A reader writes:
I want to go to HR about my boss coming in sick, resulting in me using all my vacation time for an upper respiratory infection, but I’m not sure I should.
We work in a cafeteria, so we have an HR but we also serve food.
My boss came in Wednesday and Thursday last week with a sore throat, no mask, just Neocitran to handle it. We didn’t see each other for more than 20 minutes each time.
Friday morning, I started getting a sore throat. I’d originally called off for a mental health day but ended up in bed the whole day plus Saturday. Sunday morning, I go to urgent care after coughing so hard I wake up my neighbors in the house next door. Doctor assures me I’m not contagious based on when it started, gives me a steroid, and says I’m fine to work if I feel better. I got back in time to take my 11pm shift, so I worked while wearing an N95 mask. I worked one more shift before I suddenly lost my voice. Went back to the same clinic, get told this time it’s an upper respiratory infection and I’m contagious until it clears.
I text my boss about it because I literally can’t speak. After some thought, she canceled the rest of my shifts this week and we’ll see how I feel for my Sunday night shift. I had been using my vacation days because I can’t afford to just miss work, but now all of them are gone. I had seven.
I kind of want to complain the HR about my boss getting me sick, resulting in my losing my vacation days I was going to use to visit my parents in August. She probably won’t even believe she got me sick since I’m so much worse, but I had just finished a round of strong antibiotics for something and that can make viruses worse.
I worked every overtime shift except two because I had nothing going on, it was going to be tight because of car issues but at least with the vacation days it wouldn’t have been impossible to go up north, but now I get to use them to sit at home in pain. This also resulted in me pushing back an important appointment a month, as well as pushing back looking at new places for rent.
On top of that, HR was supposed to visit me and my coworker about a customer who’s harassing my coworker (asked her out and is not taking the no well) and to a lesser extent me (just bullying) and they won’t ban him from the cafeteria until they talk to us both, so she’s still dealing with him while I’m gone.
Is it worth it to contact HR over this? There’s been a lot of other stuff going on too but I think this is my final straw. I am looking for new jobs for around the end of the summer, but this one has benefits which I really need and are hard to get in kitchens.
I’m so sorry. I would love to tell you that you have recourse here, but you probably don’t.
Part of working around other people is that you’ll sometimes be exposed to germs. The only real way to protect yourself from that is for you to wear a mask — because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the last few years, it’s that you can’t count on other people to wear them themselves when they should. Even when they’d be willing to, though, people don’t always realize they’re sick until it’s too late. So if you absolutely don’t want to pick up something at work, or when you’re just out and around other people, wearing a mask yourself is the safest option (although I realize most of us don’t do that anymore, including me).
Should your boss have taken more precautions himself? Absolutely. Coming into work sick and not masking was a crap move. But reporting him for getting you sick isn’t likely to be seen as actionable by the company. They (and we) can’t actually know he’s the one who got you sick, and food service (unfortunately) has a culture of people working while sick. They’re not likely to address it with him.
At most you could push for a policy that people who don’t feel well need to mask at work — which would be a really good policy for every workplace to have anyway. (If you’re thinking the policy should be that sick people should stay home, sure. But in practice, things like colds can take weeks to fully pass and most people can’t afford to miss work for that long. If employers considered offering more sick days though, it would be a step in the right direction.)