I worked for a software company that didn’t give a lot of sick time, only 40 hours for the first five years years then 80 hours after that.
There were some folks that made a point of not taking a sick day, ever, they came in with serious cases of flu, food poisoning, whatever. Some of them had 300 hours of sick leave built up. They were planning on getting paid for it when they quit.
Then the company announced everyone’s accumulated sick leave would be reduced to 40 hours at their next anniversary date and you could never carry over more than 40 hours from that point on. And that was that.
Employees were free to take their 300 hours (or whatever) within the next year, so there was no legal basis for saying anyone actually lost the hours, everyone got to use their hours they had built up.
The accountants had pointed out the large amount of sick time accumulated by certain employees were a liability on the spreadsheet, easily running into the six figures, so poof, one year they had them, the next year they were gone.
So take ‘em if you got ‘em folks, they might not be there tomorrow.
The way LTD works where I am is there is NO payout until I’ve been off work 6 months, then LTD kicks in.
I hoard my sick leave in a most miserly fashion indeed. I’m up around 700 hours or so at this point, but I won’t breathe easily until I’m over 1000.
I had a minor operation that took a LOT longer than expected to recover from, and I was glad to have the leave stashed away.
I *MIGHT* take a sick day every 4-6 months, usually for a doctor’s/dentist’s appt. but I try to schedule those on my days off or a morning after night shift.