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Whether you're legitimately sick or just require a needed mental health day, a sick day can be an employee's best friend. There are some of us who abuse the system of sick days, whereas they're those of us who rarely do.

Let's face it; we've all taken a sick day for some reason or another. We're allocated a number of them per year, and the fact of the matter is that if you don't use them, you won't accumulate any pay for them at the end of the year.

On the other hand, sick days can work in a positive and negative way for your employer. They lose a staff member at short notice, needing to cover that person or possibly face a couple of days of lost production. But then they're faced with the legitimate sick people spreading germs through the workplace, and can have a possible epidemic that spreads throughout the whole office. It's a fact; sick days cost business a lot of money every year.

I have worked in work places where the excuses become ridiculous. I've heard excuses ranging from being hung over from the weekend prior, to an aunt dying who just happened to pass away a few months previously to the voices in a person's head telling him not to come in. I have also worked beside those who take a sick day just about every other week and those who come in ill, sneezing their germed molecules all over my lunch.

There is an amount of responsibility a person holds when calling in sick. When you do so, consider the following do's and don't to calling in sick to work.

DO

*Do call your employer and advise that you are sick, preferably in advance. Taking a day off without advising anyone and also at short notice does not warn your employer to organize another alternative.

*Do call in sick if you are legitimately sick. Today we have far too many dangerous strains of flu that can endanger people if it's not kept restrained.

*Do call in sick if you have something highly contagious but you are not ill. For example when I was pregnant, a woman came to work with a condition called slap-face'. When a woman is exposed to this in the early stages of pregnancy it can be extremely dangerous for the fetus.

*Call in sick if you have injured yourself and are unable to perform your normal duties. Working may make the injury worse until you seek proper medical attention.

*If a member of your family is very ill and you are the only person available to provide care if it's needed, do call your employer and advise you'll need the day off.

*Do call in sick if there has been a death in your family.

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