When I was a teacher, I had an allotment of 10 sick days and 10 vacation days per year. That was a lot, given that I also had two and a half months of flexible work from home time called “summer” built into that schedule. I took one sick day my second year of teaching when I woke up with a fever and then while I was in the bathroom taking my temperature, I threw up three times. Calling in sick seemed like the prudent thing to do. But except for that time, I didn’t call in sick, ever. If I had called in every time I had a sore throat, or minor body aches, or a screaming headache, I would have been out sick for most of my first year of teaching, when I caught every strain of pestilence that my precious little 5th grade disease incubators brought into the classroom.
Never took a sick day, that is, except for the one time I played hooky. I had been close to the edge of a breakdown for weeks, feeling overwhelmed and ineffective and depressed, and it was two weeks before Christmas and I hadn’t done any Christmas shopping yet and I decided to call in for one day, planned well in advance, to take a day to sleep in, shop for Christmas presents, and eat peanut butter off a spoon while watching daytime tv in my pajamas. A personal day, if you will.
On the appointed day, of course, I woke up with a raging fever and a complete inability to get out of bed. “Typical,” I thought. “God is punishing me for fibbing about a sick day. Typical.”
I know that all of the magazines implore us to actually stay home when we’re sick, because our coworkers would really rather pick up our slack for a day or two than be subjected to the flu themselves. I also know that I have a really hard time convincing myself that I’m “sick enough” to “deserve” a day off.
So this morning, when I woke up feeling like I’d been run over, and John said “call in,” I hemmed and hawed, because I really just felt worn out, not acutely ill, and who calls in just because she’s tired? But then I thought “what the heck, I have a dozen sick days that don’t roll over and I’m never going to use them all. Plus I have no meetings or appointments today that it would be a problem to miss, and I have a HUGE meeting tomorrow where I’ll really need to bring my A game so I should probably rest up. Might as well.” I called in, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
What happened next? I promptly developed an unidentified tummy ailment. OF COURSE.
oh no! there is nothing worse than actually getting sick on a fake sick day, gah!
although this time, you can hopefully rally yourself with the thought that if you HAD gone to work, you would have felt WAY WORSE because you wouldn’t have been able to sleep / let your body start to recover through the very important early stages of the illness. so CLEARLY you made the right move here, yes?
When I first started as a legal secretary I got so sick my boss sent me home. My parents were out of town, and my brother was “working from home” and suggested we go to the beach since it was a nice day, and we never go to the beach.
I said okay and put a box of tissues in a bag and was ready to go. We got there and I promply collapsed in the sand. Barely made it back to the car, so tired. Never should have gone to the beach.
Now when I’m sick, my guideline is, “If I’d stay home and run around and do shit, I’m well enough to go to work. I can only call in sick if I’m going to sleep all day.”
Hope you feel better soon.
Good for you for calling in! Feel better!
Oh, Murphy’s Law…how you do suck.
Feel better soon
Oooh feel better.
And if you don’t use all your ‘sick’ days before the end of the year I will hurt you. Either that or I will buy them from you on the Black Market, beause oooooh extra sick days!