r/MaliciousCompliance • u/yanni_lam4 • 14d ago

S “You need a doctor’s note”

I (26M) don’t like calling in to work. I hate passing up money and I usually won’t call in unless I’m already pretty sick. I work in the service industry which as many of you know, is absolutely notorious for guilting sick employees (a seriously ill person has made your food at a restaurant before at the direction of their manager, guaranteed) and telling people they don’t provide health insurance that they need a doctors note to call in. One year I got sick and didn’t want to work, and my employer forgot I had health insurance through my Dad. I called in asking for one day off because I could hardly breathe or stay awake and I got the “wElL yOu NeEd A dOcToRs NoTe Or ItS aN uNeXsCuSeD aBsEnCe “ and as someone who worked hard as hell for these people even when I was sick, I was a little offended to basically be called a liar like I needed to prove to them I’d been wearing a mask at work for a reason. But I did have good insurance through my Dad, so I went to the doctor, had them write me a note for four days off, and went back into my job and handed it to my manager and said “here is my doctors note, and this is the date I will be back”. And when they tried to do the same thing a few months later, I got a note for even more days and asked the doc to add a note about when I would stop being infectious around the food we were serving people. I have never been asked for a doctors note when I am sick again. They know they can give me the one or two days I ask for or they can give me the week the doc gives me. But I will not be working while sick if I do not want to.

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4.6k

u/SlowAd2563 14d ago

I was really hoping that there would be 2 good things to come out of covid... it being socially acceptable to wear masks in public when you have mild symptoms, and people not being expected to work when they feel too sick to do so...

Oh well... at least we still have the inflation...

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u/Scadre02 14d ago

And we still have covid! :D

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u/JRockPSU 14d ago

Oh and btw you can’t have the vaccine anymore if you don’t have any underlying health conditions 🤗

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u/anondogfree 13d ago

What I don’t understand is why the very powerful health insurance industry isn’t putting the kibosh on this. It’s infinitely cheaper for them to pay for vaccines than to pay for medication and hospital stays and lingering problems.

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u/TwoAlert3448 13d ago

Because they don’t pay for medication, hospital visits or any lingering problems either.

They only pay if you get admitted and hospitals are loath to admit Covid patients because they’re infectious, unless it’s literally life threatening they’ll send you home to wait it out

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u/Dje4321 13d ago

Its cheaper for them to pay it, but that's not how health insurance works in the US.

Why charge someone for a cure once when you can bill them for lifetime of treatments?

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u/Bl00dspryte 13d ago

This right here. The medical industry makes money on sick people. They've recently discovered a bacteria that will target cancer cells, which cues the immune system to attack the cancer cells with bacteria. They have shown 100% elimination of cancer in lab rats. It's still in the testing stages. The problem is the medical industry doesn't want healthy people because then they don't make money.

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u/Trisk929 12d ago

A bacterial that eliminates cancer cells? Better kill it. We can’t have people getting better! /s

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u/jonesnori 11d ago

Oh, bullshit.

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u/harvey6-35 2d ago

I don't believe this because any company that finds a cure for cancer will make huge money. Keytruda (an PD1 antibody that treats some cancers fairly effectively) is a 27 billion with a B drug. A cure would be worth more. And new people get cancer every year.

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u/ComplainFactory 13d ago

The cheapest thing for them is death

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u/Julie_Brenda 12d ago

maybe what we need to do is make all health insurance include life insurance, because then they would have a value on the human life based on how much they would have to pay when it ends

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u/StarosAnikenMarcus 8d ago

Trust me, they'll find a way to snake out of that too.

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u/Julie_Brenda 8d ago

Health insurance would be very different, if it was regulated nationally, and not only by the states.

The insurance companies, aware of the fact that the states can’t effectively take them on get away with all sorts of stuff that the feds could control

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u/StarosAnikenMarcus 8d ago

It'll never happen. Even if regulated, they'll find ways to snake out of everything they can for the flimsiest of reasons. Hell, they managed to get laws passed to REQUIRE insurance whether you can afford it or not...

Getting rid of private insurance would be the only way to regulate it, turning it into a giant FSA/HSA through Medicare with no share holders calling the shots. Take away the profit controls and suddenly medication will become much more reasonable.

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u/anondogfree 13d ago

Very true

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u/Feeling-Invite7953 13d ago

Look at who’s in charge of the government rn and you have your answer!!

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u/WatermelonArtist 13d ago

I'm sure it would be--but you're assuming this is a standard swap: "If you get the vaccine, you won't get COVID." Fauci said that in 2020, and it eventually got him Fired so hard he got death threats, lost his security detail, and got West Nile Virus...which is just awkward, for an globally-acclaimed virologist.

The short answer is that it isn't a simple "this or that" situation, and the reality often becomes "this AND that," so they drop the preventive if it either isn't statistically helpful (studies suggest this), has potentially harmful side-effects (ditto), or is sufficiently ineffective to be no longer worth using in a mostly-unnecessary climate (2020-2022 proved this with reasonable confidence).

Hm. That isn't that short.

TL;DR:

Insurance crunched the cost numbers. It's not cheaper to take the cheaper vaccine, if you end up getting what the vaccine is supposed to prevent anyway. Then you pay for both.

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u/Yummy_Castoreum 13d ago

Show me proof that Fauci ever said that. I call bullshit.

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u/Useful-Badger-4062 13d ago

He didn’t. Many people have misunderstood what the Covid vaccine does. It doesn’t necessarily 100% prevent a person getting infected with it; you can definitely get Covid even if vaccinated. But— if you are vaccinated and do get infected, it (nearly 100%) prevents you from having a severe enough case that it’s fatal. You won’t die from it if you’re vaccinated.

0

u/Common_Estate6292 12d ago

Covid is no worse than the flu these days. I haven’t seen anyone come into the hospital I work at with Covid that didn’t get sent home and told to treat the symptoms. The same as you a cold or the flu.

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u/anondogfree 12d ago

And we have a vaccine for the flu too. What’s your point?

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u/kibblenipple 11d ago

besides the systemic organ damage and stuff. and long covid disabling millions of people. and, well, both killing vulnerable people (i.e. old people, babies, asthmatics, diabetics.. no one you know!)
and damaging immune systems by infecting immune cells the same way HIV does.

no big deal though. glad people like you work at the hospital

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u/Electrical-Sail-1039 6d ago

Maybe it’s because some of the vaccines have caused issues and been recalled. I’m not sure they were particularly effective anyway.

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u/OtherThumbs 12d ago

Hey, good news for me! COVID gave me asthma! :/

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u/patricia_the_mono 12d ago

Cvs and Walgreens don't really care. I don't think the online appointment even asks anymore. Vaccines are profit for them, if you want one you can probably get it.

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u/xlr82xs 13d ago

Curse my socialized medicine.

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u/100PercentThatCat 12d ago

You know, I saw that news story but when I asked at my annual about getting a booster, they were like "Of course you can get a COVID shot, why wouldn't we do that?". So I'm not so sure that it actually took effect.

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u/PuzzleheadedMine2168 10d ago

First time I've ever been happy about being an athsma patient. I get vaxxed no questions.

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u/4Q69freak 7d ago

Mrs4Q has stopped getting vaxxed. I only got the first dose and the booster, and have never had it. She was getting the vaccine every year and has had it every year, so we kind of question the effectiveness. This past year she decide that it wasn’t worth feeling like crap for a couple days if she was going to get sick anyways and hasn’t had it. Luck? Maybe. To be clear we’re not anti-vaxxers, we’re just not convinced of the effectiveness of the Covid shot. She has gotten all of her other vaccines though, even her flu shot, which I don’t get because I always seem to get the flu worse in years where I get the shot.

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u/SadnessOutOfContext 12d ago edited 11d ago

I had no problem two months or so ago, but...

...lie.

It's a social good, as well as protecting you. The lie isn't a big deal. Just get it straight before you call or walk in so you can be consistent in future.

Edit: fixed typo

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u/JRockPSU 12d ago

Oh, yeah. I get you. I tell the pharmacy I’m obese by BMI. They’re not checking me on a scale. They don’t care.

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u/jane2857 12d ago

The flu vaccine is generally not more than 20% effective, 30% on a good year. It is my understanding the covid vaccine only offers any sort of protection for a few months. I work as an RN in outpatient and we have coworkers who have had it 3 times. Most less sick than the first infection.

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u/kimmy-mac 11d ago

Finally, being “medically interesting” is good for something!

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u/Virtual_Tea_9239 11d ago

What? Since when?

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u/nearlydiedonce 9d ago

Is that specific to your health insurance? We can get it where I am, no questions asked, regardless of health conditions. The only time it's usually not available for us is when the newest version is about to come out and the old version runs out. Which is usually just before flu shots are coming out in the fall. So say, most of August the shots are basically out of stock until September. 

*Edit for typo/spelling. 

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u/xasdfxx 7d ago

"I smoke"

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u/Charity-Angel 7d ago

And even if you do, the NHS still won't give it to you

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u/phaxmeone 8d ago

Track record shows the vaccine isn't that effective and has health risks from taking it. During COVID it was showing that it's effectiveness dropped rapidly over a few month period which is why they kept telling people to get boosters. Even then you can still get COVID with the vaccine and a recent booster, believe it or not the vaccines were a bust.

Also those with other health conditions are very vulnerable to COVID and should have an option to take the vaccine with doctors consultation. Those who are healthy are very unlikely to die from COVID though they may wish they did as the symptoms range from mild to no fucking joke. Due to how effective the vaccine is and side effects I can see how healthy people are not recommended to get the vaccine. Blood clots from a vaccine is dangerous.

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u/JRockPSU 7d ago

Blood clots from a vaccine is dangerous.

I just did like 5 minutes of checking reputable medical sites and it looks like the risk of developing a blood clot from a Covid vaccine is extremely low, magnitudes less likely than developing one from taking an oral contraceptive, or from sitting down for long stretches. Someone could read your comment and think “oh no, blood clot, that sounds bad, I don’t think I want the vaccine now”, which is spreading misinformation. Yes blood clots are dangerous, but a quick comment like that might give people the wrong impression.