They’re sounding like a villain in a Christmas movie right now.

We’ve all heard the stories of teachers or nurses coming together and donating their sick days or paid time off to a coworker who is dealing with cancer, a loss in the family, or some other tragedy that would prevent them from working. While some see this story as a testament to coworkers’ selflessness, all I can think of is the selfishness of the company they work for. It’s not right that we live in a world where you can lose your job because of a life-altering tragedy that you have no control over, and therefore lose your health insurance. I know that in a lot of cases, people don’t lose their jobs because they have cancer: they just lose their income, having to go on leave indefinitely, and that’s the point of donating PTO: PTO and sick days are paid, and once you run out of those and your emergency is still raging on, you lose your source of income. Enter the heroic coworkers donating their PTO instead of the company giving them more paid time off than they «earned.»