Should people work with the public if they have a cold?

If you have coughing or sneezing that spread germs around, no. If you don’t feel ill and can control the wet symptoms with cold medication, I would work. You might write a note to the management.

Their employer should send them home if they show up for work sick and part of their job involves handling unprotected food. I feel like that should be a law.

I hate that.

I think workplace culture still discourages people from taking sickleave. Not sure what it’s like in the US but here some workplaces now want a sicknote if you’re off for a day. Most places it’s three days. I think if employers made it very clear that when their workforce is sick, they’d prefer they stayed home, people would be more likely not to show up.

You have to go to a doctor’s surgery to get a sicknote and that might mean sitting there for a few hours plus you might incur a cost. There was talk of letting pharmacies give out sick notes to people who had minor ailments that should keep them off work. I don’t think that’s happened completely though because of the fear of litigation and liability.

If you’re a casual employee and won’t get paid if you don’t show up – I guess paying the bills will take precedence over the harm of spreading germs.

I’d prefer people stayed home when sick.

I hate when people come to work sick, but I understand it. My employer does not excuse call outs, even with a doctor’s note. Their attendance policy runs on a point system and as your points go up, you go through the disciplinary process, all the way to termination. The points stay on your file for a year. There are all sorts of offenses that rack up points: being late, missing a swipe, working a partial shift, and calling out. On top of that, the call outs are worth different point levels if it’s a shift during the regular week, a weekend shift, a holiday shift, or if it’s a late call off.

No one wants to lose their job because they are sick.

Most hourly jobs with the public, especially corporate ones, calculate labor costs and try to keep them as low as possible. They estimate the minimum staff that can handle the maximum traffic, and try to shoot for that goal. One nameless corporate coffeehouse where I worked took this to the extreme. It always felt like we were juuuuuust shorthanded enough to be constantly on our toes/slightly behind, at all times. This way, if one person wasn’t pulling their weight, everyone else hounded them until they kept up. Otherwise, everything went totally to shit and everyone suffered.

In an environment like this, you have to make sure someone covers you if you take a bathroom break or get supplies from the back. Taking a sick day is pretty much unheard of. If nobody will cover your day, the whole operation goes out of whack. The pressure comes from the top down, from the corporate office to the management to the staff. There doesn’t have to be a policy about a sick note- the culture alone is enough to make people feel like they have to come in.

And @Bellatrix is right, most jobs with the public don’t have paid sick leave. A lot of them don’t have health insurance either, so the employees can’t afford to go to the doctor. So if a doctor’s note is required for a sick day, that sick day could leave the employee several hundred dollars in the hole. If you earn nine bucks an hour, it’s a lot easier just to work through the sick day.

It’s not right that people do this. Especially in food service, they could potentially sicken hundreds of others. But for those workers, there isn’t a lot of choice.

Many people don’t get sick pay. My husband doesn’t. (he also doesn’t work at Walmart. He makes grain bins.) Be careful the next time you touch a grain bin.

Because most employers suck and don’t give a shit about their employees so they create environments where taking a sick day is frowned upon at best and punished at worst.

The manager where my grandson works makes them go home if they show signs of sickness, and they have no sick pay.

Pisses me off to no end. When someone brags about not ever missing a day of work and always dragging themself in even when they are sick I say to them, “I think it is horrible you don’t care about getting your whole office sick.” I just saw on facebook one of our jellies who doesn’t come around much anymore post that even though she feels crappy with a cold she is going to the gym. It took everything in me to not write, “and get the whole place sick.” She can’t use the pay excuse.

It doesn’t matter if it is a grocery store or a retailer or a doctor’s office. You can catch it in any of those places. Even a corporate job the other employees are at risk.

After about 48 hours most colds are not very contagious. But, when someone is sniffing and blowing their nose, I as a customer have a hard time knowing what day of illness they are on. It would be nice if people stayed home a day or two initially to protect the public and work colleagues.

I don’t like it, but thanks to some really good comments on this thread, I understand it better. In society, compromise is a dated cocept in some quarters, but compromise is essential between what some people like and what others don’t.

@everyone Thanks for all the answers!

If you can’t get sick pay, you go into work sick. Most people can’t afford to stay home. Until societal norms change, we have to live with that.

No, they shouldn’t. But corporate policy is not very enlightened when it comes to sick pay.

A massive sneeze in your burger at macdees would probably enhance the flavour somewhat & it most likely wouldn’t be the first time it’d been done either, at least in full view.
“Snot burger to go!”

It happens every day. You just have to protect yourself and hope for the best. Low wage workers who take a whole day off are going to effect their paycheck in a very bad way.

No. However…the most contagious time is when the virus is incubating pore-symptom. Therefore by the time the person is actually showing signs of being sick, too late, Typhoid Todd has already infected hundreds. lol

that’s typhoid Mary

^^^ LOL

@Coloma It’s true right before someone starts feeling sick they are very contangious, but also the first 24–48 hours while sick. You know all that sneezing, and you think, hmmm, am I coming down with something? That little virus is trying frantically to get to the next host. But, not all colds start with sneezing of course.