When you’re sick, it’s important not to go into the world with your sickness and spread it around. It’s also important to stay home and rest so that you can feel better as soon as possible.

If you have the type of job where you can work from home, than being sick doesn’t necessarily have to mean taking a sick day if you feel up to working. However, if you have a job that requires going to work, such as retail or in a factory, that’s why sick days or personal days exist.

In this story, one woman shares that the company she works at is short staffed. She went to work even though she was feeling sick, and she wants nothing more than to go home.

However, she feels bad about refusing to work overtime. Should she stay for overtime? Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA if I refuse overtime even though we’re short staffed.

Some quick deets about our staffing. Recently two staff were let go as they couldn’t do the job so it was having to be done again behind them – they have been replaced by one person.

1 member of staff has moved from late shift (my shift) to day shift. Another has had their late swapped for a day shift today.

1 member of staff left last week and has not been replaced.

She went to work even though she’s sick.

Today

I have the flu. I feel super ill and I haven’t been sleeping properly so I’m exhausted too.

I usually finish at 10 but was asked if I could stay till 12.

I said unless the rest of the team will all have to stay hours late to finish the work (like 1 or 2am) I’d rather go home as I domt feel well.

She’s not the only one who feels sick.

However my Supervisor is also unwell. He thinks he has tonsillitis.

His shift ends at midnight and has said he will not be staying later than that as he feels ill and anything that isn’t done will have to be picked up in the morning by day shift.

So my question is this AITA for wanting to go home and go to bed instead of doing overtime even if it means the day shift tomorrow have to pick up the left over work

(Note: after their few set morning jobs what they mostly do is sit and watch TV on their phones unless called on by radio. Even some of their less urgent but still required jobs don’t get done because they cba)

I’m wondering why either of them are at work if they’re sick. They should both go home.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who was facing serious accusations before retirement, but luckily had security footage that proved his innocence.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

This person thinks the supervisor should stay.

Another person thinks she should go home.

A former supervisor weighs in.

Here’s another vote for going home.

Nobody should feel obligated to go to work when they’re sick, and they definitely shouldn’t feel obligated to work overtime when they’re not feeling well.

It doesn’t matter that the company is short staffed. That doesn’t mean that the remaining employees should have to sacrifice their health.

The morning shift staff can pick up the slack in this case. It sounds like they have enough extra time to handle it anyway.