seldom be used and lost if your particular company doesn't allow you to carry over those hours or accumulate more hours than the cap. So what do you do? Call in sick even if you're not!

Still, if you're going to do that, it's important that you don't go overboard on it. What do I mean by that? Well, let's look at a recent case of an intern in New York working at a fairly presigious bank. As Halloween approached (in the middle of the week this year) he wrote to his managers detailing a 'family emergency' which would preclude him from being in the office for the rest of the week. The next day one of his co-workers checked his FaceBook page and found a picture of the intern dressed in a fairy costume as part of his Halloween celebration. Apparently the emergency was not sever enough to warrant his missing out on some Halloween fun but enough to keep him from the office for the next few days. The intern's manager wrote a reply to the intern and copied the entire office on it. In addition to responding to the note that he would be out of the office, the manager attached the picture of the intern at his Halloween party in costume for the whole office to see. Basically it was an indication to the intern that his manager knew that the call in sick was a sham.

Now there have been numerous discussions on this and similar incidents on various forums to be found on the internet. There are many who feel that it isn't 'legal' for a company to view someone's facebook page or other such page since this is 'private' or personal. For those people who believe that, I say 'you are living in a fantasy world'. I have said it before and I will say it again, people tend to think that no one else in the world is capable of seeing their 'personal' pages on the internet save for those who are on their list of friends or associates. I have news for them. If it's on the internet, there is a very good chance that someone else will be able to see it too. I have no illusions that this page is only being viewed by a select group of people that I know. I am aware that strangers from all over the world visit this page and as such I don't post any personal or private information on here simply because there is little or no way of safeguarding it.

On sites like FaceBook and Orkut, you can have text conversations with people via your message page but unlike instant messaging which generally only the person you are chatting with can see, the message pages leave the messages there for as long as you keep them there. That being said, it becomes very easy for someone to come along and read all the conversations you're having with someone. Just because it's your page and you have to sign in with your name and password doesn't mean that anyone else can't see what it is you're writing. If you don't want people to read what you're saying then why post it someplace as public as the internet in the first place. Perhaps the Halloween intern in New York figured that his managers were not internet savvy enough to discover his FaceBook page. All I can say is that most people in this day and age are savvy enough to know or be able to find information about someone they are interested in. I mean very few people can similarly claim never to have googled their own name out of curiousity.

I haven't been able to find out much else about this particular intern though I do know his manager had stated to the entire office that this was not the first time that the intern had 'called in sick' and requested time off from work. Is it really an invasion of privacy when your manager then looks up information about you on the internet or on sites like FaceBook? Not really. If you don't want them to know then don't put it out there. People ask the same thing when it comes to ranting against your bosses or similar things which can affect the work environment. Angry at your boss for passing off your idea as his own? Chances are you won't be the only one reading your post about it so don't go nuts and say what you want thinking that it will remain anonymous on the web. Anything and everything written out there is probably being viewed by someone you have never even suspected. That being said, greetings to my readers out there in Timbuktu.