Employee refuses to cover for coworker who has constantly called out of work on Fridays over the past 8 months: 'I didn't think it was fair for the same people to keep absorbing the impact of recurring absences.'

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• Am I the bad guy for telling my manager I won't stay late to cover for a coworker who calls in sick on Fridays with suspicious regularity?

  

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  _{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

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• There are definitely laws that might scare management away from questioning an employee's choice of sick days. Most managers don't want to explicitly state that they don't believe their employee was actually sick when they took time off, because they don't want to get sued. It's illegal for employers to retaliate against employees taking sick leave. Sick leave is legally protected in some areas of the United States. I wonder if this workplace has an unlimited sick-leave policy that allows this behavior, or if it operates like a retail job, where you don't have a set number of "sick days" but you call out when you're sick. If he has a finite number of sick days, he might be approaching his limit for this year. But if not, there's probably not much the manager can do without risking legal trouble. The manager might not think that's a risky work taking. If that's the case, he should plan for Dan to take off and staff accordingly. Either that, or he could fire him for a reason unrelated to this whole situation.

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• The manager might've thought his employees weren't noticing that they kept having to pick up Dan's slack. If he thought that, he's a foolish manager. Taking on the work that Dan didn't do is the least he can do to continue employing someone who has made it clear they aren't too fond of the five-day workweek. If he doesn't find a long-term solution to this problem, his team will continue to resent him. 

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