can I use sick time for haircuts and massages?

A reader writes:

Help me settle this not very serious argument I had with a friend recently. My workplace has an average or slightly above average PTO policy with separate vacation and sick leave. My cat has been sickly lately, so I’ve been back and forth to the vet a lot over the past few months and have taken probably three hours total off work to do so.

Somehow it came up in conversation with a friend that I logged those hours as sick time, rather than vacation. Our sick leave policy does make clear that it is to be used for health-related time off for myself or immediate family and defines who that includes. Unsurprisingly, it does not include pets in the list, so my friend argues that I’m violating the policy. But what it does say, and what HR emphasizes every year, is that mental health is health, and taking a mental health day or sick time off for a mental reprieve is okay and needs no further explanation.

We’re a pretty casual and positive place to work, and my argument is that making sure my pets are healthy is good for my mental health. I feel the same way about haircuts and massages, etc. — they aren’t exactly health-related but I have no qualms about using sick time for them.

It’s not that many hours, I have a massive bank of unused sick time, and I’m going to keep doing it. But my friend thinks I’m a bit of a bad person now. What say you?

I don’t think you’re a bad person because of this, but it’s also highly unlikely that you’re using your workplace’s policy the way it’s intended.

Using sick time to get a haircut is a pretty significant stretch. In theory you could make a case for massage, but at a lot of workplaces that too would be out of sync with what the time is actually intended for.

Taking your cat to the vet — well, your workplace specifically lists out what family members you can use health-related time off for and doesn’t include pets. So no, that’s also probably not aligned with the policy.

I get your argument that it’s all covered by the mental health umbrella, but under that argument pretty much anything could be a sick day — shopping, or baking cookies, or having a drink with friends, and I think most people would agree that would be a bad-faith interpretation of the policy.

That said, “is this allowed under our policy?” is a different question from “realistically, how much does it matter?” Realistically, if you do good work, don’t miss deadlines, aren’t taking last-minute days off for this stuff that leave your team in the lurch, and and overall aren’t taking a ton more time off than other people, this is more an intellectual debate than anything else. But I don’t think you should fool yourself into thinking that your company would be fine with this if you were open about doing it. Or who knows, maybe they would be! If you really want clarity on it, you could ask your manager. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, that’s an answer too.

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