I worked really hard at my first year at a big company and didn't take any sick days. During my performance review, I scored 4/5 for attendance, even though I arrived early for every shift and did every overtime opportunity. When I asked my manager, she said it's policy not to hand out 5's because it sends the message that there's no room for improvement.
No one could tell me how I could improve my attendance.
Naw, it wasn't a bad experience overall, once I fell into the habit of mixing sick days with vacation days.
They had some exploitable policies, doctors notes for 3+ sick days in a row but no questions asked about 1-2 days, vacation days with 2 weeks notice one day at a time with no right of refusal if there's proper coverage.
This meant you could book Wednesday to Friday off two weeks in a row, and call in sick Monday/Tuesday two weeks in a row, giving you 10 days off for the cost of 4 sick/ 6 vacay. Other exploitable shenanigans were possible around Stat holidays.
The front line managers knew what the situation was, but HR never got wind unless something tripped the system,so if everyone works together on their sick days it was pretty good.
Yo, heard. Reminds me of something familiar on my end as well. Nice when there's a lil bit of wiggle room in a system like that. Gotta have a functional team though that can appreciate that work hard play hard work-life balance thing.
Relatively recently got a decentish gig after only working "good bad jobs." While the corporate culture shock is still abrasive at times, nice having some actual benefits and shit -- other than being able to call in "sick" to fuck off or hang with the boyes without care or consequence. Have a decent stack of mandatory personal/sick days that renew annually.
I can already tell I'm gonna be getting mighty ill around the holiday season, something definitely brewing.
The reason is it makes the managers look good. They aren't judhes on their productivity scores directly, but on how their scores are from last year/quarter. So they intentionally sabotage employees to make themselves look better.
Whenever I'm asked to give feedback on somebody when dealing with support, I always give full marks to the staff member, even if they couldn't help much.
It's not their fault the company they work for is a load of shite.