Work and ms

Everything I have read about work and ms seems to be you employer to make reasnable adjustment Well I asked my line manager ificould take Friday of work asi don’t work Thursday’s as I have had a lot going on this last week and I’m not feeling myself and I want to avoid a full on relapse coming on I thought ifi took myself out this might help Well he did agree to it but he wasn’t happy about it and it has caused metro stress more on the situationthateven having these two days plus the weekend thatthisisgoingto help so then comes the problem. I still worried about having afullrelapseand ending up of work for 4 -6 weeks again as he won’t be happy about that So what do I do help please

You do not say if the Friday off was a one off or every Friday. If it was a one off and you only asked this week, maybe the irritation was about the short notice? DOn’t kow what job you do but if there was a deadline to meet an other people off too - say - then your absence might have caused some practical difficulties? Trying to think about this from both sides - your line manager might have been more sympathetic or maybe not… You also don’t say if you have disclosed your MS - again might be more likely to be viewed as reasonable if part of an agreed strategy for handling your declared MS. There is a good MS Soc toolkit “working yet worried” that includes agreeing plans with your line manager for dealing with different situations. Reasonable adjustments need to be agreed in the context of an overall plan to be reasonable on both sides. Suggest maybe a meeting involving line manager and HR or Occupational Health if you have one - apols if you have already done this of course!.

OK, I hesitated to say this earlier, in case I was in a minority of one, but having seen the other reply, I suspect that yes, the short notice is the issue.

I’m sure “reasonable adjustments” don’t mean time off at short notice has to be granted on request, OR that management have to look happy about it.

In this case, I can see very little grounds for complaint, as the request was granted anyway. A smile with it would have been nice, but isn’t compulsory.

I think perhaps another factor here was taking it as holiday, rather than “sick”. If you are too ill to work is one thing: the correct procedure is to book it as sickness. Then there should be no ifs or buts: sick is sick. Nothing anyone can do about that.

However, to say you need holiday, because you don’t feel well, is rather different. It’s a bit like trying to have it both ways. You’re not officially declaring yourself unfit to work, but at the same arguing for a special claim to a holiday.

So I think sometimes, you have to make a choice and stick to it. Go sick, and accept it goes on your record, and whatever long-term consequnces that may have. Or, if things are not so bad, settle for holiday, but accept that MS does not give you preferential claim to short-notice holidays, and that your request might be turned down. If you’d feel absolutely devastated and unable to cope if you didn’t get the holiday you’d asked for, it might be a clue that the right choice should have been “sick”.

Tina

Hi, I agree with your other replies, it sounds like the problem was the short notice and i think this would probably have been the response whoever asked, ms or not. However , if you do think you might want to do this again, could you speak to your boss and get it agreed as “a reasonable adjustment”, although not sure if they know about your ms or not, if no, you could mention it and then get them to agree to this “reasonable adjustment”. I quite often take days off at short notice, several of us where I work do this, it is nothing to do with my ms. If one of us thinks we might do this in the next week or so we tend to say “I might take a day off next week if…such and such” and then he is prepared when you do ask. Another thing in your situation you could, if you want a day off again at short notice, say something like, although dont know if they know about your ms, but if you do , say maybe " my ms has been playing up a bit recently, I know it’s short notice buut could I have the day off on Friday to sort out a few things to do with my ms"'. Cheryl:)

Could you swap your day off to the Friday from the Thursday as an ongoing thing? You don’t say if you work weekends, but if you could have the day off as part of your weekend, it might help avoid future problems? When I worked full time Mon-Fri, I cut my hours a bit by taking the Wed off, it allows me to go for oxygen therapy once a week and breaks up the week a bit too - now I only work 16 hours a week, but still don’t work on a Wed - this works well for me. I’m lucky with my employer though, they can’t do enough to help me, but I’m a secretary and it wouldn’t usually impact too severely if I had an unexpected day off.

Luisa x