Eat sh*t, Cal Ripken

Postal Worker Retires After 44 Years Without Sick Day

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/postal-worker-retires-44-years-without-sick-day-204326090--abc-news-savings-and-investment.html

"I was trying to do the best I could, and that just evolved into working all my scheduled days," Ford said.

 

Dog Eat Dog World wants to know why the slacker thinks he should retire at all.

 

I've taken 2 sick days in 30 years in the business, after breaking an ankle and a collarbone on the tennis court, in May 1984. Should have been just one day, but the silly hospital kept me overnight and much of the next day before finally helping me learn how to walk on one crutch.

 

I've been in the business for 17 years and I've missed three days of work for medical reasons. It was after I had my gall bladder removed in 2004.

I could have probably come back to work the next day, but the SE insisted I take the rest of the week off. Since it was a bye week for the college football team I covered, I didn't fight it.

I was working desk on New Year's Eve several years before, and the other two sports staffers were out of town on vacation. I had a gall stones attack, went to the emergency room for treatment, and then went back and put the paper out.

Not bragging, but the concept of "sick days" just doesn't ever occur to me regardless of how I feel. I rarely get more than a head cold. Guess I've been lucky in that respect.

 

She didn't use a sick day, but that doesn't mean she didn't miss time for sickness.

The article says she used vacation days to tend to doctor's appointments.

That's fine. But it helped her accumulate enough sick hours to earn a 5% bump in her pension. So she had an incentive other than showing up to work for not using sick days.

 

More than two years of sick time! She's gaming the system and is making money off that! Lazy federal employees!

 

Exactly, there's personal gain involved. That's why she used vacation time instead of sick time.

 

Makes her all the more admirable.

Feeling a little sluggish, Joe Slacker would take a couple of sick days so that he could rest up and be sure to be healthy for his vacation next week.

Oh, come on.

Do you really think money had ANYTHING to do with it? Are we THAT cynical about people with a strong work ethic?

Even had she used 1 sick day EVERY YEAR instead of a vacation day (44 sick days all told), she still would have amassed 4,150 hours of sick-leave balance.

There's also "personal gain" in enjoying your vacation instead of spending it at the doctor's office. But she decided to forgo that.

 

When was the last time a postal worker went postal?
Seems like it has been a long time.

 

if you control the mail ... you control everything.

 

... And then the barcode reader breaks ... And it's Publisher's Clearinghouse day!

 

I've never understood the pride in not taking sick days. If you're sick, stay home and don't give it to me.