I think if I was out with the flu then all those absences would be counted as 1 occurrence. And they used to give us more leeway on certain things. I know when Mom had her stroke I was told (because everyone who called out was told this) that it would be considered an occurrence but when I talked to my then assistant manager and she told me to worry about it. And then they worked out me being out for a few weeks. But again this was pre pandemic and we had as many people working in the mens' active section then as we have for the entire mens department now.
Edited- the other reality is that if too many people call out in a day they have to scramble around to see if people can cut their lunch short or stay late so we can meet our allotted hours. If we don't then we risk next month having reduced hours based on what hours we used during the current month. Which sucks but we don't have any wiggle room at this point.
They had a hiring thing on Saturday and there were 6 people who applied and out of those 5 people were going to get interviews and we are going into the holidays and I honestly don't know what is going to happen then.