Me: I’m not feeling well. Going to take a sick day.
Boss: Ok, feel better.
HR: You need a doctor’s note for the sick time to be approved.
Me: I just feel “blech” and need to rest.
HR: Doesn’t matter. We need a doctor’s note.
Me: [Slugs to urgent care, waits 3 hours to see a doctor]
Doctor: Just go home and rest.
Receptionist: That’ll be $35 for the co-pay.
Me: (twitch)
That’s also 3 hours of time spent on work related requirements!
Good point!
If OP is hourly, those 3 hours should be billed as work - probably under a generic HR-related category if one is available.
If OP is salaried exempt, then this would fall under “doing any work at all” (all that’s needed to be paid for the day) and if sick time is tracked by day and not by hour, then OP doesn’t need to use one. If it’s tracked hourly then OP should make sure to only use 5 sick hours (or less, depending on how long the work-related conversations took) and depending on employer policies may not need to use any sick time at all.
This also cut into the time OP could have been using to rest. It would be very reasonable for OP to need an extra day to recover, as a result.