A few sick leave stories from the past few days . . .
MY GROCERY SHOPPING EXPERIENCE
I went to the grocery store Wednesday night after a neighborhood meeting to pick up a few things. I got all my groceries and went to the check out. As I was checking out, the clerk sneezed, and she covered her face with her hand when she sneezed . . . then picked up my groceries and kept running them through the scanner and grabbed the receipt and handed it to me. Now, I’m not a germophobe to the extent that one of my co-workers is (tee hee, you know who you are!) but, I was a little concerned that someone who was sick was handling my groceries and handing me my receipt after she just sneezed on her hand.
Then . . . as the bagger is finishing bagging my grocery, another worker comes up and says to her, “why don’t you go home, hope you feel better.”
And I left the grocery store with a strong desire to wear rubber gloves as I was putting away my groceries and wipe them down with some sanitizer . . .
EVICTION PREVENTION
So, Friday, I was talking to one of my co-workers and sharing with her how much money we had raised for the Housing Crisis Fund. We were pleased with the generous response from the community and remarking how a relatively small amount of money to many of us can sometimes mean the difference between a bad landlord reference or eviction and a clean tenant record.
My employee was telling me about a person who came in and needed assistance. The person was talking about all of her housing issues and the employee kept trying to figure out what had happened to have this employed person fall behind on their rent. Turns out, she needed less than $100 because she had to stay home from work due to illness. That was the amount she made in those few days that she had to miss work. My employee was remarking that the paid sick leave ordinance really would have made a difference to this person. We then lamented that with all the statistics that we gather, we don’t count how many people need eviction prevention are due to a few missed days of work due to illness.
A ROOMMATES DILEMNA
I was talking to a friend who had helped cover their roommates rent last month and wasn’t in a position to do it again. Their roommate was really sick and as my friend put it “obviously shouldn’t be going to work”, but only had a few dollars and couldn’t make the rent. So the roommate went to work anyways. This person was going to be serving food to people all evening.
For every story of alleged “beer flu” there are stories like the ones above. I heard/experienced three of them in three days . . . no doubt the paid sick leave ordinance would effect people’s lives every day, not just the ones who are sick . . . but those who are likely to become sick as a result of sick people coming to work.
