DR K , 07-29-2021 06:43 AM
Line Holder
It’s a pretty simple decision for most non-trolls and pilots who care about their livelihood and employability.
If you’ve had the third party vendor contact you for a doctor’s note, many pilots will decide not to use sick time in the near future when they are marginally sick ie sniffles or at the beginning of a possible cold due to the uncertain negative ramifications.
Example - If you’ve had the bad luck of actually being sick on Thanksgiving or Christmas and accumulated an unknown amount of points for using sick time then, what do you do when you when you have a runny nose and cough in March? Easy decision, hop into the jet with the OP and blast off. He may not like it, but he is not the one who will be riding to OKC or ATL or wherever the compulsory medical evaluation is scheduled after the subjectively requisite points are racked up.
Same scenario with sick time on a single departure line that crosses one or more of the verboten holidays and accumulates many points (how many? Good question!). After burning through that year’s worth of sick hours and getting a doctors note request and a call from one’s manager, what happens 3 or 4 months later when you catch a bit of the crud from a family member? Exactly - see you at the folder.
One of the trolls here who most people have blocked wrote that his previous employer has unlimited sick time in their contract and this is only about greed - pretty amazing stuff. You will be a management guy one day that is given a nickname that nobody will forget (and not because your spelling and grammar are so strange) . But this is not greed, it is simple economics. This is about the most efficient use of scarce resources. The scarce resource is not sick time, it is gainful employment at the best flying job in the industry which is put in jeopardy by using a contractual benefit. The decision is easy for many - threats of discipline and termination compel pilots to fly when not 100% well, despite sick hours sitting in their bank.
I would never judge a fellow pilot here for flying when under the weather or with allergies going on or sniffles and cough. I have not seen his secret file and do not know what he’s gone through or is concerned about with discipline or points accumulation. If sick time usage was truly a non-jeopardy event, I would think differently about his decision to fly when not 100% like the OP was complaining about. In the meantime, this is the nature of our contract and the economics of human behavior. DR K