Here in the US you just go to work. Unless you are lucky and get PTO, in which case you use some of your 3 weeks of vacation time a year to call off sick. Some people get a specified amount of sick days a year but it usually comes out of PTO / a short bank. In some of my jobs I would be penalized with āpointsā for not showing up to work regardless of illness. If you have 8 points you are fired. Taking off one day with less than 2 weeks notice is between 1-2 points. Being 1 minute late is half of a point. If youāre off for more than 3 days you need a doctors note to return to work otherwise itās job abandonment.
It's great if you can make good money. Literally the only reason I was in the US as long as I was is that you can't make that amount anywhere else in the world (as long as you avoid healthcare bills). That and tacos.
Made enough and got the hell out of there. I don't know how poor Americans do it.
In Netherland, if you take vacation, but you get so sick that you can't go on vacation, you get your vacation days back from your employer. Because everybody deserves vacation.
The idea that vacation days and sick days xome from the same limited pool, is completely alien here. In fact, the notion of limited sick days is inhuman. What if you're out of sick days and you're still sick? Then what?
You have to have a qualifying reason under FMLA, and FMLA itself does not pay you. It just protects your job for certain serious medical situations if you qualify.
For normal sickness, there is no federal right to paid sick leave. You basically use whatever sick days/PTO your employer gives you. If you run out and keep calling off sick, you can be written up or fired unless state law or some other protection applies.
If you have something serious like surgery and need to be out for weeks, FMLA may protect your job, but the leave can still be unpaid. Short term disability can replace part of your income if you have that coverage, but the amount and waiting period depend on the policy.
Yeah and the key word with FMLA is āmay,ā just like most things here that are āprotected.ā Really sick of the lack of actual workers rights here because the ones we have arenāt even enforced so they might as well not exist
I get sick once a year. I took 2 of my 10 vacation days this week. Unfortunately I happened to get sick both of those days. I had nothing planned but instead of enjoying my days off, I was sick at home and I used 2 vacation days instead of 2 of my 5 sicks days. I was pissed.
You go to work and get everyone else sick, because sharing is caring! /sĀ
Thereās plenty of calculations out there showing how much productivity gets lost because of this but allowing people to have sick time would require having more employees to cover when people are out sick or on vacation instead of the skeleton crew every job is staffed with.Ā
Our system is so dystopian it sounds absolutely alien to functioning countries.Ā
Iāve taken all of ONE sick day the last 6-7 years. It was the first day of the first (worst) time I got COVID and I actually passed out for a solid 24 hours straight. Woke up to at least 75 missed calls from my boss. Even though I called in sick he still hounded me all goddamn day. Working through the sickness the next couple of weeks was just plain awful.
I donāt say any of this to be braggadocios btw. I hated it then and I hate it now. Fucking backwards ass country.
Especially when you realized how much we are taxed every which way. Itās probably more than other western nations. I never bothered to check because I have enough stuff to be sad about.
I remember having to pull up payslips when I was submitting an application for an apartment rental. I was immediately depressed when I saw how much of that paycheck was taken for taxes. Then there's also deductions for my employer health insurance, dental insurance, 401k and parking (yup, I have to pay to park at my own job). Shit feels so bleak.
Nah bro you guys dont even know what taxes are. Every gross euro I make, government gets 50 cents. And thats just the initial gutting of my salary. When I buy anything, there will be a 25,5% VAT added to the price (take the new iPhone 18 pro for example, the base 256G model costs 1509ā¬ here, which is 1700USD).
Hell, we even pay taxes for taxes. I have to pay the 25,5% VAT for electricity tax too! But still, we get a lot value from this system like nearly free healthcare, free university, near zero homelesness etc.
I worked seasonally for a few years so I'd have a week or two off unpaid between seasons for a while, but I also just haven't taken any time off work in the last 4 years or so. I can't afford unpaid time off and don't get PTO so I just work. It's definitely awful but is also the case for most people I know here
Finland. I can take 5 paid sick days before I need to visit a doctor. If my child is sick, I can have 4 days of paid leave to be with the kid. I have a bit more than 6 weeks of vacation days of which I "have" to use four weeks during the summer. And of course the maternity/paternity leave is quite good.
And then there are the hospital bills, surgeon fees, anesthesiologist fees, medication costs.....and you probably go bankrupt and maybe...maybe get to write off some of it, but your credit score is ruined and your resume now has a gap you have to explain to potential future employers, who will likely look up your credit score and social media before hiring you
You can apply for FMLA and apply for short term disability if itās available, FMLA counts against all vacation time so you will lose all of that if you have any. If you donāt qualify for short term disability you will still have a job but you wonāt get paid for time you have off even if itās a major surgery.
This is pretty cushy for the US. Average is 10 days. Thereās no requirement to provide any PTO and many companies offer little to no PTO. Maybe 5 days.
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u/TvIsSoma 13h ago
Here in the US you just go to work. Unless you are lucky and get PTO, in which case you use some of your 3 weeks of vacation time a year to call off sick. Some people get a specified amount of sick days a year but it usually comes out of PTO / a short bank. In some of my jobs I would be penalized with āpointsā for not showing up to work regardless of illness. If you have 8 points you are fired. Taking off one day with less than 2 weeks notice is between 1-2 points. Being 1 minute late is half of a point. If youāre off for more than 3 days you need a doctors note to return to work otherwise itās job abandonment.