Performance Review

https://mrlovenstein.com/

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As a German I find the concept of "allotted sick days" disturbing.
- What if I told you that it usually also takes away from your vacation days?
  So if you get sick too often, no vacation for you that year.
  
  That’s sick (pun intended). Over here it’s the other way around: When we get sick during a vacation, we get the vacation days back.
  
  My sick days and PTO are the same. I have a chronic illness I'm working with doctors to treat. Between occasional sick days, and doctors visits, I never get a vacation day
  
  That's not the case in the UK, your annual leave is a legal entitlement, and unrelated to any sick time you may have to take.
  The workers of your nation need to organise a few general strikes to get their basic rights sorted out, I don't like seeing workers abused.
  
  Jokes on you, I haven't been able to afford a vacation in a decade 😂😭
- Yeah WTF, what if you get sick again? Do you tell the flu to sit it out or prepetuate the epidemic?
  
  Yes
  
  Believe it out not, straight to jail.
  
  I was always told to never call in sick. If you’re sick, you go to work and only if the manager says to go home should you leave work.
  
  You get everyone else sick, like Supply Side Jesus intended!
  
  Unfortunately you're likely taking unpaid time off until short term disability kicks in (usually 6 weeks)
  
  wait until you see this documentary they made a few years ago, called "Breaking Bad".
- What if I told you merging PTO with sick days was to get around the Federal requirement for employers to not use your use of sick days against you. By eliminating sick days and rolling them all into one pool, they now can use being sick as an excuse to fire you.
- Haben wir bei uns auch, nur dass es natürlich deutlich mehr Tage sind

I had a coworker whose kids got sick back to back and then his wife, and then he got ill too. By March, he had no PTO and had to cancel his vacation that summer. He was worn the fuck out come summer. I think he was able to flex to work "four tens" here and there, but it sucks that "sick" and "vacation" are not only the same bucket, but could get you punished.
- As a European I can't grasp this concept. As if sickness is something somebody chooses by will.
  
  No, sickness is not a choice, but staying at home to recover IS a choice.
  Just came in to work, projectile vomited everywhere then passed out on the floor. Bonus if you could pull off a seizure.
  
  Where I work, I get 5 days worth of PTO which can be used for either sick time or vacation time. It takes (8) 40 hour weeks to generate 1 new PTO day. We're not allowed to take unpaid time off, you're required to use your PTO. If you do not have any PTO left, you go up to 40 hours negative. You are then required to work 40 weeks to break out of the negative. If you decide to quit or are fired while in the negative, that hourly difference is deducted from your last paycheck.
  It didn't used to be this way. The family owned company I work for was bought out by a 500 million dollar corporation.
  Shits fucked yo.
  
  I've worked at companies where sick days are part of PTO and others where sick days are separate. In the past 2 years, I've had 1 with pti covering it all and 2 with separate vacation and sick accruals.
  
  This is the American mindset via a comment my previous boss made: “We’ve closed the shop due to heavy snow conditions, it’s not my fault it snowed so you need to use your own vacation time if you want to get paid.”
  Same reasoning for illness: “it’s not my fault you got sick so why should I lose anything?” (they see loss of productivity as a punishment they don’t deserve)
  (Sorry if you end up with 3 of these, my phone or Lemmy is being dumb trying to send this...)

Is this one of those comics where you have to laugh otherwise you'd cry because it's so true?

I'm so glad for the German worker's rights. I practically can't be fired for being sick.
- In fact you can’t be fired at all (in the sense of "leave immediately and we won’t pay you anymore“) unless you really fuck up (like, assault your superior or something along those lines).
- That's not true. The hurdles are high but you can get fired for sickness.
  
  That's what "practically" implies. It's possible, but firing someone in a legal way is really really hard. Most fired employees just take the hint, but that doesn't mean it's legal to fire them.

But that doesn't make sense even in capitalist mindset. Finding another specialist is going to take time and resources. Plus, this is apparently a very good employee, already tested. The new one will likely be not as good if this one is perfect.
I understand that this comic is a hyperbole, but seems like firing people over using their sick leave is financially detrimental.
- It doesn't make sense but it happens constantly, especially in low-level environments Where Heads Are a dime a dozen, it's usually not straight out being terminated however it's done in the case of yeah you did everything perfectly but we can't financially afford to give you a higher rating than average. Which does more or less the same thing cuz it tells the employee well it's time to go elsewhere so they're going to be doing training costs anyway
- Yeah, but the new guy's gonna be cheaper than the one with experience!
  I mean, think about the next quarter benefits! Stop searching for stuff like 'reliability' or 'long term'. That doesn't mean anything to the shareholders who'll jump ship the next month.
  (It's definitely an hyperbole, but it does raise a good point over hyper short-termism leading to mass layoffs for 'profitability'. The sick days are just the excuse needed to part the employes that will support their hyper toxic management structures from the ones who aren't 'team players')
  
  Onboarding a new employee is incredibly expensive. I think the stat is that it takes on average 6 months for the company to break even for the hiring costs. That's what I've read through. No idea how true it is
- It most definitely is, and it is such an idiotic mindset when actual number crunching happens.
  Employee A: Been here for a year (due to getting a performance review in the comic), already trained, already knows much about the system and environment, apparently perfect Gets fired for using a sick day
  Employee B: newly hired (since we fired the last guy), needs to be trained (as each work environment can be totally different even in the same field), knows next to nothing about the work flow or systems or environment, might be perfect but we won’t know for sure until next year or until they mess something up really bad Loss of money on training someone for a role that used to be filled by a person who was already engrained into the work
  = a really fucking dumb way of looking at how you handle management
  The new person could also use EVEN MORE sick days or whatever. Just…? Brain… are you there…?

cries in working parent
My employer gives us 8 sick days a year. When we run out of those we are supposed to use vacation time. It's downright depressing how fast we blow through the sick time in a bad winter season.
I'm very very lucky to work from home, so I can neglect my sick kid at home while getting work done and thus avoid having to burn through my vacation time as well. Others aren't so lucky.
- This is pretty much illegal in most European countries btw. But not all countries assure sick children time off.

Actually I've read studies saying people who took their full PTO tended to get better year over year raises.
- I would like to see how they handled companies that have "unlimited" PTO.
  
  unlimited is a scam, people tend to take fewer days when you tell them it is unlimited comparatively as when they have a fixed number of days. I know, I did the same. Now I take care of consuming my allowed PTO entirely and I take a lot more days off than before.
  
  Is PAID Time Off ever unlimited?
- This might be confusing cause and effect. People who feel more secure in their jobs are more comfortable taking time off.

I finally have a job that has good benefits, after only having contract work and unpaid internships in the past. I have unlimited pto and unlimited sick days.
I am too scared to use them because I don’t want to accidentally use too much.
- Yeah it's funny, a lot of companies are switching to "unlimited PTO" because studies show the average employee ends up using less.
  
  I co-owned and worked at a small business and we tried unlimited PTO.
  We had to add a two-week minimum clause because some people weren’t even taking that.
  As an employee, I came to prefer a fixed amount that expired because it felt like it should all be used.
  With unlimited, it seems some people who felt guilty or loyal or “busy” would take less while others who felt entitled would take more.
  
  Many people use as many as you give them. If you don’t give them a number, they only use what they need.

I don't think there's ever been a bad Mr. Lovenstein strip.

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