For god’s sake if you are sick, stay home

Have you noticed lately that more and more people are showing up for work looking like they are at deaths door?

Hacking and wheezing like old steam engines they lurch and sniffle their way around the workplace gleefully spreading their germs everywhere they go.

What in the world are they thinking?  Is the job that they are doing that important that they need to inflict their sorry ass sick presence on the rest of the world? I don’t think so. Unless they are brain surgeons or rocket scientists. And those guys know enough to call in sick.

My father used to tell me that the cemeteries are full of indispensable people. Now the office is full of people who are trying to put everyone else in the cemetery.

I know some bosses make it very uncomfortable to not show up.

Some of them don’t even care if you’re bleeding all over the workplace as long as you are there.

I heard a story about a Scrooge of a boss who was insistent that employees show up every day regardless of how sick they were. The story is that his secretary showed up, pale, sweaty and a delightful shade of green. She stood in front of this ogre’s desk and proclaimed her illness. Bossman said “can’t you just suck it up?”

Secretary’s response was to throw up all over his desk. Eventually the boss went home too because he couldn’t stomach the smell.

One time I tried to call in sick for a weekend air-shift because I had such a bad cold It was making me sound like the Snuffle-upagus from Sesame street. My boss said he had no one to fill in (god forbid he take on extra hours) and that I was to get in there.

It was the worst on air performance I ever did and towards the end I lost my voice entirely and couldn’t speak on the air at all.

This boss had the nerve to call me and ask me If I was that sick why did I come in?

I wished him well.

Go back to today’s Blog post for 1/13/11