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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1294 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?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do you know men who get "man flu"? Are you a guy who gets "man flu"? If you don't know what man flu is, my understanding is that it's the idea that men are lazier than women when they're sick. I heard this and wrote it off, like most gender war stuff. Men don't help around the house enough, women earn less than men for doing the same work. But I keep seeing guys defending the idea that viruses make them sicker than women.

This is completely anathema to me. My father would go years without taking a sick day. He would get sick every few years during his busiest work event of the year, when he'd be pulling 12-hour-plus days. Growing up, I don't recall ever hearing about anything being put off in our social circle because a man was sick. My mom, on the other hand, was down all the time with one thing or another.

My father-in-law is the same. In 2021, he clearly had COVID. His wife was in the bedroom for days; he was out shoveling snow, cooking, and then making everyone play cards with him.

The only time I take "medicine" is when I'm at work events pretending I'm not sick. Afrin and a constant supply of cough suppressants..

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?

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.

Many employers have just a single pool of PTO, so days you take off for being sick come at the expense of days you could have taken off for fun.

I really dislike the trend of companies playing around with sick and vacation days to force more work out of people - this and unlimited* vacation days are both horrible policies.

*if your supervisor approves them, which they coincidentally will not because more vacation makes them look bad to their supervisors.

"Unlimited" vacation is always a scam. I get why companies do it - e.g. tech workers, unfortunately, under-utilize vacations, and the culture, unfortunately, often encourages it - and with "unlimited" vacation you do not have any monetary liability left to cover. And it doesn't even take the supervisor to explicitly deny vacations - absence of defined benefit already creates an expectation that it's something additional to what you're normally owed, so if you're taking more of it, you're more "greedy" than then next guy who doesn't. If you have X days defined by contract, then you taking X days is normal. But if there's nothing in contract and you take X days and the other guy takes X/2 days then clearly the other guy is a better worker than you. That's not a healthy dynamics to be in.

This. "Unlimited" just means "at the supervisor's discretion", and I'd prefer at-will days off instead. At my current job, I have X weeks of vacation, and they ask us to book two weeks in advance. Some things I had happen were:

  1. On Monday, I learned about something for the coming Friday. I emailed the manager and explained that I wanted that time off, why I couldn't follow the regular procedures, and why it was valuable to me. (It was quickly approved with no issues)
  2. I had a normal vacation that I saw coming a month away. I filled out the request on the employee portal and was approved with no further scrutiny. (I told everyone what was happening via watercooler talk, of course. Community/interpersonal conversations are different than corporate/administrative ones.)
  3. I had an extra week, and they would prefer not to carry the days over to next year, so I took some more time off in December.

Under an "unlimited" scheme, I'd have to justify each day off (like scenario 1), and the reasoning for #3 is probably not strong enough to get approved without pushback.

I agree 100% about "unlimited" vacation, but the single pool doesn't bother me as much as an alternative to being either paid out for unused sick days or having to malinger to get use out of them.

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