Rambling about Sickness, "Probation Periods," and why we can't Have Anything Nice

It has been about two weeks since I have written anything and that break is mostly due to a moderately sever illness. I had a cold slowly turn into bronchitis which became pneumonia and left me on the verge of being completely incapacitated for the last ten or twelve days but I seem to be getting better now. Unfortunately, I am not yet past the six month "probation period" that my employer forces all new hires to wait through before they are allowed to call-in sick without fear of being fired for the terrible and offensive act of falling ill. I started thinking about my predicament and I realized that I didn't know exactly how I should feel about these sorts of "probation periods." On the one hand, I had a legitimate reason to want to miss work (I went ahead and showed up anyway, though) but, on the other, I have seen people abuse more liberal call-in policies. However, I, ultimately, came to the conclusion that a merit based middle path might be the best approach to these kinds of situations.

Being sick sucked and working through it sucked more. I had to take long coughing breaks that left me light headed and dizzy before quickly returning to lifting and throwing objects ranging in weight from a few ounces to 40 or 50 pounds. Suffice to say, that sort of work dose not blend well with being ill. Even after I started to feel better, the prescription cough syrup left me foggy headed and slow moving and the antibiotics upset my stomach. Again, both of those things impact the quality of work that a person can do. What is the point of requiring someone to preform in that condition? Is an individual who feels that way not more of a hindrance than a helper when he or she is forced to work in a potentially dangerous environment? What hell is wrong with these managerial douche-bags and their unreasonable demands?

The problem, as usual, is that there are a lot of shady, unethical, exploitative people ruining things for the rest of us. Some individuals will take advantage of every opportunity to avoid the unpleasantness of work, even when it harms others and deprives them of the same opportunities. These people call-in every time they drank a little too much the night before or when they made plans on a workday. They abuse the system, to put it simply, and their employers end up punishing everyone for the lazy workers' misdeeds. The employers are structures of authority and authorities often only know how solve problems with the use of threats and force. They say that if you are new, you'd better show up or else because they hope to weed-out the chronic absentees while it is still easy and people like me suffer through a couple of incredibly unpleasant work weeks as a result. From my perspective, it seems like assholes do a great job of firing-up the authorities who respond by acting like even bigger assholes. They, needlessly, poke the seeping "bear" for selfish motivations (there are good reasons to antagonize an authority but being hungover isn't one of them) but it steals everyone's picnic baskets when it wakes up.

I can see both sides of this issue and I think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I am fine with an employer trying to keep only the best employees for the job but I can't stand the idea of unbending rules and "zero-tolerance" policies. I think that things should be, primarily, based on merit. If a good worker (you can tell of someone is good in far less than six months) is sick, I think that it is okay to cut that person some slack and if he or she abuses that kindness, I think that is fine to consider getting rid of that individual before he or she gains his or her union protection, or is fully tenured, or whatever situation may apply.

Well that's all I have for today. I am going to try to recover for a few more days and I will write again next time that I'm off.

Peace.

All the image in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.