OP, did you tell your boss that you stay home in order to NOT bring it to your co-workers? I think that's worth saying.
I've always gotten sick more often than many, and since my mid-20s I rarely medicate to make myself appear better (unlike many people), so when i'm sick I'm SICK. It weirds some people out, but at least I'm not out in the world infecting other people, and if I do have to go out, people know to stay far away from me!
Many years ago I had a boss who did not believe me when I called in sick. He told me if I did not show up for work, I would be fired (at this point I had worked there for 18 months and had never called in sick). I dragged my butt out of bed, took a taxi to work (too sick to drive) and spent like 4 hours basically sleeping at my desk. Still sick I showed up for the rest of the week for fear of being fired.
The next week, we had a BIG visit from the home office, and no one was in the office. Including one person who was in the hospital suffering a complication of the flu (probably because of me). The same boss who threatened to fire me told the executive visiting that everyone was ill because I was inconsiderate and came to work sick.
The executive took it upon himself to have a talk with me about responsibility. I explained that I did call in sick but was threatened with termination if I did not show up. My boss denied it, and the executive did not believe me either........until I told him I had the message to prove it. Now back in the stone ages of answering machines when your phone rang and you picked up the machine kept recording.......so I had a record of everything my boss said. Needless to say my boss was fired--turns out this was not the first complaint the home office received about his "sick policy".
Oh that's a story for the ages, I love it! I too helped with the termination of a boss, mainly because he put his nastygrams in email form, and it felt GOOD.
And many of those jobs are in the service industry....anyone care to think about how many people making your food can't take a day off when they're sick because they won't get paid or might lose their jobs?
Yep yep! I was working in the kitchen of a bar with a restaurant, started with washing dishes (where everyone started). And suddenly I came down with my very first case of conjunctivitis (pinkeye). I can only assume, because I had no contact with other people, that a patron had it, wiped their eyes on a napkin, put the napkin on their plate, and I handled it then touched my face (which is why, if anyone in my presence uses a napkin to do anything but wipe their mouths, they take that napkin away with them instead of making the busser/dishwasher deal with it).
I was told to come to work or else. And at the same time, they had promoted me to the cash register.
So there I was, eye streaming, no makeup, glasses instead of contacts, doing my darned to not let anything that had touched my face touch the money! They were LUCKY it was me, and not one of the slobs I worked with, b/c those people would have thought it was funny to give out eye disease with change.
Anyway, OP, I would really talk to your boss about this, explaining why you stay home!
