Another argument for sick leave and Good Jobs

My glasses broke today. They're half-frames, with the frame on the top half and the bottom of the lens held on by a thread-like thing. The thread thing came unattached, causing the lens to fall out (luckily it didn't break!) and leaving me helpless.

Luckily I was able to get to Lenscrafters before they closed and they were able to fix it for me. But on that desperate subway ride, I was thinking about what I would do if they couldn't fix my glasses. I can't work without my glasses - there's simply no point in showing up blind. So I thought about it and decided that the best plan was to find a one-hour glasses place (I don't know whether Lenscrafters does one hour at every location), go there first thing tomorrow, get my eyes checked (I know my current prescription is outdated), blindly trust the optician in helping me select frames (since Poodle is out of the country), limiting myself to the selection available on hand in one particular store, and hope they still have that thing where you can return them within a month for any reason. Absolute best case, that's half a day's work lost, several hundred dollars out of pocket, and walking around wearing glasses that were chosen with insufficient consideration for aesthetics. Worst case, I lose a day or two of work, or struggle to work with inadequate eyesight (which, best case, will worsen the quality of my work and create more work for my colleagues; worst case, it will be impossible.)

Fortunately, I can absorb this because I have a Good Job with sick leave. I could totally use my sick leave to drop everything and get my glasses replaced. (Some might argue that that's not being sick, but it's a necessary medical device that needs immediate replacement so sick leave is the closest possible accommodation). And I wouldn't lose any pay for taking sick time, which is good because it coincides with an unexpected several-hundred-dollar outlay. And (because I haven't yet bought new glasses during this two-year-period) this outlay would be partially mitigated by my insurance, which I have by virtue of this being a Good Job. (The insurance amount is insufficient, but it does help.) If I didn't have a Good Job, if I didn't have sick leave, I'd lose pay, I might even lose my job, and between the lost pay and the uninsured cost of new glasses I'd probably have to choose between getting the glasses and paying some other bill.

My broken glasses were a relatively minor malfunction. Things like this happen, that's life. Even if they hadn't been able to fix them, it would have taken a few hours' inconvenience to remedy the situation. A quick change of plans, a bit of schlepping around on the subway, putting a rush on the big text I have due at the end of the week. No one should be in a situation where a relatively minor malfunction like this has them up at night worrying about how they're going to pay the bills.