'Just wear a mask and don't tell anyone': Workplaces are filling up with sick employeesMaria Bernal, an employee at a Jack in the Box in Folsom, Calif., couldn’t read the orders popping up on her screen. Her vision was blurry, her hands shook from chills and her head felt heavy. A pharmacist told her she probably had COVID-19. When she told her boss, the manager told Bernal to keep working. “Don’t worry, everyone has it, you can still work. Just wear a mask and don’t tell anyone,” the manager said, according to a Jan. 14 complaint Bernal filed with Sacramento County’s public health department. As the Omicron variant knocked out swaths of the labor force, people in a variety of jobs — fast-food workers, grocery clerks, teachers — say they have been under immense pressure to report to work while feeling sick or having tested positive with the virus. Bernal, the Jack in the Box employee, said she does not know what the chain's protocols and sick-leave benefits are for workers who contract the virus, as no manager at the company has given her this information. The complaint Bernal filed with Sacramento County’s public health department alongside three of her co-workers at the Folsom Jack in the Box alleges restaurant management dissuaded workers from quarantining, encouraged them to cover up or not disclose their symptoms to their co-workers and failed to take additional safety precautions. The complaint says the restaurant has allowed several staff members with COVID-like symptoms to continue working without wearing masks, including the store manager. About a third of workers at the Folsom location have been working with COVID-like symptoms or were home sick with a confirmed COVID case in the first two weeks of January, the complaint says. Jack in the Box did not respond to requests for comment. Crystal Orozco, another Jack in the Box worker in Folsom, said in the complaint her manager asked to see a doctor's note after Orozco texted the manager reporting she was sick with a fever and a cough, and was having trouble finding a COVID test. In California, officials took a further step to battle shortages of healthcare workers as intensive care units filled up with COVID-19 patients. A policy change allows healthcare workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus but don't have any symptoms to return to work immediately. And at facilities with the most severe staffing shortages, symptomatic staff are allowed to work with COVID patients. A child-care provider at a facility in Las Vegas was told to come to work even after reporting to her boss she had been exposed to the virus and wasn't feeling well, according to screenshots of text messages reviewed by The Times. The facility was short-staffed, and its director believed the worker, who is vaccinated, was well-protected. The worker got a PCR test and went to work. After her shift, she was able to find a rapid test. The result was positive. When she returned to work a few days later, the message from management was to not talk about what happened. “They said, ‘We didn’t let anyone know about your situation. You’re fine now, you can just work.'" A child-care provider at a facility in Las Vegas was told to come to work even after reporting to her boss she had been exposed to the virus and wasn't feeling well, according to screenshots of text messages reviewed by The Times. The facility was short-staffed, and its director believed the worker, who is vaccinated, was well-protected. The worker got a PCR test and went to work. After her shift, she was able to find a rapid test. The result was positive. When she returned to work a few days later, the message from management was to not talk about what happened. “They said, ‘We didn’t let anyone know about your situation. You’re fine now, you can just work.'" https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/just-wear-mask-dont-tell-170843215.html - https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/just-wear-mask-dont-tell-170843215.html
------------- "Facts don't care about your feelings" I'M A UNVAXXED DEVIL so kiss my rebel ass.
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