The FMLA; don't abuse it or you will lose your job.

Recently many people have turn towards the Family Medical Leave Act, i.e. FMLA, as a method to miss work whenever they don't feel like working. I mention this in my previous blog but I think  this subject deserves more attention. The FMLA was created for people who had a serious medical condition, or a loved one that needed care, so they could use time off from work to care for themselves or others and not lose their jobs due to absences. After 9-11, I noticed an increase in people requesting doctors excuses to use the FMLA. In the beginning it was mostly flight attendants that had anxiety relating to flying after 9-11. This made sense to me so I would fill out the necessary paperwork for them to take time off. However, as the years went by, many people are requesting it due to increased work demands in a slow economy. Since many companies have decreased the amount of employees, the work has to be distributed to the employees left behind. This means higher demands on workload and more productivity expected on the remaining  people. People get stressed out and develop anxiety and depressive symptoms. Instead of searching for coping mechanisms. They go to their doctors and request time off. Some ask for a "block" of weeks to months off while others request intermittent time off. The intermittent time off is tricky. They request days off whenever they feel anxious. Some ask for 2-3 times a week, if they "need" it, to several times a month. I know people that take the day off if they happen to oversleep. Others have had the audacity to travel to Las Vegas or New York, on a brief vacation, while using the FMLA. Two people that I know where caught on these mini vacations while on the FMLA and were fired immediately. I know this other woman that has been applying for the FMLA for years now because she has to start work at 9:00 AM and she oversleeps a lot. So every time she oversleeps, she just calls in "sick", i.e. "anxious", and gets the day off. She has been accommodated at work with special hours so she could start work at a later hour than her coworkers. Even with these accommodations, she still misses work every Sunday, (she works weekend shift), because she is too tired to get out of bed. The last time she applied for the FMLA, she told me that she had to continue applying every year since she knew she would be fired if she was not "protected" by the FMLA. She said that other coworkers had not renewed their FMLA and once it expired, they would lose their jobs. I wonder how people put themselves on these predicaments. In a slow economy where jobs are scarce, wouldn't you want to keep your job? Isn't it better to stress out at work than stress out because you have no money to pay your bills? The way I look at work is time I put in to be productive. Staying at home with nothing to do won't do you any good. They call it "work" because you get paid for doing it, otherwise they would call it "fun".