r/science • u/eastbayted • 2d ago
Health Sick food service workers remain top driver of viral foodborne outbreaks in US
https://www.healio.com/news/gastroenterology/20250331/sick-food-service-workers-remain-top-driver-of-viral-foodborne-outbreaks-in-us
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u/ArtemisCatGoddess 2d ago edited 2d ago
Sick leave isn’t enough. The other problem is to justify any sort of wage increase places are slashing hours to maintain a bottom line that doesn’t decrease profit for CEOs etc. I’m a manager of a small pharmacy and I send people home and never enforce any rules in regards to people being sick. We have 5 paid sick days a year, and I can’t override that but if you’re sick stay home. Please don’t get me or my patients sick. However my staff is tiny, there’s 3 of us. So there’s literally no coverage or backup or anyone we can call to cover if people are sick, so people feel guilty about calling in. I literally have to send people home, “but you’ll be alone!” Which I can’t explain how much that makes my blood boil toward corporate. Especially since I have worked in 2 pharmacies for the same chain that have near identical script counts/workload. One store is allotted 40 pharmacist hours and 64 tech hours; the other is allotted 48 pharmacist hours and 100 tech hours. The difference? One pharmacy is more rural so the wages are 10-20% higher. Take a random stab at what allotted hours were given to the store and where the only difference was higher wage? Then we get caught in the loop of “you have too much overtime! Why aren’t these professional services being done?!” Well it’s because you refuse to hire more than a skeleton crew which is constantly behind and can barely keep up with the day to day to ensure the CEO gets his multimillion dollar bonus.