It’s easy if you want to keep you job don’t get sick. Take responsibility
You dont get to have that ability out here.
I had a case of arsenic once from the ground dust. Another of mountain sickness. Several raging fevers that took a week to resolve and so on. Sometimes end up in the ER or even the Trauma Center by chopper or ambulance.
When you are sick, nothing doing in driving. The company can repower the load or stick another driver on it. But I aint taking that thing one inch.
They can always fire me. It is indeed at will.
I will bury them in documentation and pick up my back pay in due time.
You dont get to choose not to be sick. What you CAN do is fight the sick and risk killing a family along with yourself. Remember safety first.
The last time I was sick related to the trucking was tested for TB. That was a old enemy from Baltimore. So they test for TB, until they read the results on the arm no work period. Three bosses confronted me raging wtf I was doing skipping out on weekly work?
"TB"
GTFO of here. And so I went.
I have had so many violently profane battles with dispatch and suits. I learned that if I personally am too sick to hold 40 ton at the speed limit and between the lines its not going one damn inch. They can fire me. (And have)
Its the principle of the thing. They can make all the policies they want. And do. You should see the convoluted byzantine process of calling in sick at walmart. I just be sick and then show up with the necessary documents from ER or Doctors with medicines etc.
That gets sorted in a few moments. If I still have a job or not? Irrevelant. I remember one incident where I blew a scales. Completely and absolutely blew it. They shipped me to the hospital on sight. I arrived with 104 fever, in bad need of fluids, chemicals and other things for a few days.
To this day I do no possess any memory. If it was not for the hospital reports from EMT, Law and so on I would not know it happened. The truck? Not my problem. Company took care of it.