Employee calling out sick too often
When an employee frequently calls out sick with short notice, employers are left wondering if they are genuinely ill, overwhelmed, or secretly working another job. This uncertainty makes it difficult to manage daily restaurant staffing while trying to balance trust and fair communication.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Putting back of house staff out front to serve
- 2Asking morning servers to stay on for the next shift
- 3Having a fact-finding conversation to let the employee explain
- 4Combining sick days and vacation time into a single generic PTO pool
- 5Ignoring the absences if job performance and deadlines are still met
- 6Investigating potential second jobs or monitoring company laptop usage
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“6 callouts today:”source ↗
“She's been with me since March 2026 and is actually very good at her job. Recently she has been calling off a lot saying she's sick which I believed and allowed her to take the days off.”source ↗
“The frequency of the calling off is concerning me - is she working another remote job ? Is she overwhelmed by her tasks at my business and needs extra days off during the week to decompress”source ↗
“Just have a polite fact-finding conversation. Talk about how you've notice a high frequency of call outs and ask if she's okay or needs any accomodations.”source ↗
“I’d be concerned about the lying. Job performance is good but if she’s not working full time and is getting paid for it? Personal use of company laptop - is that allowed?”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 4Why do schools blame teachers for student absenteeism?
- 12Why can't employees ever use the self service portal?
- 9Why is handling employee relations so overwhelming?
- 4Why do employees lack initiative and need constant hand-holding?
- 2How to handle an employee who keeps threatening to quit
- 8Why do managers care about arriving 5 minutes early?