Why is it any of their business what was going on with him on his sick days? 

When you call out sick from work, there are really only two kinds of responses you can get from your manager. They will either say, «Get well soon!» or, «Are you really so sick that you can’t come into work?» If you’ve never worked for the latter company, consider yourself lucky. 

Many companies have designated sick time for employees to use, so they don’t feel the need to badger them about their exact symptoms. When a company doesn’t offer sick time and relies on shift workers, they are more likely to question employees who call out sick. Managers are annoyed at having to find someone to cover the sick employee’s shift, and they might have been burned before by employees claiming to be sick when they weren’t. Even if that’s so, it doesn’t give them an excuse to be unreasonable to their sick employees and demand that they come in anyway. I don’t want a sick waiter to serve me food. I would rather wait 90 minutes for my food than get it in 30 minutes and get the flu three days later. A 3-star review for slow service is not worth infecting the rest of your coworkers and customers alike. 

The employee in this story took two sick days off, and now all of his coworkers want to know exactly what was ailing him and if he was telling the truth about his illness. If I worked in this office, I’d be exhausted.