A friend told me his father in law took all of his sick time before leaving for another job. It surprised me. One he said it was a month. Plus I never considered it. Is this normal? What does everyone think?

I've heard both sides of it, from you earned it take it, to just quit early & not waste each other's time.

Depends on the job. Some you lose it completely, others pay you for half of the time..

yep, depends.
i worked part time during college and accumulated 400+ hours of sick time.

Got my full time job in a completely different pension system and they let me transfer it all over. Now I can buy back my time for half price, or call off sick and get full price. lol

There's something in our contract that allows us to cash out unused sick time at retirement too.

We just want from vacation (which you got paid for if you retired or left) and sick leave (which you didn't get paid for when you retired or left) to Paid Time Off (which maxes out at a set number that you get paid for).

Yes, I knew a lot of officers who burned their sick time in their last year or two, trying to get any knee/shoulder/hip surgeries done before they retire. The Paid Time Off makes more sense.

We have big sick time abuse issues. It ends up screwing somebody into forced overtime, then that person calls in sick the next day and somebody else gets screwed. It just doesn't end. The city has no desire to push the issue.

Some of it is as blatant as a guy calling in sick on a day he was denied vacation and then posting stuff on social media from a wedding or other event.

You guys must be salary workers.

Writing from an hourly employee point of view...
Management seems to let us take sick time as desired. If it is perceived to be used too often or abused for extracurricular stuff, then it is used against you such as less wage increases or potential bonus. All unused sick time is lost at end of year. Our HR person said it is ok to just take off for "mental health day". She abused her time off and no longer works with us.

I used up all my sick time that I had built up (1year) after my injury. It came in handy.

What the hell is sick leave???

I am now retired, worked since I was 15 and never had 1 day of sick leave.

Bob

I was able to turn all of mine back in for retirement credit. I got an additional percentage point of retirement for the rest of my life in exchange for 2200 hours of sick leave. Fortunately, I was healthy during my career.

My old company went to 'paid time off' where the sick leave was combined with vacation. As a result, most employees took it as vacation and when they got sick - no pay. Just as you'd expect people to do.

My mother worked for a railroad union for many years and accumulated 2 years of sick time.

When her cancer returned she was able to stop working and get paid as normal using her sick time up until her retirement date. It was a blessing for her.

I always saved sick time. When I had my stroke it was nice using those sick days to get a full paycheck while I was recovering. Fast forward 2 years and I had to retire because of another one. The sick time I save in between was added to my “time in service” towards my retirement calculations.

The city had to pay you for your vacation or let you take it, not so with the sick time, it was up to the department chief. So a lot of cops saved their vacation and sick time so the could retire early. Literally taking a half a year or more of sick and vacation Time.

If we don't use our sick leave, we lose it upon leaving. You don't get paid for it when you quit/retire, and it doesn't count anything towards retirement. (As opposed to vacation time and flex/comp time, all of which get paid out upon leaving.)

Even with that, I don't recall anyone heading into official retirement who just took weeks/months off to burn their remaining sick time before formally retiring. And while I can recall a few folks who were planning to quit who were conveniently sick quite frequently leading up to putting in their notice, even that's not the norm.

I currently have 360 hours (45 days/9 weeks) of sick leave in the bank, which is the maximum allowed, so I cannot accrue any more sick time. It's nice to know that if I had a serious illness/injury, I'd be covered for over 2 months off. But other than that it has no other benefits.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are constantly spending sick time, and end up calling in saying "I'm sick again, and I think I might have enough sick time to cover today?" or "I'm sick again, I guess I'll use vacation time to cover today?"

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,

When my uncle retired from John Deere plow and planter works,
He had 18 months of time accumulated

Never worked at a place with sick time. The places I worked for others all had PTO. It had its advantages, but one of the things that sucked is people would come to work sick and “share the love” because they didn’t want to waste PTO.

I've only heard of Union Members saving and using sick time.

Doesn't happen among Salaried professionals.

quote:

Originally posted by dar185:
A friend told me his father in law took all of his sick time before leaving for another job. It surprised me. One he said it was a month. Plus I never considered it. Is this normal? What does everyone think?

Must be an old style company. Most companies have started to do away with separate sick leave and lump it all under personal time with a use it or lose it limit.

It was a common practice for federal employees to accrue at least a couple of years of sick leave through their career and before retiring, they would use up two years worth of sick leave.

I don't get shit. Even the few vacation days I get are a pay cut so I take as many days off as I want. 100% commission

When I left the post office I left about 40 days(it may have been more) of sick leave on the books it was about $8k worth of pay. Never again will I allow that to happen. My current job use to pay a 100% of sick leave now they pay half.