To work, or not to work when suffering with bad case of Flu?

STAY HOME.  Whatever you have will filter through the office like wildfire and everyone will look back to the first source.  Course, we shed viruses for a week before we actuall show symptoms....

Please stay home when sick!  

Ok, I am going to throw another little spanner in here....

I'm a teacher, and we are under the strictest instructions not to go to work with flu because of the whole swine flu thing. BUT, as a teacher, when you are sick, you still have to do your planning and set the work for someone else, and then, when you get back, you discover that your kids have been obnoxious for the reliever (substitute teacher do you call them in the USA?) and didn't do as they were asked, and you have to change your planning to do the work again that you had set, and then work your butt of to get through what you SHOULD have been doing with that time, and in doing so, you make yourself sick again with the stress.

It's a Bart Simpson moment; you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

It also strikes me as unfair that you can be disciplined for being ill. I'm not sure that employers are allowed to do that here in NZ. They might be, but I don't know.

Whatever you decide, take the meds, get well, think of yourself and your health first. And, hope that you don't go stark raving mad stuck at home, which is how it goes with me. I end up feeling more guilty than recovered because I haven't gone to work!

Good luck. Feel better soon.

Wow, I'm sorry - that really sucks. As others said, it's best to stay home if you're that ill, but in your specific situation, I can see how you would be torn. Is there a reason why your company has such a stringent illness policy? What kind of work do you do? Could you at least talk to your employer to see if you could do work from home, so you would still be "productive", without infecting other associates? Or could you go in and maybe set up somewhere away from the vast majority of people (like an extra conference room, etc), so you could do your work with minimal contact with others?

Hi all, thnks for the support, yup my organisation is like something from many centuries ago, and hasn't evolved much since!  I am a Police officer in the UK, so not only do I risk infecting my colleagues I infect the public too!  I have squirreled myself away in an empty office for the last two days doing my admin stuff, but woke up this morning and my throat was bleeding I had coughed so much, so I have given up the ghost and phoned in sick. 

We also have posters up EVERYWHERE in work telling us not to come in, but we still get disciplined if we go sick!  Craziness.  You would think they would make exceptions for things like pandemics.  The doctor has now prescribed me with tamiflu and antibiotics, so hopefully I will be on the mend soon.  On the downside, it appears that my boyfriend is coming down with it as he stayed with me in the week preceeding the illness, so he now has to notify his ex wife to keep an eye on his 3yo son for symptoms....oh dear

Thanks again for the support you guys, hope none of you come down with this horrible lurgy (was wondering why i felt so dizzy i almost fell off the treadmill friday!!  This would explain it then...)