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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   746 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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It's not that men get sicker, but that when they do need to be taken care of or take a load off, the contrast is more stark. Let's say a husband and a wife are both under the weather 10 days in a year, with 2 being ugly. If the man takes those 2, and quietly shoulders the rest, while the wife, is at various levels still in commission for her remaining 8, one might misread the batting average.

My wife is open that she needs to lean on me more than I am allowed to lean on her because she's the woman (generally, not about being sick). (I agree!). She's self-possessed enough to recognize that gender dynamics aren't even. So the thing is that occassionally, a man gets knocked on his ass, and it looks like he's being a bitch.

As an aside, I cannot recall the last time I took a sick day at work, if perhaps ever. However, the person who took the most I ever met was a former male boss. Nice guy but extreme stereotype of a leftist. Used phrases like 'adulting'. So maybe it's also about the type of company the type of person who uses the phrase keeps?

As an aside, I cannot recall the last time I took a sick day at work, if perhaps ever.

Me neither. I basically never get sick.

Banking sick days is good in the case that I do come down with a sudden case of multipleinterviewswithadifferentcompanyitis that will take too much time beyond a “dentist” or “doctor’s appointment.”

The "no sick day" pride thing is confusing to me. My employer allows a certain number of sick days, why would I not take advantage of those for days when my productivity would be affected by being sick or my recovery would be impaired by working? Not to mention knock on effects of getting my co-workers sick.

There's no bonus for not using any sick days.

Unless your company is unusually weird, you have to lie to take advantage of them though -- which you kind of should do anyways, but it's not great.

Why do you have to lie?

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