For some reason, employers become extremely cynical whenever their employees need a day off work, even if the cause given is something extremely plausible (and statistically likely), such as the contraction of the flu during the height of flu season. It's almost as if it's a projection of the employer what they themself would do if placed in the employee's position.
"Surely," [Employer] reasons. "[Worker] must be making it up to skip out on their work duties." For they, too, would have done so back in their days of being in someone else's employ.
While this may be sometimes the case—for there are surely less-than-honest employees out there, like [Employer] themself once was… More often than not, when an employee calls out sick during the time of year when people usually get sick, they probably actually are.
This tutor used to work with K-12 kids in an after-school program. One day, they got the flu and couldn't call off work. Their boss told them to come in anyway, so they decided to make their boss regret that decision, arriving with gravitas in the form of attire that made the severity of what they had been asked sink. When they walked in the door of the school's office, they were donning three KN-95 masks and two layers of surgical gloves, elaborating the symptoms of their illness to lengths that deserved to be performed on a dimly lit stage in front of an audience.
Horrified, the administration found someone else to take over the tutor's students that day, and they were in the building for less than 5 minutes…
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