As part of his Motivation Monday series, David at MoneyNing spoke out against consistently taking sick days on Mondays and Fridays. His point was that using sick time to create an extended weekend won’t fool anyone, is irresponsible, and may even lead to losing your job.

I usually agree with a lot of the commentary at MoneyNing, but this is one area where we totally disagree. Taking full advantage of all of your time off is a subject that I’ve covered in the past. I wrote a 2 post series on this subject for the Lending Club blog. Here are those posts: Raising Your Hourly Wage and Lack of Vacation

As I said in my Raising Your Hourly Wage post, “I’m not suggesting that you exploit your sick and personal time but rather take full advantage of it when the need arises.” Being sick (or even just tired) is highly subjective. If the weekends wear you out and you need time on Monday to recover or if you can’t make it through a particular week without taking Friday off to regain your sanity, then I really believe that you should take a sick day.

My main arguments for taking full advantage of your time off are as follows:

• Sick and Personal Time Tend to be “Use it or Lose It.” Unless your sick time accrues and you are paid for it each year, or when you quit, not taking this time off reduces your hourly wage.
• Many companies consider this time off part of your total compensation. In other words, they justify paying you less because they offer you this benefit. Not using it leaves you underpaid
• Working sick (or tired) is less productive and may infect other coworkers
• The United States is the only country with an advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation for its workers. This breeds a culture where taking time off is shunned.
• Your company isn’t going to give you extra time off for working overtime, so take advantage of the time they do offer.

This discussion reminds me of what life was like in the office during the 2004 baseball playoffs. Night after night, the Red Sox and Yankees were playing high stress games deep into the night. As long as the normal games were, Games 4 and 5 even went to extra innings. I was working in Boston at the time. During the week of the playoffs, tons of people called in sick. Nobody believed that anyone was truly sick, but here’s what I noticed: The people who took sick days were much more productive when they returned than those who did not. Those of us who were good little worker bees and did come to work, dragged all week and really hurt office productivity.

To me, being unproductive when you are at work is more irresponsible than taking a day when you need it. Going through the motions while getting paid for working is worse than using a sick day. So if your “mental health day” happens to fall on Mondays or Fridays, so be it. A day off is a day off and if taking one in conjunction with a weekend makes it even more valuable, I’m all for it.