can I report my boss for getting me sick?

by Alison Green on July 23, 2024

A reader writes:

I want to go to HR about my boss coming in sick, resulting in me using all my vacation time for an upper respiratory infection, but I’m not sure I should.

We work in a cafeteria, so we have an HR but we also serve food.

My boss came in Wednesday and Thursday last week with a sore throat, no mask, just Neocitran to handle it. We didn’t see each other for more than 20 minutes each time.

Friday morning, I started getting a sore throat. I’d originally called off for a mental health day but ended up in bed the whole day plus Saturday. Sunday morning, I go to urgent care after coughing so hard I wake up my neighbors in the house next door. Doctor assures me I’m not contagious based on when it started, gives me a steroid, and says I’m fine to work if I feel better. I got back in time to take my 11pm shift, so I worked while wearing an N95 mask. I worked one more shift before I suddenly lost my voice. Went back to the same clinic, get told this time it’s an upper respiratory infection and I’m contagious until it clears.

I text my boss about it because I literally can’t speak. After some thought, she canceled the rest of my shifts this week and we’ll see how I feel for my Sunday night shift. I had been using my vacation days because I can’t afford to just miss work, but now all of them are gone. I had seven.

I kind of want to complain the HR about my boss getting me sick, resulting in my losing my vacation days I was going to use to visit my parents in August. She probably won’t even believe she got me sick since I’m so much worse, but I had just finished a round of strong antibiotics for something and that can make viruses worse.

I worked every overtime shift except two because I had nothing going on, it was going to be tight because of car issues but at least with the vacation days it wouldn’t have been impossible to go up north, but now I get to use them to sit at home in pain. This also resulted in me pushing back an important appointment a month, as well as pushing back looking at new places for rent.

On top of that, HR was supposed to visit me and my coworker about a customer who’s harassing my coworker (asked her out and is not taking the no well) and to a lesser extent me (just bullying) and they won’t ban him from the cafeteria until they talk to us both, so she’s still dealing with him while I’m gone.

Is it worth it to contact HR over this? There’s been a lot of other stuff going on too but I think this is my final straw. I am looking for new jobs for around the end of the summer, but this one has benefits which I really need and are hard to get in kitchens.

I’m so sorry. I would love to tell you that you have recourse here, but you probably don’t.

Part of working around other people is that you’ll sometimes be exposed to germs. The only real way to protect yourself from that is for you to wear a mask — because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the last few years, it’s that you can’t count on other people to wear them themselves when they should. Even when they’d be willing to, though, people don’t always realize they’re sick until it’s too late. So if you absolutely don’t want to pick up something at work, or when you’re just out and around other people, wearing a mask yourself is the safest option (although I realize most of us don’t do that anymore, including me).

Should your boss have taken more precautions herself? Absolutely. Coming into work sick and not masking was a crap move. But reporting her for getting you sick isn’t likely to be seen as actionable by the company. They (and we) can’t actually know she’s the one who got you sick, and food service (unfortunately) has a culture of people working while sick. They’re not likely to address it with him.

At most you could push for a policy that people who don’t feel well need to mask at work — which would be a really good policy for every workplace to have anyway. (If you’re thinking the policy should be that sick people should stay home, sure. But in practice, things like colds can take weeks to fully pass and most people can’t afford to miss work for that long. If employers considered offering more sick days though, it would be a step in the right direction.)

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{ 186 comments }

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  1. L-squared*

    As Alison said, there is no way to know it was your manager, and not any of the other people you were around those days. I’m sure its easy to blame him, but that doesn’t make it so.

    Also, you worked while sick, because your doctors said you weren’t contagious. Do you know for a fact that your manager’s doctor didn’t give them that same advice?

    1. Michigander*

      Yes, it would be very hard to prove that it was your boss who got you sick, especially if you work in a cafeteria and are presumably around a lot of different people every day.

    2. Anon for this*

      Also, with some diseases, you’re frequently contagious *before* you show symptoms. Not much the manager could have done if he didn’t even know.

    3. RIP Pillowfort*

      Yeah. We don’t know exactly why the manager had a sore throat or what the decisions behind coming in were.

      It’s so easy to blame someone when you’re already unhappy with your job (like OP seems to be). But it really could have been anyone- even someone without obvious symptoms. My mom is so susceptible to respiratory issues and they could easily hospitalize her. It’s not productive to try to find blame. I’ve been there done that, even blaming myself at times that I didn’t do more to keep her from getting sick.

    4. Beebis*

      I got strep a lot as a kid and it seemed like I always tested negative initially. So they’d tell me to go about my merry little life and then call my mom a few hours later to tell her the longer time test was positive and I’m actually sick and get me home immediately because I’m super contagious. After a few times we just started assuming my body liked to not test positive at first and a call would be coming later. Your last question is a plausible scenario to me just based off that recurring experience.

      1. Chocoholic*

        This is my daughter. She almost always tests negative initially and I’ve had to coach her (she is now 20) that if she goes to urgent care, where they may not send out a sample to culture, to always ask them to do that. Sometimes she will drink water or something and that will initially kind of “wash out” her throat, leading to a negative rapid test.

    5. Brooklynlite*

      Exactly to that last part. If you now got your coworkers sick how do you want your company to respond?

      1. Butterfly Counter*

        My take isn’t that she’s asking for a punishment, but for her PTO to be given back to her. And if she got others sick at work, she would want them to have their PTO given back to them.

        1. anonprofit*

          My work actually did something kind of like that when it was very very clear that I got sick from a coworker + inadequate workplace precautions. I didn’t get all my sick time back, but I got enough back to avoid some issues.

  2. jmc*

    Everyone needs to mask for it to be super effective. I really wish people would do that instead of being so selfish. I mask when I go anywhere and I still got covid for the second time because OTHER people aren’t masking. Cause the pandemic is still going no matter what the government says. I know covid wasn’t mentioned but I didn’t see where anyone tested for it either so it might have been!

    1. L-squared*

      Yes, Covid still exists, and it likely will forever. No, there is not still a global pandemic.

        1. WOOLFAN*

          I can respect that, but can we at least please correct that misinformation? There is no need for debate because the question of whether Covid is still a pandemic is not debatable — it is a fact that it is, according to the WHO and the CDC. Correcting misinformation about this is the responsible thing to do, and does not require debate. Thanks!

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Yeah, I mask going into other people’s workplaces because they don’t have a choice about being there and it seems rude to potentially make someone ill just because I wanted a burrito. Similarly, I’d definitely be masking if I was in a customer-facing role (or even just working around a ton of other people in close quarters) because I don’t really trust other folks and their hygiene choices at this point. It’s so funny to me how many people won’t eat at office pot lucks but don’t consider this kind of thing ten times worse.

    3. kb*

      THANK YOU! “one-way masking” is just not that effective- its a way to let people out of a moral/social responsibility.

      1. MCMonkeyBean*

        It is not as effective as all parties masking, but it IS still much more effective than initially supposed and at this point all we can control is ourselves. Mask mandates are not coming back so if you want to protect yourself then mask up.

        1. Msd*

          I think one of the problems with masking is that people aren’t really careful about their hands and touching their masks – so contaminating themselves. I know I forget and touch my mask then touch my face or when I take the mask off I forget to wash my hands. I wear glasses which protect my eyes which is a problem for contact wearers and good vision folks.

          1. Up the Down Staircase*

            I’m not at all careful about touching my mask, and I still haven’t had COVID (or anything else since 2019.) I wear a KN95 at work though. I’m a teacher, and I’m pretty sure I’d constantly be sick without it!

    4. Hydrates all the flasks*

      COVID is now *endemic* as is the flu, the common cold, etc. Which is a major, major improvement over where we were in March/April/May 2020, most of 2021 before the vaccines, etc.
      You could very well have had COVID more than twice and not realized it because you weren’t showing symptoms or thought the symptoms were something else or didn’t have a high enough viral load when you happened to test that day (assuming you tested). Blaming your COVID infections completely on “other” people is not a great understanding of science or disease.
      You’re perfectly in your right to continue masking and it has benefits beyond COVID (other upper respiratory infections, allergy season, etc) but being the morality police ain’t one of them.

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        COVID isn’t endemic, for the record. It’s still considered a global pandemic, the WHO just declared that the *emergency* phase of the pandemic was over, not the whole thing. Endemic means the baseline infection rate is consistent and not increasing; we don’t have that with COVID.

      2. COVIDisn’tover*

        Just a quick note on definitions: colloquially I think you are right with how folks are using endemic (it’s not going away sadly!). But my understanding is that the scientific definition of endemic includes an ability to predict a virus’s behavior (when it will surge, how many people will get it, stuff like that) and COVID is still mutating too quickly for us to predict that with certainty.

        Which to tie it back to the workplace questions — if people used to be able to figure they’d get (say) 1-2 colds a winter and a flu every few years (more often for both if they have or work with kiddos) they could have a reasonable sense of how many sick days they might need. But now folks are getting COVID on top of that, which can mean an extra 2+ times a year of being sick (with however many sick days that means varying) including in summer (and that could change as COVID changes). So we either need to reset our expectations — people need even more sick time, and they weren’t getting enough to begin with so they don’t infect colleagues — or we need to talk about what we do to decrease workplace and school spread (better air filtration, masks when someone is visibly sick, whatever works).

        Otherwise we are looking at more and more lost productivity, which means lost profits. (And increased sickness and suffering but that argument doesn’t seem to be compelling change, so, lost profits is what I’m going with.)

      3. Katara's side braids*

        Endemicity isn’t a measure of danger, only of how predictable and entrenched the spread of a certain illness is. Ebola is endemic to certain regions. Smallpox used to be endemic to most of the world. In this case, we still don’t fully understand the long-term consequences of repeated Covid infection – the constellation of people who develop long Covid is much more random than most people realize.

      4. Chickadee*

        Covid is still a high risk infection for many people (including me!) and is transmitted person to person, so it’s reasonable to be grumpy about people not taking it seriously (testing, masking, etc) and passing it along. Also saying “I caught this virus from X person” is just basic contact tracing? It’s a bit much to claim jmc doesn’t understand science or disease.

        Like yes, I get it, wearing a mask is annoying and it’s more effective to push for better air filtration in public buildings, but also? I mask and I’m fully vaccinated but covid still landed me in the ER multiple times. It’s been over six months since my last infection and I’m still recovering. Please, please stop acting like this virus is mild.

      5. The other sage*

        If it’s pandemic or endemic is not that important. What is important is how dangerous it is, and unfortunately it still is. People still get disabled and unalived by that virus, and it doesn’t look like this will end soon. Plus there are scientists worldwide researching on the effects of the virus on humans, and it looks like most of us will get some nasty long term damage from it.

        I’m sorry I have to say this, I really really wish things where different and that the “covid is over”TM crowd where right :/

      6. It Actually Takes a Village*

        It is not endemic. It is still a pandemic.

        The acute infection is not the major problem. The major problem is that it attacks every system in the body and causes major organ damage.

        Long Covid is an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Likes AIDS. Millions and millions of people are now disabled because of Long COVID.

        The reality of Covid is terrifying and denying it won’t protect you or your loved ones.

    5. Nancy*

      This has nothing to with any pandemic because LW doesn’t say what her respiratory infection is, and there are thousands of them.

    6. Courageous cat*

      I guess I have to finally ask: are we not getting sick of the “everyone who doesn’t wear a mask at all times is a selfish, bad person and I’m a good person because I care about my community members” discourse here, four years later, in 2024? Why hasn’t this kind of moral policing been banned yet, honestly? I’m kind of over seeing it *still* being repeated here ad nauseam every time this kind of topic comes up.

      1. Alice*

        Your side has won in the real world, such that even the staff in the oncologist’s (!) office refused to mask in a winter COVID surge. And now you want to ban *talking* about it?
        If you are so confident that you are in the right, IDK why you care about some criticism on the internet from people who are powerless to get even their own healthcare providers to mask, let alone to control your behavior.

        1. Anon4This*

          I’m fairly certain Courageous cat only means banning in terms of this blog, not fully in life. And it’s a fair question, considering it’s not just people saying “I prefer to mask” but rather people saying “If you don’t mask you’re a bad person”. That does seem to fly in the face of the rules of this blog (not to mention, ignores the legitimate reasons a person may not be able to wear a mask).

          1. It Actually Takes a Village*

            Very very very very very few people have legitimate reasons to not wear a mask.

            We know the reason why most people don’t mask is because they don’t want to be “uncomfortable” and they’ve bought into the massive lie that Covid is just a cold.

            Covid is airborne HIV.

            People who choose to disregard the MOUNTAINS OF DATA that prove that Covid attacks the body like HIV, and that Long Covid is akin to AIDS, are choosing delusion and to disable and kill everyone they share air with.

  3. Link*

    Depending on your food handling laws and resulting certifications, you might have recourse. I know my local ones have strict rules when it comes to working with food while knowingly sick, and while they’re aren’t upheld on a restaurant level cause my city is chronically understaffed when it comes to hospitality jobs, they are upheld on a legal level when appropriately complained about through the correct channels. Now it usually only results in a hefty fine for the restaurant, but I have seen it result in closures and firings.

    That said, my city is one of the strictest I know of, and others are very blasé with their food handling regulations.

    1. Office Plant Queen*

      I’ve worked restaurant jobs before and at least in the state I was in, there was no mention of respiratory symptoms. They’re very clear about fever and/or gastrointestinal symptoms though. Probably because the highest risk to customers is stuff like norovirus, and those laws are made for the sake of consumer safety. Highest risk to coworkers, meanwhile, is going to be respiratory illnesses, just like any workplace

    2. Antilles*

      None of that seems like a recourse for OP themselves though.
      The hefty fine for the restaurant doesn’t affect OP. The store closing means OP is out of a job. The boss getting fired for coming in sick might feel like nice revenge but doesn’t help OP pay the bills (and also OP came in sick too so if firing is on the docket, OP might be fired too).
      From a customer perspective, yeah, it’d be great if neither the boss nor OP came in sick to their food service job. But even IF the the municipal government acted, it doesn’t really serve as any recourse that’ll help OP.

    3. Ace in the Hole*

      I haven’t seen of food codes restricting people from coming to work with a sore throat.

      There’s no mention of the boss having any other symptoms, it’s not clear the boss even had a contagious illness at all (allergies, for example, can cause sore throat). She may have even seen a doctor and been cleared for work just like LW was!

  4. COVIDisn’tover*

    So sorry you are dealing with this, LW, and I hope you are able to find a new position with benefits and better sick time/vacation soon (and that HR deals with that harasser ASAP). Definitely consider wearing a mask in this situation even once you’re feeling better.

    Would love to see more discussion of the long-term impact the ongoing COVID pandemic is having on workplace issues like productivity, absenteeism, and need for short and long-term disability leave and benefits, as well as what folks have been trying to do to make their workplaces safer for everyone.

    And just a PSA from a public health perspective: We are in a summer surge per wastewater testing in the US so N95 masking at work and in crowded places/during travel (at the least!) is worth doing. Highly recommend the People’s CDC (for current stats) and the Sick Times (for reporting on long COVID, which affects a significant percentage of people, including those with mild infections, young healthy adults, and children, and for which your risk increases with subsequent infections).

    1. toolegittoresign*

      My workplace this year upped the amount of sick time included in benefits for all employees because every single employee went over on sick time last year. That’s how a good and reasonable company should handle it because the alternative is encouraging people work when sick.

      1. COVIDisn’tover*

        Love this! Just posted a comment up thread about the need for this, will link in a follow up comment.

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Mine got rid of our bonus COVID sick time at the same time they had us return to the office, which never made sense to me.

        1. COVIDisn’tover*

          :( :( :( so short-sighted. I hope HR folks and others are doing data analysis at organizations to point out how much time is being lost to illness. I wonder if the companies pushing return to office as more productive are failing to see that even a remote workforce gets sick more frequently now than in 2019 so they can’t compare now to the Before Times? Would bet that if they did an analysis of productivity when remote vs after return that accounted for sick time they’d see folks were more productive at home because they weren’t getting sick quite as often.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          Mine got rid of the bonus COVID sick time when it was declared “not an emergency”, which is better than most, but probably about to bite me in the ass.

    2. Mouse named Anon*

      I know so many people sick right now. My co-worker just caught COVID. My oldest 2 kids are sleep away camp. I am sure they will come home with something. Luckily the camps make everyone covid test prior to coming.

      1. COVIDisn’tover*

        Oh no, hope your kids come home healthy!! If they don’t, some masking indoors, open windows, air purifiers may be enough to keep everyone else healthy. Also, when folks get it, even a mild case, it’s really important to take it easy for longer than you normally would — there’s been some connection between long COVID and resuming normal (even low-key, I think) activity too soon.

    3. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

      Good mail-order sources for masks: Armbrust (armbrustusa.com) has N95 masks at a good price, and Bona Fide Masks (bonafidemasks.com) is a good source of KN-95s, including child-sized masks.

      One-way masking is imperfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing, especially for things you can’t move outdoors or skip (like an in-person job, or many medical appointments).

      1. COVIDisn’tover*

        Co-sign! I’m a fan of the Honeywell molded cup N95 masks, I can put them on and mostly forget about it. Kept me safe through international travel and many a doctor appointment, accompanying a loved one to the ER multiple times, and going to many plays.

  5. Caramel & Cheddar*

    “food service (unfortunately) has a culture of people working while sick” but also food service by nature means you’re seeing dozens or even hundreds of different people every day, each with their own particular take on how they manage illness and how they participate in public health more broadly. It could have been your boss, it could have been customer number five, fifty, or even five-hundred that you saw that day. It could have been someone on the bus to work. It could have been someone in your own home who was otherwise asymptomatic. It could have been a food service worker where *you* were the customer picking up dinner on the way home.

    As Alison mentioned, most people aren’t really taking any precautions right now. But after the last four years, my hope is that people do the math on how many people they come into contact with each day and make decisions accordingly to how they protect themselves knowing the vast majority of those people aren’t going to do a thing to protect you.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Long long ago, in another life, I was a private music teacher at a community music school. One teacher complained all. the. time. that her students would come to their lessons sick and get her sick. She was very mad about it. I felt sympathy for her but also frustration, because while of course it’s likely that one of her students got her sick, she also could just have gotten sick from someone at the grocery store or some other public location.

      Last year I went on vacation with my friend and her sister. Sister got sick the last couple of days and tested negative for Covid multiple times. Friend and I both got sick when we got home; friend tested positive but I tested negative multiple times. Is it possible we all actually had Covid and it’s just that only my friend actually had enough viral load to test positive? Is it possible sis got me sick with a random cold but friend got Covid from somewhere else? Who actually knows??? Viruses are very random and everyone’s immune systems work differently and unless someone does a DNA sequence on the exact viruses involved (which afaik is only done in scientific research and not so much on random viruses people have) there’s really no way to know who got who sick with what.

      I’m fairly certain that the music teacher I worked with would have been less upset about getting sick if the school had sick time for teachers, but alas, we did not. So I can understand why she was angry all the time, and I can understand why OP would be upset about losing their vacation time; it is *very* unfair to have to use vacation that you were planning to take in order to recover from your illness. Hope you can get out, OP, and find a place to go that will let you stay home when you’re sick without penalizing you for it.

      1. ferrina*

        It’s a well-known thing with teachers and healthcare workers that you will spend your first year low-key sick all the time. Your body is exposed to so much in that first year that you can’t possibly fight it all. But after that first year, you can develop some impressive immunity to a lot of the common things. But not all of it.

      2. Bast*

        While it’s true that a disease could have come from anywhere, I still don’t think it’s good policy to show up to an appointment (of any kind) when you know that you are sick. Your music teacher friend did not get sick time, and likely suffered financially for having to call out because mom knew that little Sally has been puking her brains out all day, but forced Sally to go to piano lessons anyway because she already paid for the month and “it’s no big deal.” She may have used the same rationale that “well, it’s going around, and Music Teacher could just as easily get it from XYZ as she could from Sally” which is true, but the cavalier attitude towards someone else’s health, particularly when you know that Random Stranger in the store is a 5 second in passing thing while Teacher is sitting three feet from Sick Child for an hour.

        I’d feel too guilty going to say, get my hair done or get a massage while sick because while sure, they could pick up a disease from any of their dozen other clients of the day, or the guy in line at McDonalds, or any other number of people, I still don’t want to potentially contribute to them being sick and losing their pay for whatever time they take out as a result. Maybe it’s just a me thing; I feel guilty and will reschedule.

        1. Daisy-dog*

          My massage place tells us explicitly in at least 3 different ways: You cannot get a massage while sick. They explain that massage isn’t actually helpful when sick (even with body aches) because it’s much more of physical experience than we think (because it is relaxing).

  6. Chairman of the Bored*

    If colleague tried to “report” me for coming to work with a sore throat I would put that person on a polite need-to-know information diet for the rest of our time working together.

      1. Anon4This*

        Because a sore throat can be caused by many non-contagious (and even non-illness) reasons?

        1. louvella*

          But if there was any chance it was a contagious illness, it’s basic common sense to wear a mask. I mean if it’s confirmed by your doctor to be not contagious, sure. But it’s 2024, we know that we wear masks when we’re sick now.

          1. Nah*

            *Especially* in a dang FOOD SERVICE job! Just how many customers had their food accidentally coughed on, or that aerosolized bacteria (from coughing in a different direction – coughing into your arm does not magic away all the particles coming out of your mouth) settled on? If you touched your face even once subconsciously, can you say for sure that none of what you smeared on the ingredients you’re handling was enough to get someone sick?

  7. TheBunny*

    As others have said, there’s no way to know your boss is even the one who got you sick.

    As we learned from COVID you can be infectious before you have symptoms. COVID isn’t the only thing out there like this.

    I get being mad, but you just can’t know for certain your boss got you sick.

    I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.

    1. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

      That statement is correct.

      Statistics show people did not get sick as much – to the point that an entire strain of flu died out – when everybody masked is also a true statement.

    2. I Licked Your Salt Lamp*

      This. I think (at least in the US) if mask-wearing has not been adopted as a common practice in the past 4 years, its not going to happen. Covid is also not going away ever so the people insisting “we’re still in a pandemic”, well, technically you might be right but people have adjusted to the new normal which is higher overall odds of getting sick, probably forever at this point. So if you don’t want to get sick its up to individuals to wear masks and assess their own personal risk.

      1. WOOLFAN*

        This comment is WILD. Wow.

        ‘Technically it’s still a pandemic, but we’d rather just get sick over and over because it’s easier to fearmonger basic safety precautions than actual illness.’

        We are all doomed.

    3. Aelin*

      I was going to let this comment pass me by because I know there is no hope of convincing someone like you, but for those who read this and think maybe this is true, let me assure you that it is not.

      Masking is safe and an effective way of stopping the spread of germs. If you are symptomatic and cannot stay home, going out in a mask means that you may prevent others from getting sick. No intervention is perfect, but an N95 or KN95 that fits well will do a world of good. It is the responsible thing to do, and makes you a good community-member to do it.

      ChurchofDietCoke, I hope that you someday learn the value of being a good community member, and change your ways.

      1. A Book about Metals*

        I don’t think they’re against masking, just that in 2024 it’s not realistic to expect others to do so – that’s just where we are today.

      3. AnonyMiss*

        What about Church’s comment isn’t true? An overwhelming majority of the population gave up masking a long time ago. Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s incredibly unwise and naive to expect everyone to suddenly pick it up again after so many years.

      4. Chairman of the Bored*

        It is (mostly) reasonable to expect that people will comply with all federal, state, local, and site regulations regarding hygiene and infection control.

        If you expect anything beyond that you’re going to be disappointed.

      5. TheBunny*

        I’m not going to say what I’m thinking…I don’t feel like being banned.

        But please don’t tell someone they are or aren’t being a “good community member” by choosing to mask or not.

        If you want to mask, do it. If you don’t, go for it. But to equate masking with being good… well, that’s not the great look you think it is.

        It’s a personal choice. Plenty of great citizens mask. Plenty don’t.

      6. Anon4This*

        There are folks who physically cannot mask due to their own disabilities, be it breathing problems, PTSD issues, sensory issues, and more I’m sure. So please keep in mind that being a good community member means recognizing that you don’t know someone’s life and are not in a place to judge them.

    4. FrivYeti*

      It wasn’t that long ago that people said the same thing about expecting people not to smoke around you.

      1. Lightbourne Elite*

        I hope someday we can come to a point in American society where most people mask when they’re feeling sick.

        We will never get to a point where people mask every day, all day, every time they’re in public. Expecting that is not practical.

    5. louvella*

      If they’re sick, though??? I mean, masking when you’re sick and in public is just common sense. I wouldn’t even want to associate with anyone who didn’t do that.

      1. Starbuck*

        Word. We’re clearly not going to be masking all indoors all the time ever again, but masking when you have respiratory systems really seems like it should be the absolute bare minimum. You might argue that it’s not currently where we’re at, but to argue it shouldn’t be the expectation is absurd.

      2. Anon4This*

        We don’t know that the boss was sick. A sore throat could be due to allergies for all we know.

    6. WOOLFAN*

      You cannot and should not expect others to refrain from smoking around others.

      You cannot and should not expect others to use their turn signal.

      You cannot and should not expect others to throw their trash in a trash can instead of on the ground.

      You cannot and should not expect others to drive on the correct side of the road.

      You cannot and should not expect others to yield to pedestrians in marked crosswalks.

      You cannot and should not expect others to wash their hands before preparing and serving your food.

      You cannot and should not expect doctors and dentists to sterilize their equipment after using it on another patient, before using it on you.

      You cannot and should not expect others to refrain from having bonfires and cookouts when there is a risk for wildfires.

      You cannot and should not expect others to drive only while sober.

      You cannot and should not expect others to be kind, rewind.

      1. RussianInTexas*

        Honestly? Most of these are covered by laws, which is why people do them. Not out of some kind of good citizen feelings.
        And even then, people do not use their turn signals more than they do, still use the phone while driving, even though it’s illegal in my jurisdiction, we have the highest drunk driving death rate in the country, huge number of people do not in fact wash hands before preparing and serving food, huge number of people do not throw trash into the trash can, and many people are definitely are not kind. And many people will absolutely smoke around you unless the place prohibits it.
        Would it be ideal if people wore masks when they feel sick? Sure. Is it realistic to expect it? No.
        Expecting people wear masks when they are not feeling sick? This will never ever happen in the US, unless you have some very strict laws about it, and laws that are enforced. And even then, it’s unrealistic, and honestly a huge over-reach. Saying me who diligently wore masks as long as they were required, and still does where they are required.

        1. RussianInTexas*

          What I am saying, that I absolutely drive as no one showing signal, everyone runs red light, half of the people are drunk and the other are on the phone.

  9. HA2*

    “Part of working around other people is that you’ll sometimes be exposed to germs.”

    Living through the last few years of the pandemic COVID really emphasized for me how much the passive voice here hides responsibility. Instead:

    “Part of working around people is that sometimes those people will infect you.”

    Infecting isn’t a thing that just randomly happens. It happens when some person does it to you. Yeah, you probably can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law who’s the person who punched you, but no reason to pretend the punch just came from thin air.

    1. L-squared*

      I mean, with the case of airborne illnesses, they literally do come from thin air.

      you can infect someone before you even feel sick. You can infect someone without ever feeling sick. Acting like it was some kind of malicious act and not “we live in a world where there are germs” seems very excessive.

      1. MsSolo (UK)*

        And, of course, most diseases have a patient zero – you can hold the culture of wetmarkets responsible for Covid, but I don’t think you can blame the animals!

      2. Nicole Maria*

        Thank you for being reasonable. The virus literally does exist in the air, and sometimes people are contagious when they have no idea they’re even sick. Comparing passing on a virus to assaulting someone is kind of absurd, although admittedly I might be a little salty right now because a rando online recently called me “plague rat” because I said I don’t wear a mask at work unless I’m actively sick.

      4. Alice*

        Some people think, “we live in a world where there are germs… so let’s provide masks that people can use when they are working while sick, and check that the ventilation system is working correctly, and provide paid sick leave.”

        Other people think, “we live in a world where there are germs… so, as Fauci said, ‘the vulnerable will fall by the wayside, they’ll get infected, they’ll get hospitalized, and some will die.'” [Yes, that part in single quotes is a real quote from a BBC interview]

        1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-66643426

          He was asked specifically if there was going to be a serious surge like in the past where there were massive hospitalizations and deaths. I don’t think he meant that those people weren’t worthy of protecting or that they deserve it. I think it’s wrong to characterize stating probability of infection rates and who it will hit the hardest with indifference to that suffering. Also, this was 2023, when he had seen three years of people fighting tooth and nail NOT to protect themselves and others. If we hadn’t gotten the hint in three years, I don’t know what him stating it yet again would have done.

          1. Alice*

            When you’re one of “those people,” it’s hard to see daylight between “indifference” and forecasting harm without trying to prevent it.

    2. I Licked Your Salt Lamp*

      I mean, plenty of people are contagious without symptoms as pointed out already, so unless you think we all should be wearing masks in public 24/7 forever its not helpful to point blame. “Infecting” someone is not the same as throwing a punch like what

    3. A Book about Metals*

      Except in this case OP really has no idea that the boss was the one who gave it to her. Of course he shouldn’t have come to work sick, but as has been said there are dozens or hundreds of people who might have given OP the illness. And OP may have given it to others as well

    4. Mo*

      In most cases, though, you don’t actually know who you got sick from and whether they were being irresponsible. Many viral illnesses are especially contagious in the days before symptoms appear. Sometimes people are asymptomatic hosts of certain pathogens. Few people are going around actively infecting people (which I guess would be knowingly coughing on them or something?). We’re exposed to an obscene number of bacteria and viruses everywhere we go, and when you spend time around humans you are exposed to bacteria and viruses that like to hang around on humans.

    5. kiki*

      But people, in general, do not intend to infect other people. Since 2020 we’ve definitely seen that there is a contingent of people who are so negligent that I would describe them as culpable in actively infecting others. But it’s not possible to be sure you’re never infecting somebody with an illness without living an extremely, extremely restricted life. People can be infectious before they have symptoms. Sometimes people have allergies or chronic non-contagious conditions that make it difficult to tell if their runny nose is a cold or allergies– they couldn’t possibly stay home every time their nose is running because that would mean they’d be sequestered 300 days of the year.

      1. kiki*

        I’m not saying this because I think we should all rest on our laurels and keep going on as things have been– I think there are some more things we can do as a society to reduce the spread of germs! But I also think assigning individual blame to folks for spreading sickness in our current broken culture (not enough sick time, no free testing, no support for folks who are ill, little to no social safety net, etc.) isn’t quite right either.

    6. Irish Teacher.*

      To be fair, in many, perhaps most, cases, it isn’t really their fault. I read that covid, for example, is most contagious before any symptoms are there (this is not to say it’s not important for people to stay home once they have symptoms, just that it only means they will infect fewer people, which is still important, but even doing everything right, they may well infect some other people). Plus people can spread illnesses while being completely asymptomatic. Or after they believe themselves to no longer be infectious.

      Yeah, there are definitely cases where people are extremely irresponsible and that greatly increases the number of people infected with any illness.

    7. bamcheeks*

      This is such a weird framing. Most of the time, passing on an infection IS a thing that randomly happens! Yes, there are clearly things we can do to reduce the risk that we’ll pass an infection on to others, but very, very few people are actively choosing to pass on an illness in the same way that someone actively makes a choice to punch someone.

    8. Hydrates all the flasks*

      “Infecting isn’t a thing that just randomly happens. It happens when some person does it to you.”

      tell me you don’t know how airborne transmission works without telling me you don’t know how airborne transmission works???

    9. Observer*

      Infecting isn’t a thing that just randomly happens. It happens when some person does it to you.

      That implies intentionality, and it’s just not true. It’s not just that most people are not trying to make others sick, it’s also that it an huge percentage of cases people do not even know – often CANNOT know- that they may be contagious.

      eah, you probably can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law who’s the person who punched you

      Yeah, you probably can prove who punched you if you saw it coming. But the LW could not come close to even making a solid case because there is SO much exposure, that they really don’t know who infected them.

      1. ferrina*

        Exactly. You can prove who punched you based on witness statements (i.e., you can testify that Batman punched you). Air-borne transmission is nearly impossible to prove, because it is so randomized, microscopic and it’s possible for you to get sick from someone you never interacted directly with. (Note: there are some transmission methods which are predictable, and there have been court cases of someone knowingly not disclosing/lying about an STD and infecting partners. IIRC, that is assault, similar to a punch)

        All this aside, even if you know exactly who infected you, unfortunately, there’s not much to be done. It’s not against company policy to come to work low-key sick. I will forever hate the person who knowingly worked a conference alongside me when they were sick (and they could have not attended without penalty!) I was left with a raging fever in a tiny hotel room far from home where after work three 14-hour days. She infected the entire organization- it was super clear that the symptoms and timing were exactly what she had. HR was well aware that she had gotten everyone sick. But what could they do? The policy was to use your discretion on sick days- that’s generally a good policy. You can’t tell people to always stay home when they are sick, because 1) some people randomly get symptoms/catch every cold no matter what they do, and should they really be made to stay home all that time? who is going to pay for that? and 2) people can still spread germs when it doesn’t look like they are sick.

    10. Lightbourne Elite*

      People have pointed out the problem with this logic below, better than I can. But sometimes this happens even with the best intentions and care.

      Last May I was visiting family and felt sniffly a few days before I had my flight home. It would have been a huge financial hardship for me to change that flight but I of course would have if I had tested positive for COVID. I tested every single day for three days, multiple times a day, before my flight. I got tested at a doctor’s office the day before. I tested the morning of. Every time it came back negative, so of course it seemed likely I was just having allergies. Made sense, I was in an area with a lot of allergens I’m not used to.

      I flew. I wore a mask the whole time just in case. Got home feeling worse, tested when I got home. Literally four hours from the last test…I tested positive. I probably infected fellow passengers who had to sit next to me, but I had NO WAY of knowing. People can do everything right and still get others sick.

      1. anon24*

        The first two times I had COVID I tested negative for the first 5 days after my symptoms started before getting a positive test. Both times I was able to self-isolate because I had good reasons to know it was COVID, but between allergies, exhaustion, and other respiratory illnesses? You won’t always know that. I’m extremely susceptible to sore throats, I get them constantly during the colder dryer months and frequently the rest of the year whenever the weather changes or I get too overly tired. The last time I had Covid I genuinely had no idea because all I had the first 2 days was a mildly sore throat and vague joint aches, which are exactly the same symptoms I get when I haven’t gotten enough sleep lately (and I hadn’t gotten much sleep in the 2 weeks prior).

        I’ll always do my best to avoid spreading germs, but I can’t call out of work every time I feel vaguely ill. I would literally work less than I was off. For me *feeling ill* rarely actually translates to *being ill*

        2. RussianInTexas*

          Last time I had covid (one of the two), last January, took me 4 days and 5 tests to test positive. I had super mild symptoms, but they were the same as the previous super mild case and different from my regular cold symptoms, and not even the “standard” ones so I suspected it was covid. I work from home, so I did not have to go anywhere.
          And two days later the test was once again negative.

      2. Magpie*

        The last time I had Covid, I had zero symptoms. The only reason I tested was because my husband was symptomatic and tested positive so I figured I should test too. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have carried on with my normal life not realizing I was carrying a virus and potentially infecting everyone around me.

      3. londonedit*

        I spent two years doing absolutely everything I could not to bring Covid with me from London whenever I visited my parents/clinically vulnerable sister. We assumed London would be far more dangerous in terms of Covid likelihood than their rural villages, so I would isolate and test before going to visit them, and I always wore a mask on the Tube etc. Two years and no one got Covid.

        Then I went to visit them in 2022, and they’d been over to a friend’s for dinner – the weather was nice so they’d all sat outside, everyone felt fine, their friend is a teacher and at that point she was testing once a week as per her school’s policy. On the Sunday they got a text from said friend saying she’d tested positive for Covid. On the Tuesday my mum started feeling a bit ill – just a headache and sore throat, nothing she’d really have noticed. My dad had no symptoms at all. Mum and Dad both tested positive on Tuesday afternoon. I tested positive on Friday morning. Dad had absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, Mum’s were just the headache and sore throat, which weren’t really high up on the list of Covid symptoms at the time. So despite all my efforts, it was them who infected me in the end! No one meant to, it was just one of those things.

        My sister, being clinically vulnerable, basically isolated until the vaccines were available, but even with all the vaccines and boosters available she’s still had Covid several times. Because her immune system is crap, and because she has a small child at school, and with the best will in the world he’s going to bring all sorts of colds and bugs – and Covid – home, and my sister can’t isolate herself 24/7. It’s just not realistic. It’s no one’s fault if she gets ill, it’s just one of those things.

  10. Never Surrender*

    This was a HUGE pet peeve of mine before the pandemic – people who didn’t stay home when sick because they didn’t want to “waste” their PTO/sick time. There was one woman in one of my offices that took the entire office out, one after another, with her selfishness.

    If you are sick, please stay home. If you cannot afford to stay home or must work for other reasons, wear a mask. Be a member of the human community and think about others.

    1. CommanderBanana*

      My former boss would bring her two young children to work when they were too sick to go to daycare/school. And she’d bring them into meetings. I spent more time on antibiotics than off them at that job in the winter. Everyone on her hallway would get sick, one after another, after she brought in her little germ vectors.*

      *They were delightful and cute little kids. I also did not appreciate having bout after bout of tonsillitis because of someone else’s child.

      1. We're Six*

        Oh god, I hate that. I feel like, whenever it’s someone like that, it’s always a job/profession where they do have PTO (and they have plenty of it banked!), they do actually have ways to manage childcare for the sick kid, they can work remotely instead of coming into the office with the sick kid, etc…they just choose to instead bring the sick kid(s) to work and infect everyone else. Because of some misguided belief about, “*I* never stay home so why should any of you?????”

        Selfish to the extreme.

    2. ferrina*

      This is another reason why I love working remotely. I can be sick and work and not infect anyone! And when my kids are too sick for school, I can easily keep them home and have minimal impact on work. When the kids were in daycare, there was a few times I kept them home when they had mild symptoms. There was one time my kid ended up having Highly Contagious Childhood Disease, but because he had stayed home when his symptoms were mild (pre-diagnosis), no other child in his class caught it.

      Not every parent in that daycare had a job where they could work from home. A little inconvenience on my part may have saved them an awful time or missed shifts and lost income.
      But this is one reason I believe so strongly in remote options where possible.

  11. Person from the Resume*

    LW, your job sucks and it’s not going to change. Food service work is generally a terrible environment with not enough pay, PTO, benefits, and sick leave.

    Your boss probably/possibly should have stayed home, but YOU did not stay home while sick. Maybe he had the same experience. Perhaps, like you, your boss doesn’t have enough Paid Time Off to be able to afford taking off when sick.

    The problem (in this instance) is not your boss, but the conditions that you all are employed in.

  12. Canadian Dope is the Good Stuff*

    Side note: the mention of Neocitran makes me wonder of LW is in Canada? That’s not, to the best of my knowledge, a brand that is common in the USA. The official website seems to be a .ca address, which is Canadian.

    And all it is, is acetamenophen and sudafed. It’ll make you feel a little better, and if you cough less you’ll spread the virus/germs somewhat less, too…but it otherwise it does nothing to make you less contagious.

    1. Observer*

      but it otherwise it does nothing to make you less contagious.

      Assuming that you are contagious. That’s one of the problems with this framing. The symptoms that the LW describes could just as easily have been caused by something non-contagious as by a cold.

    2. Nicole Maria*

      I’d never heard of that product before, so that makes sense, but don’t Canadians have more guaranteed sick/vacation time? I realize I could google this, but I’m curious because people always make it out like inadequate PTO is a uniquely American issue.

      1. Van Wilder*

        I would think she would have guaranteed healthcare in Canada at least, which she doesn’t per her letter. So probably in the US.

      2. Statler von Waldorf*

        We do have more on average, and better employment laws requiring companies to pay it out, but compared to the rest of the world we’re a lot closer to the US than most Canadians would like to admit. Also Canadian labor laws are usually provincial, except when they are not, so it’s a bit all over the place for what is legally required.

        She had seven vacation days. Most Canadians earn ten per year, so that’s on par. In some provinces she would also have access to limited paid sick leave, but I’m guessing she’s not in one of those. I get five paid sick days per year in BC. My ex-wife in Alberta gets zero.

        And for the record, guaranteed Canadian healthcare covers the cost of seeing the doctor and receiving treatment from them. It doesn’t cover sick leave, prescription medications, and a whole bunch of other stuff that it probably should.

      3. IngEmma*

        Sick leave is provincially regulated and fairly pitiful from a requirements perspective in Canada! (This is just a sort of unasked for info dump)

        Many provinces adjusted the minimum requirements during the pandemic. Some have maintained those, some not.

        We have decent (ish) disability (short or long term) but not necessarily great sick leave in of itself (in terms of like, paid days for one off illness.)

        In professional / salary / union / government jobs though here, more sick and relatively generous vacation is pretty standard. I wonder if we have a higher percentage of the working population in those categories than the states. Genuinely no idea if that’s the case! Related: federally regulated jobs now have 10 paid sick days. This is only about 6% of the working population. But changes in federally regulated requirements often cause the private sector to voluntarily opt into the same or better benefits here to compete with talent from the federal sector.

        TLDR: possible that the median or average sick benefits might be better than many people’s in the US but in lots of provinces calling out sick sucks, especially in food service type jobs!

    4. Statler von Waldorf*

      I caught that too. Neocitran is sold by that name only in Canada (and according to google, Switzerland). In the US the same stuff is called Theraflu.

      Excellent username BTW.

  13. Essentially Cheesy*

    I’m sorry that OP is experiencing this. What a pain.

    But … is it okay to suggest that we all need to invest in maintaining our personal health and our own immune systems? Eat well and get enough rest, etc etc? Even after a pandemic I am not sure that some people have made a connection on that.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Honestly, after the last four years I’m surprised anyone thinks eating well and getting enough rest is a way to avoid illness. Sure, it can help, especially in recovery, but some of the fittest people on the planet are currently dropping out of their Olympic qualifiers because of illness. We can’t eat well and rest our way out of public health problems.

    2. COVIDisn’tover*

      Always a good suggestion while also recognizing the systems that keep people from doing that (poverty = living in food deserts, lack of childcare, need to work multiple jobs, need to take crowded public transit, no sick days, lack of resources to buy good masks). Can’t tell someone to get more sleep if they work a night shift so they can care for their toddler during the day while the nighttime parent/caregiver works.

      We can encourage individuals to do what they can within their means while also recognizing that we need society to work together to help everyone be healthier — that’s what public health and safety nets are to be about.

      Also, COVID infections have been shown to cause lasting damage to our immune systems, so one way to keep our immune systems safe is to not get COVID… easier for some of us than others!

        1. COVIDisn’tover*

          We are definitely on the same wavelength in this comment section today!! Trying to share facts and context wherever possible these days.

      2. Genevieve*

        Thank you for doing this so kindly and coherently so I didn’t have to do a much worse job explaining all of that.

        1. COVIDisn’tover*

          Aww glad to do it! Writing kind and coherent messages is my superpower, and I do need a new job — too bad I don’t have a strong enough science background to be a public health communicator! Then again I might get too frustrated by it all.

    3. Observer*

      is it okay to suggest that we all need to invest in maintaining our personal health and our own immune systems?

      In this context? Absolutely NOT! In fact I would say that it is utterly out of line.

      Don’t get me wrong – we know that on a societal level, better nutrition, adequate rest, reasonable exercise etc. make a difference in outcomes. But was *also* know with great certainty that this is not the whole story. At all. In fact, covid helped show the limits of that approach, as so many apparently healthy people got sick and even died.

      Beyond that the LW is clearly trying to take proper care of themself. It would be bad to assume otherwise in any case – the idea that someone getting sick “proves” that they are not taking care of themselves is wrong on many counts. But here, the LW is also mentioning behavior that indicates that they *are* actually trying to do the right thing by their health.

      And, also, you don’t seem to have noticed that a lot of people don’t “invest” as much in their personal health as you have decided they should because they *cannot*. And ond of the reasons is that they may not be in a position to walk away from a job that makes that extremely difficult or impossible. And, the LW describes a job situation that makes it hard for staff to take REALLY good care of themselves.

    4. Katara's side braids*

      Definitely, if what you mean is suggesting that we make those lifestyle changes feasible for everyone. In the US, that means eliminating food deserts, federally mandated paid sick time, restructuring the work week in such a way that people don’t feel the need to “revenge bedtime procrastinate” just to feel like a person and not a robot. A more robust and comprehensive social safety net, so people CAN get enough rest instead of cobbling together 3 jobs to stay housed. Universal health care. Etc.

      Otherwise, it just won’t happen regardless of how much it’s suggested, because of math.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        revenge bedtime procrastinat[ion]

        Thank you. I’ve seen the phenomenon all my adult life and now I have a name for it.

    5. Productivity Pigeon*

      But LW wasn’t in a position to get proper rest, not even when sick because of the employer and society in general.

      Can’t we just assume most people try their hardest *under their particular circumstances* to prevent sickness? And that they might be in situations where they have very little choice in the matter?

      The employer (and society in general) is to blame here.

      1. Alice*

        We could assume that most people try their hardest, given their circumstances, to prevent sickness… or we could read this and find out.

        Merrell, W. N., Choi, S., & Ackerman, J. M. (2024). When and Why People Conceal Infectious Disease. Psychological Science, 09567976231221990. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231221990

        (That said, you are of course right about the idea that the systems within which we are all working are important.)

          1. Productivity Pigeon*

            I still think that many people *can’t* do more than they do.

            I couldn’t read the entire article but it seemed like their sample was not poor working class people, but I freely admit that I may be misinterpreting what “online crowdsourced workers” mean, and if you can access the full article, I’d love to know what they meant by that.

    6. CommanderBanana*

      Federally mandated paid sick time would be the single biggest policy change we could make that would cut down on disease transmission.

    7. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

      Not unless you’re working to make sure everyone has access to good food, and isn’t chronically short on sleep because they have to work two or three jobs, and can see a doctor when they need one including for preventive care.

      I have an autoimmune disease that we’ve learned in the last few years is an aftereffect of an infection that 95% of the population get by age 20, often without realizing it, and recover from without lasting damage. The best currently-available MS drugs keep the disease under control, sometimes, at the cost of making vaccines less effective.

    8. louvella*

      I know a lot of people who eat well and get enough rest who have still gotten COVID.
      I haven’t gotten it yet (symptomatically, anyway) and I eat a lot of pastries and get garbage sleep. But I do wear a mask.

    9. Kella*

      Health is not a choice. You cannot choose to avoid getting a cold or the flu or covid. You can do things that decrease your likelihood of getting sick or getting other people sick. The people who are most vulnerable to covid and similar infections are chronically ill people who tend to spend 24/7 tending to their health but who can never be fully healthy, through no fault of their own.

    10. RussianInTexas*

      So is it like all the people who basically said “the best way to protect yourself from covid is immediately drop weight”? Because that was a thing, and if you could not do it, and “save yourself”, it was your own fault.

  14. Meep*

    One other step you can take is taking vitamin C immediately. It won’t help once you are sick, but it will help if you boost your immune system before to make it less icky. And most people are vitamin C defection anyway since we aren’t eating our fruits.

      1. CommanderBanana*

        There are some limited studies that show that vitamin C might shorten the duration of colds. Might. And an NHS study showed that high doses vitamin C didn’t do anything at all for COVID and could even be harmful. Vitamin also doesn’t reduce the risk of catching colds (NIH).

        By all means, eat fruit if that works with your particular eating habits/needs/whatever, but it’s not going to do anything for COVID, colds, or other viruses.

    2. Rooby*

      I… don’t think that’s borne out by particularly robust studies. Citrus fruits are definitely good for you, though, and if you’re getting mouth sores or something, then yes, remember to boost your vitamin C.

      1. CommanderBanana*

        Yeah, it’s not.

        Oddly, when I do have a cold or other virus I tend to really crave citrus in a way I don’t when I’m not sick, but I’m one person and it may just be me remembering being given orange juice when I was sick as a kid but not being given juice otherwise.

        1. Genevieve*

          I also crave citrus when sick. Unclear as to whether it’s because it’s sweet and acidic and syrupy and feels like it cuts through all the drainage, because my parents also encouraged me to drink orange juice when sick, or a natural craving. Whatever the reason, it’s soothing!

  15. Productivity Pigeon*

    Ideally, none of you would’ve worked with a cold, especially with food. But honestly, the employer is to blame for not offering any sick days and only seven meager vacation days!

    Employers like that make me furious.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, I think the manager coming to work with a sore throat is not the biggest problem here. The lack of sick time that means people have to use up their vacation when they are sick is the real issue.

  16. Antilles*

    On top of that, HR was supposed to visit me and my coworker about a customer who’s harassing my coworker (asked her out and is not taking the no well) and to a lesser extent me (just bullying) and they won’t ban him from the cafeteria until they talk to us both, so she’s still dealing with him while I’m gone.
    The answer to OP’s question is right here.
    HR is refusing to act against a customer who’s harassing multiple employees and making a ridiculous excuse about needing to talk to both employees before doing anything. If HR won’t have your back on this, I don’t see any reason to think they’d have your back on the sickness thing either.

    1. A Significant Tree*

      Yes, that’s a sign of a garbage HR – why in the world aren’t they taking one employee’s account of a customer’s horrible behavior as enough? Is two the magic number of affected employees?

      It’s unclear what OP’s benefits are and whether they could negotiate for retroactively using sick leave instead of vacation days, or borrowing against future sick/vacation/PTO so they could still take their planned vacation. If they had a functional, reasonable HR that might be recourse for them.

      1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

        I’m guessing that HR is not on the premises, and they don’t want to make 2 trips, hence saying they need to talk to both employees at once. I think that someone in management needs to make the point that if one person is out sick, that shouldn’t delay talking to the other person.

    2. Observer*

      If HR won’t have your back on this, I don’t see any reason to think they’d have your back on the sickness thing either.

      Even if the boss had come over to the LW and coughed all over them then cackled and rubbed their hands in glee while saying “Aha! Now THAT will make you good and sick!”

      The bottom line is that they won’t act on a clear problem. What would make anyone think that they would act on something this nebulous?

    3. Sprout*

      I’m the LW, I realize I didn’t explain this at all but the HR coming to see us was the factories HR, I would be reporting my boss to our companies HR which is different.

      The good news is the guys direct manager has been coming at the same time as him and just hanging around to make sure he doesn’t do anything to bug us, since the factory HR still hasn’t come to see me.

  17. Frank Doyle*

    Does the OP get paid sick leave? It sound like they do not, and that seems like the most egregious thing here. If both they and their boss had paid sick leave, they might have stayed home in the first place and not spread the illness around. (And the OP would have had to use less, if any, of their vacation time.)

    1. QED*

      Yes, this! If all of OP’s paid time off is 7 vacation days, that is not enough to cover vacations, illnesses, appointments, etc. I would be because this is food service, that OP’s boss also doesn’t get more days than this. The situation is a product of insufficient PTO more than anything else. Even if you’re annoyed at your boss right now, OP, banding together with your coworkers and advocating for paid sick leave and more PTO generally is worthwhile.

  18. Adereterial@gmail.com*

    The concerns about a customer bullying and harrassing staff IS indeed something you should take to HR if local management isn’t acting on it.

    You getting sick though just isn’t. You’ve no way to tell whether it was your boss who passed on what you now have – statistically it’s far more likely to have been a customer, or a random person on the street, or a hard surface you touched somewhere else. If you’re handling cash, that’s known to be a significant vector for some diseases too. There’s too many potential ways you could have caught something and trying to get HR to intervene will not succeed.

    I hope you feel better ASAP!

  19. Mouse named Anon*

    With the way the US is (even post pandemic) there are sadly times where many of us will have to work while sick or with a cold. There are jobs that don’t provide adequate sick time and coverage. We can and should try and stay home while sick, or at least with a bad cough/runny nose.

    In November/December of 2023 had a HORRIBLE case of bronchitis that just would not quit. I stayed home as much as I could. But there were times I couldn’t call off/wfh and had to be in the office. I did everything I could for others, masks, hand wash, sanitizing my area and I even have an air purifier at my desk.

  21. MistOrMister*

    You only mention wearing a mask one day, when you had symptoms, which makes me assume you have not been masking prior to that. Given that, I assume you stopped masking at work ages ago. In that case, working at a cafeteria, you have been exposed to probably a minimum of 100s of people a day, likely all unmasked. You cannot begin to actually tell who got you sick when you have been so exposed. And that doesn’t include anywhere you go outside of work. Given the incubation period of various illnesses, you and your boss might both have caught the virus from someone else a week or more ago and then your symptoms manifested within days of each other.

    However, even if you could prove your boss got you sick, what good would it do you? Unless your workplace has a sickness policy that your boss violated they did not do anything wrong. It sounds like they had a fairly mild version of the virus. Given that it, is not unreasonable that they should take medicine and still come in. I don’t see that there is anything HR could do in this instance.

  22. I'm great at doing stuff*

    Alison has brought it up here before, and I find myself addressing it more and more at my work- unless it’s an actual legal situation like a serial harassment case, work is not the place for justice, revenge, or teaching people a lesson.

  23. Sneaky Squirrel*

    In a perfect world, no one would work when they’re sick. Everyone would have sufficient leave time to take off without feeling penalized. Everyone would also be practicing the best hygiene habits to ensure that they’re not spreading what they have to others.

    We’re not in a perfect world. Both employers and employees have to juggle vacation time with other financial considerations. Employers should, of course, allocate more to time off to ensure their staff have the time off they need, but there will always be needs that extend beyond what a reasonable employer can accommodate.

    OP, your boss probably should have stayed home. You probably got sick from them. But penalizing those who come in sick is not good practice and one that adversely impacts those who are the most concerned about income and sick leave already. It’s very possible that your boss had to make the hard choice the same way that you have to be concerned about your ability to visit family later.

    Also, OP, while it is extremely likely that your boss passed it on to you, you really can’t prove it. You work in a cafeteria, so presumably there are plenty of people walking in and out who could equally be contagious with something. It’s also possible that you picked up the illness outside of your work.

    1. Productivity Pigeon*

      Ideally, it wouldn’t be dependent on employers, there should be a well-established government system for dealing with sick workers.
      Everyone, regardless of position and employer, should have equal access to sick leave that isn’t limited to set number of days.
      (And one for long term disability.)

  24. Morgan Proctor*

    I feel like the discourse around COVID has made many people jump to the conclusion that not only should they never, ever get sick, but that they are entitled to a lifetime free of infectious illness, and if they do get sick, it’s someone specific’s fault, and that someone specific did it purposefully, and that person is deserving of, at minimum, emotional punishment.

    This urge to punish has become the default reaction to getting sick. People are rewarded for it on the internet by generating engagement. The “discourse” has excluded any room for compassion, empathy, or understanding, including a basic understand of the science behind infectious illness, and that it has been part of life on earth for billions of years.

    Y’all, occasionally getting sick is part of the experience of being human on a planet we share with 8 billion other people. Sometimes you will get sick, and you will have to take PTO if you have it. If you want people to stay home when sick, maybe stop attacking people on the internet and organize your workplace to demand sick leave. Any workplace can unionize! Channel that energy into actually doing something about the problem rather than trying to punish everyone around you for something that is sometimes unavoidable.

    Should you stay home if you are sick? Sure. Some people can’t afford to do that. Some people don’t care. If you want to avoid getting sick, most times the best you can do is wear a mask. We don’t live in your perfect idea of the world, and we never will.

  25. JPalmer*

    I don’t think there is any recourse for the manager’s behavior.

    I think it’d be worth talking to coworkers and banding together to get improvements to the sick policy. It doesn’t sound like a good one if a week of sickness tanks your vacation for the upcoming months/year.

    You could also talk to your boss about working on some health policy changes around the office that encourage mask use. Not directing blame at them directly and hoping their guilt will do that. That might prompt some action and improvements.

    1. HonorBox*

      I think your third paragraph is especially important. These are workers in a cafeteria. They’re exposed to customers who may be contagious but not symptomatic with a variety of things. Plus, they’re serving customers. Would masks be helpful at all times? For sure. But at the very least, if someone is feeling at all unwell, they need to be in masks. I think if customers found that they were being served by someone who was sick, they’d be pretty upset. And the health department might have things to say.

      I get that food service employees don’t have the best opportunity to take extended time. That really needs to change. But at the very least, if someone is feeling a little unwell and is doing the mental gymnastics about going into work or staying home, making masks essential would be protection for coworkers and customers.

  26. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    You know, OP, it sounds to me like what you really WANT has nothing to do with your manager. I think what you want is more sick time. Which, like Alison says, means talking to your employer about that. But it might also mean that you want a better job. I know you said you’re looking around, and I think that’s probably going to be the best solution to this sort of thing. I really hope it works out for you.

  27. Nancy*

    You have no idea who got you sick. You could have gotten your boss sick and they just started showing symptoms first, or you both got sick at the same time from someone else, or you were infected by two different people with two different infections, or your boss isn’t even infectious with anything, etc.

  28. NYCARTSADMIN*

    I know you’re unlikely to find separate vacation and sick time in the food service industry, but that’s another culprit of the predicament OP finds themselves in. Not just because OP was planning to take a vacation to see their family and now can’t – but because OP’s boss might have called out sick if it wasn’t going to eat into vacation time. Mental calculations for “should I use a sick day for this sore throat?” are completely different with separated time off banks.

  29. 1 Non Blonde*

    Minnesota now requires employers to offer at least 32 hours of “sick and safe” leave. Maybe/hopefully your state does something similar?

  31. HonorBox*

    The way people respond to germs and contagious illness is so varied it is really hard to pinpoint a respiratory infection to one person. Had your boss given you something more rare, it might be easier to pinpoint and trace the infection and actually be able to do something about it. But your immune system was suppressed. You’re around customers. You might have gotten sick with something that was similar, but a different virus/bacterial configuration completely. People are affected very differently based on many, many factors. Example: I recently picked up my kids from a visit to see their grandparents. When we got back, one of them came down with Covid. My other kiddo and I did not. We tested … multiple times. No Covid. We were all together most of the time, and yet only 1/3 of us got sick. So germs can be funky.

  32. Hyaline*

    I feel like this is one of those situations were feeling frustrated and even angry is totally understandable: You had to waste PTO on being sick instead of travel plants. That stinks. Also you were sick, which also stinks. Directing all of that anger at your boss who may or may not have gotten you sick, however, is not helpful, productive or actionable. Is directing your frustration there allowing you to avoid being frustrated at elements of your job you can’t change or control, like having very little PTO and no real sick leave to speak of?

  33. The other sage*

    It’s because of situations like this that I wish you would have “infinite” paid sick leave in the USA, the same way we have it in at least most European countries. That would benefit everybody, including business owners.

    1. Cinnamon Stick*

      I wish it too. Unfortunately. business owners, especially in sectors like food service or retail will push back against this. They might have to staff appropriately instead of at the level of “Just barely enough. Maybe.”

      2. Manic Pixie HR Girl*

        Part of the argument for lean staffing, though, is because the margins are already razor thin. I am sympathetic to this, especially since just raising more revenue (i.e., raising prices) has other consequences. In theory they could cut hours in some areas – not be open as many or as long hours, but that doesn’t help with unscheduled absences, which WOULD increase with an increase in sick leave.

        But, the flipside of this is, the thought of someone serving me food who has been sick … well, that should skeeve anyone out. Especially in this day and age.

        1. The other sage*

          When writing my comment I was thinking especially in office jobs, but after reading your comment I can see why on other sectors just having more than the bare minimum staff can be more difficult than I thought.

  34. egan*

    I recommend Planet Halo Health and WellBefore for certified, quality, inexpensive masks. They do have bulk options, so it might be possible to have some on offer in the office. In my experience prople are more likely to grab one when they are coughing if they are free and available. KF94s are often comfier for all day wear than n95s, especially for non – Euro cis male faces. I have been fired on the first day of a new job for wearing a mask, and consistently made fun of, but Covid and many other illnesses have gone through my coworkers many times and I have never caught it. Masking in pharmacies and grocery stores is an act of solidarity with the disabled community for me, and like Alison says, you can’t rely on others unfortunately. We really need systemic change, like sick pay, and I appreciate that Alison always points that out.

  35. AC36*

    I feel you! Last month, my boss came into work knowing she had Covid (she tested positive on a Saturday morning), then proceeded to work normally and didn’t inform anyone (meeting offsite with other staff members, not wearing a mask, doing errands, etc.). As a result, her boss and myself both became sick. As a result, I was out 5 days – and had to use a mix of sick time and PTO – so was her boss, although, he is salaried, and is less affected in that sense. I didn’t find out later that she had KNOWN she was sick/testing positive and didn’t tell anyone for days! I was LIVID and honestly, still am. Of course, nothing was done about it.

    1. AC36*

      I’ll add here that yes, we aren’t in a perfect world and many have to work while sick (I know I’ve had to work with a cold before), BUT – If someone KNOWS they are Covid-positive and neglect to tell the people they work a few feet from, that’s just negligent. This variant knocked me and my boss’ boss out of commission for a full week.

    2. DJ Abbott*

      Wow, that really sucks. I wonder what my boss would do if she knew she had Covid. I suspect some workaholic tendencies, so I don’t trust that she would do the right thing.

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, coming to work after testing positive for covid strikes me as unacceptable.

  36. DJ Abbott*

    I feel you on this. Our department manager came to work with a cold last January and mostly didn’t wear a mask. She could have worked from home.
    I caught it from her and ended up with a secondary infection. Since they don’t front-load sick days, I only had two left from last year and had to take some vacation days. She never even apologized.
    She did the same thing a few months later, and I made sure to wear a mask whenever I went into her office. I didn’t catch it that time.

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