I know folks think you should work on the fourth floor, but I’ll add you are perfect material for the CPO. Care to do a quick stint before retirement to help protect fellow pilots? Being sick definitely screws your fellow pilots, and shouldn’t be allowed. If you’ve been assigned a trip or short call or are on your first day of a string of reserve days, you should always be forced to commute in and sick out in person after sign-in in person in the CPO.

Calling in sick after being assigned a trip, or after being assigned short call would trigger GFBs in multiple bases. This was an actual CPO policy, and not some well-intentioned mechanism to pressure serial abusers. Schedulers kept a log of anyone who called in under these circumstances, forward the list to the CPO, and FOMs under the direction of actual chief pilots / RDs like MP in DTW would then call these pilots and force a doctor visit for verification…skipping the first contractual option to consider the sick event verified after discussion on the phone of general circumstances.

Never mind that the evening before a trip or short call is when one would logically evaluate their fitness for duty (after the time when open time was assigned but often with well over 12 hours to sign-in), it’s broad-brush policies like this that are corrosive to any employer/employee relationship. And when the “good faith” basis call came in days after the sick event and often after a pilot has already called in well, getting a retrospective doctor’s note was awkward for all involved. Even if one wanted to - knowing the GFB was coming based on the timing of their sick call - they couldn’t pre-verify a sick event.

Sadly, it takes a CPO interaction or two before newbies figure out that the CPO is not on your side as folks are led to believe during indoc.