I wish I could vote you up. I've been all around the world and have never encountered English spoken WITHOUT the distinction between 'a' and 'an'. I am baffled as to how the OP could possibly come to the conclusion that this is errant, and that it is ONLY Americans that do it. Makes me chuckle a bit, actually.

Well, some cops are given incentives to care:

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=27376993&nid=148&title=emails-reveal-incentives-behind-cottonwood-police-issuing-tickets&fm=home_page&s_cid=featured-1

"the FPS craze that's been going on since the days of Doom"

A 20 year "craze"?

I haven't worked for a company that actually has sick days in over a decade. Even salaried employees like myself have to use their vacation time if they get sick (how does that make sense?). Fortunately, I can work from home whenever I want but most others do not have that luxury.

I understand that many employers have made this move because people would abuse sick time, but if they implemented a system whereby employees could draw from their sick pool instead of vacation pool if they presented a doctor's note, I think that productivity overall would increase.

And the other one Dick Clark.

They are going to call one of the planets The Heff.

Must be nice. My former employers policy was graduated depending on how long you have been with the company. At 5 years, I was getting 12 days per year.

I enjoy my job. I have excellent co-workers that I enjoy spending time with.

I love spending time with my family and friends while camping, visiting museums, travelling, etc. more.

To each his own, but I only work so I can support my enjoying life with friends and family habit.

Thus the "runaway"....

I applaud you if you truly made the switch from Sick/Vacation to "Paid time off" to reward your employees (assuming the sum of the previous sick time and PTO pools equal the new single pool). The reality is that in the majority of cases, this decision has nothing to do with rewarding employees and everything to do with decreasing costs.

However, this does not decrease costs in the long run because now you have incentivized coming into work sick and infecting everyone else which results in a loss of productivity and morale.

Also, I apologize for the use of the term "incentivized"...too much time spent in board rooms.

In the U.S. you are also punished for taking time off for being sick. I actually had a co-worker told that she had to keep her accrued vacation time above 20 hours (vacation time and sick time are the same pool) because the company felt that she was taking too much time off even though she was only taking what she had accrued. So if she was hovering around 20 hours accrued and got the Flu, tough...better come to work and infect your co-workers. It's stupid. Corporate policy is based around what makes for the best quarterly report. Never mind that those decisions will cost the company in the long run as long as the numbers have been maximized for the quarterly report. The hubris of the corporate overlords is bolstered by the support of the state which says that we are "at will" employees that can be let go at any time without prior notice or reason. This is the result of runaway capitalism. We are returning to the robber barons of the turn of the last century.

This very thread is a race to the bottom....

Mozilla should just cut out the race to 5 blades and call nightlies full releases.

"ultimately, this has the potential to improve patient care by decreasing amputations, strokes and heart attacks while reducing health-care costs"... For the insurance companies. What are the odds those savings will be passed on to the patients?

Just download and install the certificate with the cn of "Linksys". How hard can that be?