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Comment by jacalata | Hacker News Reader

Your boss is stupid. Does he want you to come in and cough your filthy germs into the rest of the office, or to take the day off entirely? There are plenty of states of "sick" where I'm not going to the office (contagious, constant need for the bathroom, headache exacerbated by fluorescent lights) but could get most or even all of a regular days work done at home.

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No, his boss isn't stupid, he's exercising the "duty of care" part of being a decent boss. If you're sick, you should stay home and recover, whether you think you can be as productive or not (from personal experience of breaking this rule - you probably won't be).

Meh. From personal experience, taking motor transport makes me throw up if I'm at all sick, but I'm otherwise usually fine. If my choice is "do nothing, or spend 90 minutes commuting to and from work" then I'll do nothing. If I can work from home, I'll pretty much have a normal work day.

I think patatino's point was that his boss would say "You're not working" not "You're not taking time off to be sick"

I think they might have meant "don't work - just rest and get better"

Exactly what I meant!

I think the point is that if you're going to be sick, you should be sick and not shouldn't work at all. Not that you have to come to the office and work rather than work from home.

There are legislations about sick leave in a lot of countries.

I don't believe that any country has laws against "allowing employees to work from home on request" so I don't see how that's relevant.

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