tell you the number of times he has gone to work sick. He would be so sick he ended up in the ER and then finally out of work without pay for the week. I support ALL and not just one group.

2) this is a feminists' group -- do you understand what the goals of the group are? &
3) I hope your son did not infect any customers when he went to work sick. If his boss doesn't care about his/her employees, he/she ought to care about customers.

The purpose of feminism is not to elevate women over men. The purpose of feminism is to achieve equality and fairness for all.

with Pneumonia, didn't know at the time that's what I had, knew I was very sick but no sick days, chance of getting fired if I didn't go in.

Luckily I was young enough and fit enough that I recovered but it was hell.

I've gone in with fever and the flu, but Pneumonia! Holy cow. I'm glad you're alive! It's sick that you'd have to worry about being fired over a life-threatening condition.

That was after taking three buses in snow and slush to get there.

Good times.

She ended up in the hospital and was out of work for six weeks after diagnosed with pneumonia.

You are so fortunate to have recovered. Please don't push yourself so hard in the future. Take care!

assholes, but because I just didn't know what was wrong with me -- WTF am I so effin' tired?), and ended up in the emergency room getting chest x-rays when it got too bad. Not a fun trip in any case, but to have a boss that will fire you for being seriously ill? Jesus.

than stay home and be miserable and lose a day's pay. That being said, I got a few days of sick pay. But, since I have a chronic condition it wouldn't cover me all the time. So, I would go in feeling like I wouldn't be able to finish my shift. A couple of times I went to work and only made it two hours into my shift. One day I made it through my shift, but had a rather interesting walk home. Interesting in the sense I was very woozy and wobbly and felt like I was going to pass out. I am sure that there are people that have even more severe illnesses that do the same thing and more frequently.

and I think it would be seriously awful to have to go to work sick.

Gone to work with pneumonia, kidney infections, while passing kidney stones, a completely dislocated shoulder and hours after nearly severing my thumb ... and run if the mill flus, necrotizing cellulitis, etc.

I believe I'd rather risk being fired.

Well, I've seen my husband with a cold; I just might believe you.

I don't know what you mean by "being homeless"?

I've never been homeless.

You said you'd rather be fired than go in to work sick. Being fired isn't a trivial thing to many - we use the money we receive in return for doing work to pay for things like food and shelter. Some of these jobs pay so poorly that once rent, the electric bill, the gas bill and the phone bill are paid, food is bought, and transportation is arranged for the month there isn't much, if any, left over to put aside to build that 'three months pay' cushion so recommended. I imagine there's even less money if one is raising children as well.

felt the need to go to work sick as a dog, I "get it".

I always had my parents, who, though by no means "well off"

did live in a modest little house I could stay at if things got

really tough, so I suppose my situation wasn't as "dire",

as those of some others.

None of this means I'm indifferent to the need for sick leave..Having

to go to work when you are as sick as you've describe is criminal, in my view

Sick leave should be mandatory.

why did they vote for a contract w/o sick time?

If you use more than two sick days in a year you can be suspended for three days. More than five (and that's just one good flu bug) and you can lose your job.

I have nearly a month on the books but can't use them.l

giving with one hand and taking back with the other.

You may need a union...seriously.

No one wants to help. I've gone so far as to make contact with a union, have someone come down to speak (repeatedly), etc. They finally gave up on us, since I'm the only one who actually did anything.

Do you work with a lot of conservatives?

Just wondering.

I'm a liberal Christian and I've been informed many times that my church isn't really Christian, if that gives you an idea of what I work with. (I'm a Methodist, fwiw.)

They are very conservative, to the point that some of the men have stated that I shouldn't make as much money as they do and that I shouldn't be allowed to supervise them. And those are the American men! (I also work with a number of international students who think even worse things-and say them.)

Is there any hope of moving away from these folks or this area?

Child custody agreements prevent out of state moves and my child (soon to be a teenager) doesn't want to leave her friends unless we are making a fresh start out of state. She doesn't want to leave this town to move to a rival town or attend a rival school, etc.

a case of bad timing and stupidity on my part. I'm a mobile drive for a blood center. If I know I'm going to be really sick the next day, I can call in with no problem. The only thing is that the relief driver comes from out HQ 100 miles away. Several times I've talked myself into believing I'm not really getting sick and been stuck when I woke up with a raging cold. Then it's too late and the blood drive will be canceled if I call in. The only choice is to gut it out, treat the symptoms and take every precaution to avoid spreading it. I used decongestants, serious sanitary wipes and hand sanitizer.

Running my dairy route years ago I was in a pickle. Same situation. The relief driver would never make it and I had to deliver milk to the schools. I actually thought I might get into trouble with the school cooks if they realized I had a raging cold. I was new. Before long I realized that at any time during the cold a flu season, almost every school on my route had a cook that was fighting a cold on the job. They could have called in but people just don't do it.

for all workers to be organized (union). I'm in a union and we got management to admit staying home when sick, and getting paid, is better than the alternative...........

With the caveat that I'm in a weird donut hole myself...I'm an adjunct teacher in a union and I only get 1 personal day each semester to take off. We don't earn sick time. Being in a union, it's something I'm in a better position to improve, for sure though. But there are lots of adjuncts in the same boat.

and was sick with a bad cold and then caught another about a month later, so I remained home because hey, it's a hospital and people's immune systems are already comprised - I was threatened with termination for using too much sick leave!

That is really awful. You were threatened for doing a good thing!

Performing, working, and having mouths to feed transformed me from an itinerant free spirit into an obsessively reliable hopeless responsibility freak. What doesn't kill you only makes you stupid stronger.

Back in the day it because I/we desperately needed the money.

Now it's mostly just a disgusting, annoying, silly habit that I can't seem to break, although the free spirit has returned, with several caveats.

I know this feeling!

I felt guilty at my old job before this one for taking a week off because I'd been bitten by a Black Widow. I still crawled in a bit too soon, unloading kilns and trying to not barf in them. That was a non-profit where I had sick time, but still--the work is there waiting for you, with no one doing it.

but how many MEN do you know who fit this description?

I know of NONE, but I know of a few women who fit it...

No offense, but I think women are sometimes their own worst enemies...One of the

things women do more than men, for instance, is neglect to delegate...They can

be dutiful little control freaks, always "self-sacrificing" for...Oh hell, I don't

KNOW what for....bragging rights?

Although, when they are sick--we don't get the flu like *they* get the flu, lol! http://manflu.info/

It would be interesting to compare though--to see which professions tend to get more lenience in sick-time and what gender they tend to be dominated by.

Love the "man flu" site, btw!

which tends to be a role we socialize women into, as a society.

with dependent children to care for at home.

So, please, tell me, which child would you have delegated the task of earning the money to pay our rent to -- my 11 yr old, or my 12 yr old? Tough call, I know; but the thing is, somebody's gotta do it, and the kid's lemonade stand went deep into the red during the recession . And it's *sigh* just so hard for us single working parents to find good servant help to delegate tasks to these days. Everyone at the Club has been talking about it. Why, poor Anne Romney has been just absolutely livid over it! (Zorra bats her eyes, flutters her fan, pretends she is "getting the vapors&quot

Sooo,....I guess that leaves us the dutiful little control freak mom who is working 17/7 plus taking care of her children the best way she knows how, and for what reason?

For "bragging rights"?

"Bragging rights"?? Are. You. Kidding. Me. ?

Or could it possibly have been self sacrificing out of, oh...I don't know...love for her children?

And since when has disgustingly reliable and responsible become "control freak"?

Control is what passive-aggressive people attempt to assert when they don't show up, or show up late, in order to give themselves some pathetic sense of superiority, power, and control over others by making their lives uncomfortable. That'll teach 'em.

Another annoying trait single working parents develop, besides being reliable and responsible, is to be unnervingly direct when confronted with bullshit (especially those single parent feminists, when they are confronted with examples of institutionalized, enculturated sexism)...and, darn, I just can't seem to break this annoying habit, either -

So...in this vein...there is also this in your post, btw:

[font color="red" size="size" face="face"]SEXISM:

Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.[/font]

Your post is, unfortunately, sexist.

One of the

things women do more than men, for instance, is neglect to delegate...They can

be dutiful little control freaks, always "self-sacrificing" for...Oh hell, I don't

KNOW what for....bragging rights?

talking about "delegating" housework? .

What I WAS talking about, in fact, was women who work outside

the home who, in those postions, are in a position to

to delegate to adults under their supervision.

As far as this being "anti-feminist", give me a break --It's hardly a

moral failing, for God's sake and there's probably a sociological

reason for it, but the tendency has been observed and commented

upon by women themselves, most of them "feminists"...My own

sister has this tendency in her job and she is actually quite successful,

she just needlessly overworks herself


Too bad you leaped to conclusions, as it makes the above rant,

with all it's accusations about my supposed "sexism"

not only off-point, but almost laughable...I belong to

the History of Feminism group and anyone even REMOTELY familiar

with me, knows me to be one of THE most outspoken

feminists on this board.

It's just that when I see a post where women are referred to in the context of the stereotypically female category of "dutiful little control freak...self sacrificing...for bragging rights" and who "neglect to delegate, like men delegate", I guess my sexism auto-immune response goes into overdrive. I see "working guy who sits on couch and drinks beer and watches TV while working woman comes home and does everything else and man can't understand why woman is consistently resentful about this and tries to explain why, and has repeatedly tried to delegate minimal domestic work, and guy says "hey I do things around here, I took out the garbage yesterday, so what's your problem? You're trying to control me!" syndrome.

As a woman with two children who has managed a household and been the executive administrator of two small successful, but not overly lucrative, businesses at the same time, one a non-profit, the other self-owned, and then later in life a manager of another non-profit as well, I have a tendency to totally resent the stereotypical "control freak female" label. You simply do what needs to be done, because it needs to get done, and you are ultimately singly responsible for the work getting done, so if someone else can't, or won't, do it, you do it yourself, even if you are ill, because (sometimes helpless) people are depending on you to get it done.

I've had to deal with more than a few men on staff who resented my position of authority because I was female, and who would childishly try to impede my efforts, and I'm sure that I have been labeled as a "control freak" by men both in my home and male staff members as well. (I do not believe that any of the women who worked or lived with me ever considered me a "dutiful little control freak self sacrificing for bragging rights". The younger brother (in his mid 20's) of one of my LTR partners who rented a room in our home actually had the audacity to say to me "Who appointed you God?" after I politely explained to him, while he was finishing scrubbing the cooking surfaces off of my expensive non-stick cookware with a metal scrubber, that doing so would ruin the cooking surfaces, and that that I would appreciate it if he cleaned up his own messes in the house. etc.

Soooo, from experience, I learned that, by only hiring women whenever possible, I no longer had these types of problems, maybe because we has all learned how to be dutiful little self sacrificing control freaks I suppose; anyway, under those circumstances, all the women simply did their job without hitting on each other, or trying to sabotage me, freeing me up to relax because I no longer had to monitor staff, and could concentrate on my primary work, allowing me to vacate my position of Chief Dutiful Little Control Freak Who Self Sacrifices Because The Reality Of The Situation Is That A Deadline Is Looming And She Needs To Complete Work That Failed To Get Done By Petulant, Disrespectful Staff

My children absolutely considered me a "dutiful little self-sacrificing control freak" when they were teenagers. Now that they are grown up, married, one with two children, neither of them even remotely believes that I was/am a control freak anymore. And it appears that I have been fairly successful in getting them to understand why and how to pull their weight so that they don't ever come to view their wives as "dutiful little control freaks self-sacrificing to claim bragging rights".

Now, I do see your point that there are some women who are totally, and needlessly, workaholics. It is regretful that male workaholics are generally positively stereotyped as "admirable, productive, highly respected over achievers", while women who conduct themselves in exactly the same manner as the aforementioned men are generally negatively stereotyped as a "dutiful little control freak self-sacrificing for bragging rights". Both are often heart attacks waiting to happen; the difference is, the man gets respect for earning his heart attack, while the woman is labeled an overbearing, shrewish, self-sacrificing fool for earning hers.

Honestly, I find it distressing that the feminist women you refer to in your post would stereotype workaholic women as "dutiful little control freaks self-sacrificing for bragging rights". I am pretty sure that there are some common sociological reasons behind women becoming workaholics.

Anyway, I sincerely do apologize for misreading your post as sexist; it is true that I am not familiar with you as a frequent poster in Feminist Groups, and because that stereotype/label "dutiful little control freak who refuses to delegate and self sacrifices because of a need to claim bragging rights" basically applies only to women, it totally hit a very, very raw nerve in me. I did not equate someone being "an obsessively reliable hopeless responsibility freak" with women working themselves to death for no good reason. And I have always viewed domestic responsibilities as equal in value and necessity to working within the system, so I do not automatically distinguish these types of work from one another. Again, my bad.

So very sorry. Please forgive me for my unwarranted, rude response. I do hope you can find some understanding, and a bit of empathy, of/for/why/where I was coming from with my misdirected rant, after this reading this relatively deficient explanatory "novel".

you, and no doubt other women, are very sensitive about.

I can see how it could be seen as offensive, especially with the diminutive "little".

It was a poor choice of words and I shouldn't have used them.

My sincere apologies.

back at ya

I only have a few sick days a year and usually end up using them for when my kids are sick and I need to care for them. But I can't tell work that. They think I should have a sitter ferry my sick kids to the doctor and babysit them.....ha ha ha ha. No one wants to babysit sick kids. And the hassle of authorization to take them to the doctors or give them medication....so unrealistic.

I know it won't happen, but it should. The caring for kids when they are sick falls on women the most--http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21547885/ns/business-careers/t/female-absenteeism-not-just-about-child-care/

I think that is also why fighting for sick days is a Feminist issue. So many women don't even get sick time, and if they do, often they have to apply it to family needs, and come into work sick anyway. But expansion of Family Leave would really help too, for both genders.

so no chance to become Typhoid Mary. When I worked in a building, I would take my sick days, but I only got 4 of them and they "counted against you".

not matter what, those jobs basically had no sick days or any way for me to 'call in sick'. My current job, yeah I can call in sick.

I have sick time but deadlines don't move and nobody else is going to do the work.

There are two slightly different problems facing workers in the U.S. One problem faces those who have no paid sick leave. That's a terrible and unfair situation, it's getting worse, and I fully support unions and workers' rights movements. I would prefer to pay more for products and services and know that other people were part of a safety net ensuring their basic human needs, including a living wage and health care benefits. I would prefer to pay slightly higher taxes to expand the safety net. I probably wouldn't even have to pay more if we redistributed some of the wealth that is currently being hogged by the 1% and shared it more fairly among everybody else.

The other problem is the issue of job security. Even for those of us fortunate enough to have jobs with paid sick leave, there's the question of risking your job by taking off time, especially during crunch times at work or if there is an important project it would be unwise to miss. This is the reason many of us take little vacation, work during vacations, and work while we're sick.

The problems are related in that they both stem from an economic environment that puts profits and money ahead of human wellbeing.

I have to throwing up before I will stay home.