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That’s called sick
Exactly… No need to tell them any more than that.
Mental health days are real sick days
Employers can’t legally do anything to stop you from taking time off
They have to pay you for sick time if you have sick time available. They can still count it against your attendance and fire you for it, though.
It’s bullshit, but it’s true.
In new zealand. You can
Australia too, they’re called mental health days.
In Poland also, 4 times a year. But then everybody assumes, You just got drunk. Which is usually true.
There’s plenty days where I’m either burnt the fuck out or feel overwhelmingly constricted by my schedule, as lenient that it is I hate that I have a schedule at all. On those days I’ll just sit back and watch a few space/post apocolyptic movies and maybe do a few minutes of work in between them.
I’m able to do that and don’t even have to hide it, I tell my boss I’m having a movie day and he usually leaves me alone unless something big pops up. He started doing the same, he’s just not as good at it yet.
I’ve wanted to find a new job for more money for a while, but these kind of benifits aren’t listed in job posting and I don’t think I’d last anywhere that wasn’t as lenient.
as lenient that it is I hate that I have a schedule at all.
I feel this
Also, I’m too well to go into work. We called them “well days”
Most of the days I ignore them because I also have “feeling poor days”.
Yes, salary/paid time off is a must for the luxury of well days.
Did someone tell you to “feel worse soon” if you took a well day?
(I say this in jest)
Haha no, but that’s a good one.
I feel like there used to be a time when calling in to work with melancholy was real. Except you didn’t call, you sent a little orphan boy with a letter to your boss and then the orphan just did your job for you.
I like the idea of not going because the day is too fantastic to waste. I had (mandatory if you work more then 35h/week,) “RTT” days you could pop like.
My company has recharge days, basically a separate PTO budget you can use at any time for any reason. I use them so I can go to the beach because it’s always fucking raining during the weekend in NL.
I do. It’s called being sick. Just can’t do it for 3 days in a row without raising flags. 4 days and you gotta get FMLA stuff filled out.
We basically can at my job, but despite our coworker/manager passing away over the weekend it still feels like we’re all obligated to show up to our daily zoom check ins because everyone is trying to process and seeing faces every day probably helps. If it weren’t for that I’d call in sad for the week.
I’m sorry, that’s awful. How are you doing with it all?
Thanks, and surprisingly I feel like I’ve been doing alright all things considered. It was a tough couple of days at first and felt pretty traumatic losing someone who I saw face to face for years, especially when there was never any indication of any health issue, and they’re the lynchpin holding together our small team - it’s pretty hard to think about how we all wished each other a good weekend on Friday and that was it. But I’ve been trying my best to process in a healthy way and come to terms with the reality that anyone can be taken away at any moment - as if life were a battlefield. This is the first loss I’ve really experienced as an adult and never really had to face that reality. I also find it somewhat comforting that it’s probably unlikely that all the future losses I experience will be so sudden, as well as the fact that our team is all going through this together in our own ways.
I’m lucky that I have a great partner as well as the sweetest cat who is keeping me on my routine. Even if I’m not actually being productive with work, just going through my daily routine and getting used to seeing only the faces of the rest of the team feels like it’s helping. Even making my morning coffee makes me sad because I’m used to seeing my boss shortly after, but I guess the more I do it the less painful it’ll be. I initially wanted to take a week completely off, but part of me feels like showing up on zoom every morning is helping my coworkers as much as it helps me to maintain a sense of normalcy and adjust to how things are going to be.
I’m glad you’ve got your routine and cat! Cats are amazing partners in sad. Make sure you allow yourself just to exist in the complexity of your grief for a while though, there’s no timeline you have to stick to to ‘get over it’.
Thanks for the encouragement, it means a lot :)
I mean you can. You’ll still have to show up though.
Several jobs I have had have included mental health days as part of sick time so you can in fact get paid to not come to work if you are feeling sad
Feeling sad is not a mental health issue.
Do you think you could perform your job at 100% if you found out that your child died that morning? Do you think you might have a higher chance of making a careless mistake if your dog was scheduled to be put down when you get home from work? Do you want a surgeon cutting you open the same day they found out their SO cheated on them?
Feeling sad is mental health and can 100% have a serious impact on your job
None of those very valid examples are commonly tied with “today I feel sad”.
Imagine the sort of person that had their child die and being “O no I feel sad!”.
Luckily life happens inside and outside the workplace. You, or let’s say I, I will be sad and working, I will be happy and working.
I won’t work, if something egregious like you mentioned happened to me, or even a lot less.
You wouldn’t categorize your dog being put down as a day where you might say “I feel sad” ?
I wouldn’t categorize it as a day where you call in saying “I feel sad” and get a day off. I call it the day you call in saying “They just put down my dog” and get a day off.
And from an accounting perspective what are they going to put in as the reason why you aren’t at work?
Most companies don’t offer bereavement for a pet, personal time off could work but that can be a limited resource and it encourages a person to work through it, unpaid time off is the same thing, wait! sick leave kind of makes sense to use but the person isn’t really sick it’s more like their mental health isn’t doing great because they are sad that their dog is being put down.
My last 3 jobs at a minimum had the ability to take a mental health day for “I feel sad” and I just don’t remember anything later than that and that is in the U.S. which is known for having terrible work leave practices
feeling sad is literally mental health… feeling overwhelmed is mental health… if you’re sad and need a day to take a breath when everyone else is leaving you alone because they’re working, you should be able to just do that no questions asked…
“feeling sad” can very easily turn into depression and burnout, and depression can very very quickly turn far FAR worse
mental health IS HEALTHCARE, and your emotions - including just “feeling sad” and “i just can’t today” are just as important as having a cold
In 1979, because homosexuality was listed as an illness in Sweden at the time, a few people called into work saying they “felt gay”.
One person even got state benefits for being homosexualAs the article points out, that was only a very small part of the overall effort to change the classification, however it’s still quite funny to think about.
So “I diagnose you with gay” was a real thing a doctor could legitimately say lmao.
A few times some relatives (English not being their native language), when I was younger, would ask me “are you of the gay?!”
I always use the phrase whenever I can. Just typing it is making me laugh.
Some jobs do offer mental health days.
Some places are implementing mental health days. I assume. I feel like I heard someone say that before. Might’ve just been the echoes of my own fervent wishes.
My company instituted “Wellbeing Days.” They marked three days throughout the year on everyone’s calendar and said you should avoid answering calls or attending meetings on those days, instead focusing on personal reflection and development.
… so I stayed home and focused on developing my Elden Ring skills.
I can’t say I would play a From Soft game for my mental health…
They’re actually pretty zen once the repetition “clicks” for you.
I call them mental health days. Physical and mental health are both essential to personal well-being. If your supervisor blows up at this, they need to take a mental health day. Or week.
Time to get rid of the stigma that colds and flu are the only excuses to stay home. No one wants to work with someone in a shitty mood and having a day off to rest and recharge is absolutely necessary.
