hahah. i buy my own stuff at work if its scarce. most notably kleenex; being sick is miserable, who wants to use cheap-ass sandpaper on their nose when they already feel like shit? thank you, i'll spend $4 for super-extra-soft tissues.
If you have dedicated sick leave pay that's fine. However, sick leave is unheard of in some countries. Why would you force someone to take annual holiday time off to be sick or, worse, unpaid leave. Then they would be even more miserable than just being sick.
However, sick leave is unheard of in some countries.
And not so unheard of in some other countries.
I once got sick right before my regular paid vacation and the sickness continued well over a week over into the vacation time. It was severe enough that I had actually went to see a doctor (I do that maybe once in a decade) and she wrote me a sick leave grant.
Now, after the vacation when I got back to work it turns out, that in my country, if you have a sick leave granted by your doctor you actually get your vacation days reimbursed for the time of the sick leave. Thus, me being sick for a week on my vacation ended up being my employer's loss by law or whichever collective bargaining deal that happened to apply, and I got to have that one week of vacation at a later time when I was fortunately not as sick. :)
If your employer doesn't have dedicated sick pay, then why not? Perhaps they should? A few days where >50% of their employees are off sick due to the flu of the month going around ought to convince them otherwise.
This is why most countries (by "unheard of in some countries", I think you mean "unheard of in the US") have sick leave in some form -- it's both recuperation time and voluntary quarantine.
Actually, by some countries I meant East Asia. I had a friend get fired after getting hit by a car and needing 2 months leave (because his office had no wheelchair access). Technically not legal but you can't exactly fight a well funded employer when you are broke from medical bills.
It is quite common to see very sick people working. People who probably should be in hospital, not just on leave.
