Just got a really good job where they don’t have sick days but instead you can just call out sick whenever “on the honor system.” I want to take advantage of this but also don’t want to do it in a way that’s excessive or draws attention. So how many times would you say you call out sick per year/what seems like a believable amount of times to get sick?
I get three occurrences per quarter before verbal warning, four before formal write up. A single occurrence can only last two consecutive workdays before requiring a doctors note or something along those lines.
That said, I only call in one or two times a quarter because we can accrue sick time infinitely. We get 12 days sick, 10 days family, 3 weather. Family and weather do not roll over.
About 6 for illness, 2 for weather
Damn, looks like I’m in the minority here: I basically burn sick time at or faster than the rate I accrue it. Around 20-24 days a year.
My absence never affects anyone else, and I do have chronic migraines so some of these days are “legitimately” used; for others it’s burn out, depression, or just convenience, honestly.
Good on you honestly and if you have a migraine, you arent supposed to work.
If I’d have to do any sort of Increasing Shareholder Value-type of work I’d do maximum absence. I had a lot more sick days when I worked for a small business tyrant with shitty benefits and shitty conditions as well.
4 or 5 times last year, almost all of them because I went to a concert the night before and stayed out too late. I’m currently sitting on about 70 hours of available paid sick time after about 14 months of working there. It doesn’t fuck over anyone else working because we have multiple ppl waiting in the office on standby ready to pick up routes when needed. Union paratransit bus driver job.
I’m norwegian, so I get 4 paid sick days per year. You better believe i use them.
my last few jobs haven’t cared, so long as nobody else had to pick up my slack.
and we can use sick time for healthcare appointments. i generally end up with way more than i use (theres a formula for how much paid sick time we accrue per hour worked), but i guess my thinking is that if im ever up shits creek and need to start leaning on it, it’ll be in the bank.
anyways, you might consider looking up how many sick days state employees accrue where you live per hour worked to get a general vibe of what’s an expected sick time limit among number crunchers.
Probably like 5 times a year. Would do more if it didn’t screw my coworkers.
Do they also do vacation on the honor system? That is: is any/all time off coming from the same pool? I hope not, but it is something various companies try to do to entice people to work more, relax less, and remove the need to pay out unused vacation time when you’re suddenly downsized. In such cases (when there’s no payout for accrued days) always take plenty of vacation time. As for sick time, you should obviously take sick time whenever you are sick. Your coworkers will especially appreciate it if you don’t come in while symptomatic even if you can tough it through. Also take off if you need a personal day. If that sick time (not vacation) ends up being more than 6 days a year, perhaps you should look for stressors that may be harming your quality of life.
No vacation is not honor system, I have actual days there
10 days would be a lot, 3-5 days would be normal.
I very rarely call out sick myself (lucky). I mostly call out sick for kiddo appointments or when they come down with something (manageable but contagious).
I have FMLA for my medically fragile daughter but only use it very sparingly because as seems to be theme of the thread, it would fuck over an understaffed workplace. Probably 4-6 days last year would be my guess.
But like @abc said, so many of my coworkers call out a shitton and it can be mad frustrating.
I’m also one of two people that masks everyday (out of 60plus staff) for the main purpose of not bringing something home to my daughter and having to stay at the hospital for a night or more.
my job runs on a skeleton crew so and has a shit culture where everyone just powers through it. to my shame i went over a decade without a call out (when there were times i should have)
as i’ve gotten older i probably now average about twice a year (mostly injuries). we can have 5 “occurrences” before things get written up unless you take FMLA time.
only plus is they give us a check for our sick hours not used at end of year or my manager will just cash them out whenever if we want extra money. FT theoretically get 40 hours for sick time a year (it can vary a bit and doesn’t all come into existence at once instead it’s spread out and slowly bumps up)
When I’m sick or completely burnt out. But I am in a very lucky position where I can just email my manager that I am sick and they can sign off on it with a “ok” for the first 3 days, no doctors certificate needed. Sick leave is also 100% wages. Unionized public service.
But on the other hand I am 100% responsible for my clients alone and if I’m sick, nobody does the work. Somebody might go without safe housing or other bad stuff could happen and I am responsible for my folks, nobody else even knows the situations. So I typically at least work from home no matter how sick I feel, did that last week.
Also if I have to be on sick leave all the work is just waiting for me when I go back without enough time to do it. It just piles up and everything goes to shit.
I get sick maybe once a year, sick days 1-3 per year. But I do remote days as much as I can to compensate for the drain. And I will not go spread disease to my clients no matter what so if I’d be asked to do that I’d have a lot more sick days.
At least one day per quarter on top of regular time off
Not as much as some of my annoying ass coworkers do, that’s for sure.
Glancing quickly at my timeclock app, I took 23 days of time off in 2025. Most of that was PTO (because we have unlimited PTO/Sick and I am too lazy to really mark them properly).
For example, at least 6 of those days are legitimate ‘sick’ days according to our employee handbook (because they were days I requested off for doctors appointments & our company counts those automatically as ‘sick’ days even if it is just me requesting the whole day off because I could only get a dentist appointment at 2pm on a Friday and I didn’t feel like clocking in & working a half day)
I don’t think that’s an insane amount of sick/pto to take, given that back in like 2019 when we didn’t have unlimited PTO/Sick, we got 20 sick days a year and earned like 7 hours of PTO a pay period. I have a pair of married coworkers who will request off 2 weeks for Christmas/NYE, which is part of our busiest time of the year, and then request another 2 weeks off during Memorial Day, and will frequently just call in sick on random days & they get away with it.
It is really, Kmart said, how much of an issue it makes for the rest of the team. One could argue that a lot of my coworkers take advantage of the fact that they are technically siloed into their own duties/roles, so them taking a week off every 2-3 months isn’t really the end of the world. (I don’t agree with this because I am always picking up the slack when we’re missing 3-4 people on the same day)
From what I understand which is not a reliable metric, the amount of headache your absence causes and how much visibility it has matters much more than the number. That’s what gets people to notice or chatter respectively. Nobody wants to do your work nor get flak from higher up.
But you should of course always avoid getting others sick as much as you can because that’s prime directive level cringe. So you might paint yourself into a corner indulging and then actually being sick.
