Advice for Calling Out (Not Legal Advice, Not a Lawyer, CYA)
Hey guys, I'm sure you've either had a bad streak of getting sick, or just need a mental health day. If you are in these states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington(I mostly know California Labor Law, so I'd check your state laws yourself if I were you)
Then you should be fine! What do I mean? Ever get a manager on your ass because you're "developing a pattern", when all you've done is call out when you're really sick? Most likely either your manager dislikes it, or their boss, the DM, really dislikes it. But here's the thing: in the states I listed above, you're protected—with some conditions.
Did you know, that these states mandate employers to give a minimum of 40 hours protected sick leave to their employees? That's right. Legally, your manager cannot write you up, or administer any punitive action. Write ups, a talking-to, firing, things like that.
And the best part? If your Manager, within a certain time period, schedules you less hours because you used that sick time, and they use the excuse that your calling out sick is reducing your availability, that is actually Illegal Retaliation. Your time sick cannot be seen as missed attendance. The logic is "Why provide sick leave if you aren't going to allow anyone to use it?"
So make sure you keep a record of exactly how many hours you have used. Oh, and if you used PSL hours before the Kronos switch, and cannot find your timecard, either A: feign ignorance about the amount of hours you used up since that information should already be fully accessible to the employee, or B: look at your paystubs to get an accurate log.
Oh and yes, if you use your paid sick leave for a mental health day or just an "I don't want to work today" day, legally you totally can, UNLESS it's been 3 callouts in a row, which they can request a doctor's note.
Happy Call-outs! And get better!
— Malicious Complier
P.S. please give feedback, I like to know what my kinda people can benefit from this
Edit: I feel people are being a little Discriminatory to people who do call out, and let me first make a few distinctions.
I am not condoning people calling out without using paid sick leave, especially when they don't give notice to their store, and call out more than 3 times a month. That is annoying, and we have people like that at my store.
In other countries, like European countries, the average callout rate is Much much higher, because they have the philosophy that working while sick is not only unfair to the worker who has to suffer during their shift, but it's irresponsible, reckless, and unproductive to have someone who is performing under expectations, than to have someone able bodied replace them.
If someone is sick, say with a fever or pneumonia? If they work, and they perform very poorly, can you reprimand them for their performance if they are working? Supposedly yes. So one could say that employers use the attendance policy to guilt-trip you, saying you're bringing down everyone else. So when you do perform poorly, they can have excuses not to increase your pay—because of your work performance while sick.
The average Annual amount of time people get sick (though it's mostly anecdotal) is about 10-20 days. So why do we expect only 3-6 per year? Plus, if you do get sick, why do they expect you to recover in 1 day? You can get sick, and be sick for 2-3 days at a time.
Immune system disorders. Yeah. Some people are immunocompromised, so they cannot choose to come to work. You cannot discriminate against someone who calls out a lot, because they get sick. Diseases or disabilities of that nature are warranted to call out, and I believe but I'm not positive, are a legally protected kind of status.
And once again yes, we all have that one or few people that call out too much or just make the dumbest excuses—I'll be real, those people suck. But let's not American Corporate Wage-Slave culture guilt trip people into working while sick, please?