No words can express the horror of this pension system.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Is there a type of migraine and back pain that only flares up right before and after weekends and holidays?

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So where's the line between reasonable demand for free-time behaviour modification to suit the whims of the employer? If someone who has a migraine that's mostly flared by alcohol and related things, their migraine isn't as valid a reason to miss work as the migraine of someone who's trigger is something less in their control? How much power does the employer enjoy vis a vis behaviours based on employee health? Does the employer get to say how many Big Macs you can eat per month (assuming your contract is long enough to warrant concern over long-term health like that)? Do we have special companies to assess your behavioural health consequences and have everyone act accordingly?

How do you separate between the migraines that are genuinely flared by alcohol and ones that aren't, if the distinction is meaningful?

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Originally Posted by Loki

Is there a type of migraine and back pain that only flares up right before and after weekends and holidays?

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Weekend headache isn't exactly an unknown clinical entity, but there appear to be important psychosocial, behavioral environmental components. Ie. psychological aspects of the patient and features of the work (or home!) environment that either provoke or aggravate the symptoms or make the patient feel more incapacitated due to his symptoms. For some people relaxation after stress can provoke migraine.

Wrt. back pain there may or may not be a great mystery in back pain progressively becoming worse for every day of leisure-free stressful back-killing work and then becoming better after three days of rest.

As a rule of thumb, missing work in this way is an clue to both the severity of symptoms as well as to the person's ability to cope with them, which in turn is influenced by eg. his psyche and his environment. It may also signal more severe problems such as substance abuse/addiction and/or depression/exhaustion. Or a crappy work environment featuring wonderful things like bullying and severe effort/reward imbalance.

Which is why I like how the FMLA leaves the diagnosis to the professionals, and not at the whims of the employer.

How an employee qualifies for FMLA using the medicial reason:

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Inpatient care (i.e., an overnight stay) in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical-care facility, including any period of incapacity (i.e., inability to work, attend school, or perform other regular daily activities) or subsequent treatment in connection with such inpatient care; or
Continuing treatment by a health care provider, which includes:
(1) A period of incapacity lasting more than three consecutive, full calendar days, and any subsequent treatment or period of incapacity relating to the same condition that also includes:

· treatment two or more times by or under the supervision of a health care provider (i.e., in-person visits, the first within 7 days and both within 30 days of the first day of incapacity); or

· one treatment by a health care provider (i.e., an in-person visit within 7 days of the first day of incapacity) with a continuing regimen of treatment (e.g., prescription medication, physical therapy); or

(2) Any period of incapacity related to pregnancy or for prenatal care. A visit to the health care provider is not necessary for each absence; or

(3) Any period of incapacity or treatment for a chronic serious health condition which continues over an extended period of time, requires periodic visits (at least twice a year) to a health care provider, and may involve occasional episodes of incapacity. A visit to a health care provider is not necessary for each absence; or

(4) A period of incapacity that is permanent or long-term due to a condition for which treatment may not be effective. Only supervision by a health care provider is required, rather than active treatment; or

(5) Any absences to receive multiple treatments for restorative surgery or for a condition that would likely result in a period of incapacity of more than three days if not treated.

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Not only do you have to have a doctor's note to leave, you need one to come back, and you sign to allow the employer to request medical records in relation to the illness (at least here).

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

Which is why I like how the FMLA leaves the diagnosis to the professionals, and not at the whims of the employer.

How an employee qualifies for FMLA using the medicial reason:


Not only do you have to have a doctor's note to leave, you need one to come back, and you sign to allow the employer to request medical records in relation to the illness (at least here).

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The problem is that no one goes after the doctors for fraudulently helping someone qualify for FMLA. Well that and large companies tend to be spooked about juries providing ridiculous damages just to stick it to them.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

So where's the line between reasonable demand for free-time behaviour modification to suit the whims of the employer? If someone who has a migraine that's mostly flared by alcohol and related things, their migraine isn't as valid a reason to miss work as the migraine of someone who's trigger is something less in their control? How much power does the employer enjoy vis a vis behaviours based on employee health? Does the employer get to say how many Big Macs you can eat per month (assuming your contract is long enough to warrant concern over long-term health like that)? Do we have special companies to assess your behavioural health consequences and have everyone act accordingly?

How do you separate between the migraines that are genuinely flared by alcohol and ones that aren't, if the distinction is meaningful?

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How about you show up when your supposed to and if you don't then you get canned? Most companies will go out of their way to keep superior employees and work with extenuating circumstances.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

So where's the line between reasonable demand for free-time behaviour modification to suit the whims of the employer? If someone who has a migraine that's mostly flared by alcohol and related things, their migraine isn't as valid a reason to miss work as the migraine of someone who's trigger is something less in their control? How much power does the employer enjoy vis a vis behaviours based on employee health? Does the employer get to say how many Big Macs you can eat per month (assuming your contract is long enough to warrant concern over long-term health like that)? Do we have special companies to assess your behavioural health consequences and have everyone act accordingly?

How do you separate between the migraines that are genuinely flared by alcohol and ones that aren't, if the distinction is meaningful?

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I don't think you understand how this works. :noob: It's not that the migraine is flared by drink; it's that people make up sicknesses to get longer weekends/holidays. You might not see this kind of behavior, because you work in an area where people actually like what they're doing. That's not the case with most fast food and retail jobs (and low-level corporate jobs), where playing sick is common.

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Originally Posted by Loki

I don't think you understand how this works. :noob: It's not that the migraine is flared by drink; it's that people make up sicknesses to get longer weekends/holidays. You might not see this kind of behavior, because you work in an area where people actually like what they're doing. That's not the case with most fast food and retail jobs (and low-level corporate jobs), where playing sick is common.

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:D

I know that people do abuse it. But I also know people whose problems are mainly caused by alcohol consumption, and it seems unfair that they're penalized for behaviour that for instance I am free to engage in. The people feigning illness to hide alcohol dependence, fuck them.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

How's their mental health? How's the workplace? I mean "workplace"

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And don't think that's not the other side of the coin, of course. People who like their job and their workplace generally don't skip work. If an employer has a problem with this kind of behavior, it's a fair bet that either they have a shitty environment, or we're talking about the kind of labor that's just never going to result in people loving their jobs. Either can be handled/managed by the employer spending more money to make the working environment better, but I guess it's easier to bitch to the nearest politician and try to complain that a bunch of high school dropouts are outsmarting you. <shrug>

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

How about you show up when your supposed to and if you don't then you get canned?

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Because it's cheaper not to, obviously.

Last I checked slavery and indentured servitude were abolished centuries ago. Here's a simple solutionif you don't like your workplace: quit.

If you'd rather not quit perhaps it's time to realise that the workplace is for work, it's not a social club. It's something you're PAID to do. If you don't like it then the doors over there.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Last I checked slavery and indentured servitude were abolished centuries ago. Here's a simple solutionif you don't like your workplace: quit.

If you'd rather not quit perhaps it's time to realise that the workplace is for work, it's not a social club. It's something you're PAID to do. If you don't like it then the doors over there.

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Is your workplace a place for getting bullied?

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

doctors for fraudulently helping someone qualify for FMLA. Well that and large companies tend to be spooked about juries providing ridiculous damages just to stick it to them.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Most companies will go out of their way to keep superior employees and work with extenuating circumstances.

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so you don't trust doctors to perform within their profession, but you trust employers to not use health conditions as a way to reduce payroll or insurance costs?

yeah, thats logical

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

so you don't trust doctors to perform within their profession, but you trust employers to not use health conditions as a way to reduce payroll or insurance costs?

yeah, thats logical

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Employers have an incentive to maintain a certain quality of a working environment. Doctors have virtually no incentive to stand up to their patients and claim they're not sick.

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Originally Posted by Loki

I don't think you understand how this works. :noob: It's not that the migraine is flared by drink; it's that people make up sicknesses to get longer weekends/holidays. You might not see this kind of behavior, because you work in an area where people actually like what they're doing. That's not the case with most fast food and retail jobs (and low-level corporate jobs), where playing sick is common.

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When it's a pattern of behavior without a real medical basis, that's called Malingering. There will always be some people who do that, and it's usually co-workers who see it first, and complain to bosses. Only a physician (and not doctor-hopping) can make that distinction.

Plus, those low wage workers probably don't have good employer health insurance, or more than state-mandated paid sick time off. But they can still be fired for a bad attendance record. That doesn't say much for the part-timer working min. wage who really does have a health problem, and can't afford/get good care.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Employers have an incentive to maintain a certain quality of a working environment. Doctors have virtually no incentive to stand up to their patients and claim they're not sick.

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Again, that's why we have the Amtsarzt in Germany: An independent doctor, legally required to be thus and also employed by a governmental agency, who examines people where the employer has become distrustful as to whether the person in question is actually sick. (The Amtsarzt also doubles as an examiner in case you want to be employed in a public institution like a school - he checks, for example, if you're a carrier of TBC)

However, the employer only gets told whether the illness is genuine or not. He is not allowed to tell the actual illness itself - and you as an employee are equally not required to disclose the nature of your illness. It's also not a bright idea of an employer to try to blackmail his employees into divulging such information. The fines for such behaviour are very steep.

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

Again, that's why we have the Amtsarzt in Germany: An independent doctor, legally required to be thus and also employed by a governmental agency, who examines people where the employer has become distrustful as to whether the person in question is actually sick.

However, the employer only gets told whether the illness is genuine or not. He is not allowed to tell the actual illness itself - and you as an employee are equally not required to disclose the nature of your illness. It's also not a bright idea of an employer to try to blackmail his employees into divulging such information. The fines for such behaviour are very steep.

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I'm not sure the US has an equivalent. We don't have government employed physicians outside state departments of health or federal agencies. And they're not the kind of primary-care providers a business could/would turn to if/when there's a dispute about Absenteeism for legitimate medical reasons. hmm


Decades ago, there were company/corporate/industrial physicians or nursing staff. It started as a "primary service" for the workers needing injury treatment, when the machinery or labor environment was very dangerous, but it also helped the employers avoid class-action law suits and industry-related regulations.

I'm not totally sure about this, but my impression is that today's larger modern employers (the ones who also subsidize employee health insurance) are given a very hefty discount for their liability/casualty/health insurance policies....if they have just one nurse on duty per shift. Sometimes that means just the ability to "call" an on-staff nurse who can give them advice. We all know that might mean a phone call to a phone bank in India.

Industrial, Occupational, and Public Health nurses may have very good input about how to avoid work-related injuries or hazards, but are smacked down by being told that's not their job or it's outside their job description.

After that point, everyone is subjected to some higher entity with authority powers. In the US, that usually means the employer.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Is your workplace a place for getting bullied?

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No, zero tolerance for bullying.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Employers have an incentive to maintain a certain quality of a working environment.

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This is arguable, at best, for the benefit of the subject concerning the criteria we've discussed so far. Nonspecialized positions are rarely afforded such considerations, and the larger the business gets the easier it gets to place work environment lower on the priority, especially as you move down the ladder. Just look at WalMart, inadequate health insurance and their simple presence "Depresses area wages....pushes out more retail jobs than it creates
Your statement could also be taken to mean that the employer replaces the employee currently using medical leave in order to ease the workload or bitching from the subject's coworkers, or employees are dropped in order to get cheaper insurance for the company as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Doctors have virtually* no incentive to stand up to their patients and claim they're not sick.

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*weasel word
Doctors can be and are disbarred for falsifying conditions, they can be and are arrested for such practices. There are plenty of incentives for a doctor to do his job properly.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

No, zero tolerance for bullying.

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And yet it is among the greatest work-environment problems in the Western world. It's almost as if people shouldn't be happy at work

Also important to note that the most common response is reactive to an existing problem, and rarely concerns itself with the victim once the "problem" is removed.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

This is arguable, at best, for the benefit of the subject concerning the criteria we've discussed so far. Nonspecialized positions are rarely afforded such considerations, and the larger the business gets the easier it gets to place work environment lower on the priority, especially as you move down the ladder.

Just look at WalMart, inadequate health insurance and their simple presence "Depresses area wages....pushes out more retail jobs than it creates

Your statement could also be taken to mean that the employer replaces the employee currently using medical leave in order to ease the workload or bitching from the subject's coworkers, or employees are dropped in order to get cheaper insurance for the company as a whole.

*weasel word

Doctors can be and are disbarred for falsifying conditions, they can be and are arrested for such practices. There are plenty of incentives for a doctor to do his job properly.

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Any ethical "incentive" can be destroyed by freee market theories, if making money is the end-all and be-all.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Last I checked slavery and indentured servitude were abolished centuries ago. Here's a simple solutionif you don't like your workplace: quit.

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Sure, and new employees are free and grow on trees.

Even a minimum wage cashier jockey costs thousands of dollars to train, whereas kind words and feigned concern are free, so workplaces that actually adhere to your if-they-don't-like-it-too-fucking-bad approach to employee morale may as well be burning piles of cash on the front lawn.

FFS, aren't you a manager? How do you not know this?

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

*weasel word

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Is that how it is, no qualifiers, because everything is black-and-white and absolute?

How Lewkowskian of you.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

*weasel word
Doctors can be and are disbarred for falsifying conditions, they can be and are arrested for such practices. There are plenty of incentives for a doctor to do his job properly.

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And people can and do win the lottery; doesn't mean it happens with any reasonable frequency.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

And yet it is among the greatest work-environment problems in the Western world. It's almost as if people shouldn't be happy at work

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And you're basing this on?

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Originally Posted by CitizenCain

Is that how it is, no qualifiers, because everything is black-and-white and absolute?

How Lewkowskian of you.

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its more alone the lines that loki loves using these types of words when he has no factual information to back up a claim. the idea that he is trying to paint it as close as he can to being black and white without risking learning otherwise is what i'm pointing out.

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Originally Posted by Loki

And people can and do win the lottery; doesn't mean it happens with any reasonable frequency.

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and you're going to claim this frequency doesn't have anything to do with the fact that doctors are honest in their diagnosis? :bulb:

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

and you're going to claim this frequency doesn't have anything to do with the fact that doctors are honest in their diagnosis? :bulb:

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Would you dissuaded from a beneficial behavior when you always have some degree of deniability and have a higher chance of winning the lottery than of being punished?

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Originally Posted by Loki

have a higher chance of winning the lottery than of being punished?

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citation?

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Originally Posted by CitizenCain

Even a minimum wage cashier jockey costs thousands of dollars to train....

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Citation? :bored: It does NOT cost thousands of dollars to train a temporary/seasonal or retail/cashier jockey. Stop making shit up.

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Originally Posted by CitizenCain

Sure, and new employees are free and grow on trees.

Even a minimum wage cashier jockey costs thousands of dollars to train, whereas kind words and feigned concern are free, so workplaces that actually adhere to your if-they-don't-like-it-too-fucking-bad approach to employee morale may as well be burning piles of cash on the front lawn.

FFS, aren't you a manager? How do you not know this?

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I do know that but it doesn't contradict what I said. I've always believed in treating people right, but I've also always believed that there's no point holding prisoners. For the welfare of both the individual and the company there's no point having someone miserable at work.

If you're that pissed off anyway getting you out sooner and replacing one individual is better than having someone poison the atmosphere meaning 5 people end up needing to be replaced.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

citation?

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Care to cite all the cases where doctors got punished for giving out sick notes without sufficient evidence of sickness? Once you're done, I'll cite all the people who've won a lottery.

I was hoping you would at least try to justify your remark :(

The fact that there are more lottery winners than bad doctors isn't going to help your claim much.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

I was hoping you would at least try to justify your remark :(

The fact that there are more lottery winners than bad doctors isn't going to help your claim much.

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It certainly might help his case if the metrics you are using to judge doctor quality are based off rules that are seldom or laxly enforced.

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Originally Posted by GGT

Citation? :bored: It does NOT cost thousands of dollars to train a temporary/seasonal or retail/cashier jockey. Stop making shit up.

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Look, one of us has a degree from a college of business and one of us believes that evil Republikan j00s want to invade her vagina. You stop making shit up.

And I won't expect that citation any time soon either, because I'm not going to even the waste the time a Google search would take so I can hear back from you about how whatever citation I come across is part of the j00spiracy or a lie to aid in the 0pression 0f the k0mm0n man or irrelevant because the Republikans are sending k0mmand0 teams to occupy your uterus or what the fuck ever other painfully mind boggling piece of insanity you've got stored up.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

I do know that but it doesn't contradict what I said. I've always believed in treating people right, but I've also always believed that there's no point holding prisoners. For the welfare of both the individual and the company there's no point having someone miserable at work.

If you're that pissed off anyway getting you out sooner and replacing one individual is better than having someone poison the atmosphere meaning 5 people end up needing to be replaced.

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Fair enough... and certainly true that unhappy, toxic employees have their own costs associated with them as well.

One odd example about "the door's there" is a temporary one. We don't actually have that much snow at all in the UK, a few little flakes and some go hysterical though. I've been involved with my company now for 7 years and one important part of it involves a lot of people driving on the roads. For the first few years we followed the rulebook (written in America) which states that in "inclement" weather if the road conditions reach a point where the manager deemed it was deemed unsafe to drive then he should take the drivers off the road. The problem is that judgement call varies, so we'd have some (often the usual suspects) wanting to take the night off at the first snow-flake, while others I swear would drive through a blizzard. First few winters then it never reached the point it was unsafe to drive and so if somebody spoke to me and said they weren't sure about driving I'd try and talk them into driving (not force them though and not make it a disciplinary issue if they refused, which they didn't). Those people would just moan to the other drivers though and so you'd get more reacting.

2 winters ago a real blizzard did hit and after a couple of people requesting it I made the call that we would stop driving and called all locations and told their managers to get their drivers back into the building.

Next day we changed policy - It would no longer be upto the manager. If any driver thought for any reason the road conditions weren't safe then they would be allowed to go home (or stay inside) for the night, simple. In hindsight, that should always have been the policy I think, that was a learning. But since then we've faced much worse weather sometimes than the first few years without anywhere near as much concern raised by people - they are happier knowing its their decision, that we'll respect their choice. Also without anyone unhappy there, the rest are happy to just get on with it. Most people who know how to drive can and have driven in light snow before and by not telling anyone to it removes it as a concern.

I have noticed that people in England get scared from seeing a centimeter of snow on the road. It's kind of ridiculous.

<Modhat>Cain I think that sort of language is uncalled for</Modhat>

*steals hat and runs off*

Plot of Thor 2?

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Originally Posted by Nessus

Plot of Thor 2?

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Doesn't have quite the same ring as "The theft of Mjölnir".

I mean, "Where in the world is Odin's hat?"

Could be a Monty Python skit, though.

I'm pretty sure the Thor franchise is allergic to plots.

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Originally Posted by Loki

I'm pretty sure the Thor franchise is allergic to plots.

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I wouldn't be quite so sure about that. Granted, it's not exactly high literature, but sometimes even Marvel has some interesting stuff going on.

For instance, there was a mini series about the conflict between Loki and Thor - with Loki (seemingly) finally gaining the upper hand, incarcerating Thor. Loki, first drunk with joy, realizes after quite a while that the conflict with his sibling is an eternal circle. And that, to truly gain freedom, he needs only to make peace with his brother to break the cycle.

Only, when he rushes to his brother's prison to free him, he discovers that Thor has already broken his shackles and is thirsting for his blood. Thor then kills Loki in his berserker rage, thus beginning the cycle anew ;)


As I said, not high literature, but certainly a plot :)

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

<Modhat>Cain I think that sort of language is uncalled for</Modhat>

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Alright... in the absence of specifics, I'll do my best to make sure I avoid using the sort of language like "fair enough" again.