As someone who works in the private sector i have seen this horrible work ethic and bullshit first hand and it gets worse because those shitty workers still get promoted and get jobs that better workers should get.

The culture speads like wildfire and newer staff become shitty staff very quick once they realize what they can get away with, which is worse than murder as far as im concerned.

Last year a co-worker (10 years with company, has had 2 "sick" leaves for 6 months due to mental / depression issues ) he took 49 UNSCHEDULED absences ontop of the 20 vacation days.

Nothing happened to him, he got paid his full salary. HR had a "conversation" with him. no threats to deduct pay, nothing happened really.

The worst part is when it came time to apply for a job, I applied for the same one ( 2 years exp, 5 absences in total over 2 years and a notable "hard working person" reputation ) and so did other viable hardworking people.

In the interview, the team i was applying for was incredibly concerned with absenteeism due to the fact that they are a small team, so others have major workload increases when people are absent. They seemed to need someone that can show up and have no absences if possible.

I know that my super absent co-worker had more exp and equivalent skillset, however he was selected and I was completely baffled, there were other candidates with more experience than me and very few absences, absolutely ANYBODY else should have got the job, but they took the person with the most absences and inconsistent track record when they made it clear that it was a very large aspect of how they were evaluating / deciding who to pick. Shit is ass backwards. There's no way to correct this cycle either, people won't get fired and people will continue to do this.