beth, how does your company deal with appointments? I just leave for appointments and come back later. No worries about spending sick time on it.

5 sick days a year? If I was working full time I would use them up just going to the doctor. Dentist 4 times a year;doctor twice; eye doctor 1 reg, 1 diabetes; mammogram. Not that they take all day - but when would I have time to be sick?

We're not really allowed a certain number of sick days here. At first I thought okay, fine, you're sick when you're sick, but then I looked at the manager guidelines and learned that 7-8 days in a year was considered "poor" and 9 days or more was considered "excessive" (both of which were less than the 10 days we automatically got at my last office job way back when) . That made me even sadder than the 10 days vacation time that I get for my first 18 months.

15 vacation days (going up to 20 at my two year anniversary), six sick days, 3 personal days, half-days can be made up with OT (good for doctors appointments, auditions, voice over work). Oh, and if we need additional time we get it with a docked pay check.

It's pretty sweet.

Random meara:

My old orchestra conductor teaches at the Meadow School of Music and lives in Plano.

Emily, your box story just made both ND and me laugh out loud. We have been there, my friend.

My good friend J. takes pole dancing lessons and has a ton of bruises but holy crap great abs from it. Her boyfriend just bought her a pole and installed it in the living room. LA is an interesting place.

ND and I are frustrated. Our new, carefully researched PCP is no longer at the practice, and apparently no one else there takes HMO patients.Yeah, sure we live in a classless society.

Vw, glad you're having a good birthday.

I earn a day and half a month of vacation, a day of sick. But I have like 300 hours of sick. ridiculous. Also, here you take a full day or nothing, so I never take off for doctor's appointments or whatever unless I want to.

If I was working full time I would use them up just going to the doctor.

I don't take sick time for partial days, just whole ones. I think that's how salaried is supposed to work. I've had a couple days where I left the hospital, went home and cleaned up, and came in after lunch.

Which is sad, but allowable.

Her boyfriend just bought her a pole and installed it in the living room. LA is an interesting place.

A friend's brother just did that for his wife, and another friend (who is, I think, single) just put her own in.

Apparently they disguise the installation so when it's disassembled it just looks like a hook for a hanging plant. Unless, of course, you've seen one before, in which case it's clear.

There are at least two talented female krav/fitness instructors who do both trapeze and pole dancing...perfect women or scary as hell--you decide.

see edit -- and my eye doctor's appointments - take me out for the day. I get paid by the hour, so anytime off counts. Actually - even for full time people at the library we are a big enough system where hours have to be accounted for. ( we can't work over time either, so unless an adjustment can be made you have to take the time off) for DH - technically they don't count, but 30 to 50% of his get canceled at the last minute because he can't get out of the office. . So for some of his doctors - that are harder to see - taking a sick day is the way to go.

Of course, I believe in very generous sick leaves- I really don't want anyone's germs near me. I never used to get sick, but now if anything gets near my lungs I am down for a week and a couple of weeks before I am at my best .

Old job was 10 days sick, 2.5 weeks vacation starting. New job is 18 days of PTO.

Yeah, I figure 18 days...well, if it's PTO, at least I can choose sick adn stuff. But between appointments and random colds or whatever and migraines? I definitely need more than 5 days in the whole year! Like Beth said.

Megan, that IS depressing!! I think I would have a hard time iwth "unlimited" sick time--I'd feel guilty ANY time I took it. And honestly, every once in a while I need a mental health day. Or a mental-sleep-in-late-half-day. And wiht unlimited sick, that wouldn't feel like an option. (Do NON managers know of the written/unwritten rules?)

I think that's how salaried is supposed to work.

Yahhhh, in theory. But while sometimes I'll go to an apointment on lunch, and even if it's 90 minutes instead of an hour, not count it, if I have one in th emorning, or late afternoon, and have to come in late or leave early, I feel obliged to take a partial day.

Of course, at this place, when I asked about teh hours they worked, they were like "Oh, some people don't come in until 9, but then they work late, until 5:30!". I was all "Um, at my current job I work 9:30 to 6:30" and they said "You take an hour for lunch?!?!". Which is probably not good either, I'm thinking...

Other thing is that I'm a "play through the pain" kind of person. I don't stay home unless I am pretty much incapable of working, so I never take random sick days, and I usually have stuff to do cause I always leave stuff until the last minute.

I have two rules for my (salaried) staff:

Never miss a deadline. Never be late for a meeting. Otherwise, their time is their own, and I don't keep track of it. They come in anywhere from 7AM to 10AM (one is an early riser, the others are not), and leave approx 8-9 hours later.

They're all stars, so I can do this.