A balance between the two extremes would surely be the solution. I think what America does wrong is that no one actually believes that you really are sick. A more accepting attitude coupled with additional flexibility would be just the ticket.

This is one of those topics that can go a lot of ways for me.

I've been pretty lucky. I've had jobs for the last decade where I've always had plenty of sick time and vacation time to use when I needed it. I am also fortunate in that I don't get sick often. It would be very nice if that were a luxury afforded more people in the United States.

On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs where you have the sick time, but using it is a bad idea. If you're a member of a production environment or call center (as I was for many years) you may have sick days, but be severely penalized for using them. Calling in sick (even with a doctors note) can hurt your performance metrics, affect your bonus, and cause you to lose your job. It's the same thing in retail all over the country. As long as people stand to risk losing their jobs for taking sick time, they're going to do anything they can to not take it.

I'm in the very interesting situation of being in the office sick today, so this was very topical for me. I'm on the tail end of a head & chest cold that laid me out for about four days. I started coming down with it Thursday. On Friday I worked from home (from bed actually) because I deemed it a bad idea to try and leave the house. I have a rather unpleasant sore throat and a bit of a cough, but the worst of it is very over.

I understand peoples concern over not wanting to get sick, and I know some people do get sick very easily. (I'm fortunately one of those people that just doesn't seem to catch most things easily.) I'm not in the office because I am toughing it our or because I don't want to use my sick time (which isn't even a concern). I'm in the office because I have work that needs to be done, and I can't do it effectively from home. (Some things I can, but what I need to do right now means I need to be here.)

So while I respect peoples desire not to get sick, I also have to respect my employer and job and make the right choices. If I had scarlet fever or Pnemonia I'd stay home. A bit of a cough? Not so much.

I also won't take responsibility for your wellness. Everyone has a different immune system and the ability to handle bugs and illnesses. If you know that you're susceptible to getting sick easily it's your responsibility to take adequate precautions. Keep a bottle of Vitamin C in your desk, along with some Cold-eez. Exercise and eat foods that boost your immune system. Consume less products that make you susceptible. Consistent use of any treatment for an illness creates systemic dependency and makes it more likely for you to get sick again, because your immune system has not properly dealt with the bug.

Having worked for my entire career to date in London, I can confirm that there are far too many English people who literally treat sick leave as holiday!

Memorable moments for me include a colleague who called in sick due to a mouth ulcer (apparently affecting her ability to talk) and one who was just "too tired" to work!

It's a combination of attitude and bad management. Get these two right and I'm sure that companies could be flexible with the sick leave they allow.

But the work you do might change at the last moment, and if you're not there, the work might not get done.

I'm not interested in working with or employing people who are so ruled by their moods that they won't abide by the commitment they made when they accepted the job. Not showing up because you don't "feel like it" is very childish. Letting your love life or lack thereof impact your work is immature. If you're so grief-stricken you can't function, take a personal or vacation day.

Maricela makes a strong point about the changeability of many of our jobs. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of jobs in the US taking a personal or vacation day when you 'can't function' is the exact same thing as taking a sick day. I've never worked for an employer who differentiated between sick and personal days. In truth, most of my employers have rolled sick days and vacation days into one large bank that the employee can use.

As far as the idea of being childish or immature, Maricela is very lucky to have the emotional fortitude to hold up very well under emotional pressures and show up to work no matter what's going on in her personal life. But the reason a person can't come into work isn't the issue here. The deplorable treatment of said person by their employer is. I know a woman who was fired because her son was in an accident at school and she had to leave immediately to go to the hospital.

On a personal level it all comes down to responsibility. I was sick enough last week that I didn't go into the office, but I spent a good portion of the day with my laptop in bed working over VPN. I didn't do this because I didn't want to use a sick day, but because I had a responsibility to get some stuff done and I wanted to live up to that. If you don't take responsibility for your job you aren't going to cut it, but I don't think that all jobs (or even most jobs) demand to the minute punctuality and 40 hours of face time every week. The fact that our employers focus so much on that is perhaps the most challenging part of work-life in the US.