From a European perspective, it boggles my mind that sick days can be limited. What happens when you run out? You get fired for not coming into work, I imagine?

The Family and Medical Leave Act protects most (IANAL) employees for up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off per year at the federal level. At some point Americans with Disabilities Act protections kick in and after a few months of a serious illness temporary or permanent disability insurance comes into play.

It's not the dystopia its made out to be but even in the best states the inconsistencies between the layers of protection and myriad of rules cause a lot of people to fall through the cracks.

While this is true technically, in practice many companies will make an excuse to fire employees who take "too many" sick days. Like if there are layoffs, the sickly employee will be in the round of layoffs.

Also, if you work a service job and miss too many shifts due to illness, they'll just fire you for being unreliable.

There's a few possibilities I can think of:

* Unpaid sick days

* The limitation is the other way around, they don't want to give a single pool of 30 paid days off, you're limited to 15 vacation days

* If you have a good relationship with your manager, it's a soft limit and they'll allow you to go over as long as it's not abused

* If you're part-time/hourly, trading days/hours with a co-worker

Our HR department combined vacation days and sick days into one pool several years ago when they realized most of us were faking sick days to get more vacation time.

In Europe typically there are unlimited sick days, but the company has insurance to cover your salary after a certain number of days per year. You typically need a doctor's note after 3 consecutive days, and if you are abusing the system the insurance company (who is a pro at this) will quickly investigate and terminate / claw back their coverage.

That's a good deal. I'm in the UK and I've never had anything like that. I currently have ten paid sick days per year and after that it is Statutory Sick Pay (SSP, £96.35 pe week) for an additional 26 weeks. SSP is better than nothing but it's not great.

Looking back, all of me previous jobs have offered 10 days sick pay and I've always assumed it is a de-facto standard over here.

In my last job (Ireland) one of my team mates had a serious health issue, and was off sick on full pay for an entire year

From European perspective, yes the sick days absolutely can be limited - see Poland or Czechia. When you run out you better have acquaintances among doctors and at the appropriate public offices. Otherwise you're sick, fired, no income.

Well if I ran out of sick days I can use some vacation days and if that ran out I could get a doctors note and go off on medical leave. It is like unemployment in a sense and I would be eligible for I believe 55% my wage while off. If I just needed a few extra days and not really wanted to deal with the hassle of medical leave paperwork I am in good standing with my employer and would simply need to ask and could have some unpaid sick days for sure. So essentially the 15 days is just what you can take off and be paid my the company. Also not all companies offer these benefits I work in health care.

Sometimes, yes.