Bob Goldman
This country is sick.
I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking sick — as in Kleenex and Sudafed and the noisy, nosey proponents of nasal irrigation. Hey, you stay out of my nostrils and I’ll stay out of yours.
If you’re like most people, you are either sick now, getting over being sick or getting ready to be sick again. Really! Everyone is coughing, snorting, wheezing, itching and dripping, post-nasally. These symptoms all fall under the diagnosis of rhinitis, which I thought was the name of a successful punk band in the ’80s. I guess I was thinking of Phlegm.
Why is this happening? There’s no shortage of explanations. The allergies that bloom in the spring that are the villain, some say, or the two winters of our COVID discontent, when we all stayed home and didn’t go into work. As result, we lost the germy immunities you get when hermetically sealed in offices from early morning meetings in airless conference rooms to after-work happy hours, sharing drinks and antibodies with co-workers.
If you’re the type of person who believes in getting paid as much money as possible for doing as little work as possible — what scientists call a “normal person” — life in stuffy-nose nation represents an opportunity.
All you have to do is call in sick.
No one is going to question it. You get sympathy and you get paid, too. It’s nice when you’re sick. It’s even nicer you when you’re not.
Of course, there is a limit to how many sick days you can take. My rule of thumb is that your sick days should not exceed 50 percent of your non-sick days. Does this seem risky?
Here’s what you need to know before you make the call.
No. 1: Don’t wait until you’re sick.
Waiting until you’re actually sick can take all the fun out of a sick day.
A healthy person who calls in sick can look forward to 24 hours of freedom. A sick person who calls in sick can look forward of 24 hours of Vicks VapoRub and chamomile tea.
Worried about falling behind at work? It could happen, but remember — the more time you spend out sick, the fewer chances you have of making a career-ending blunder. It’s not what you don’t do that gets you in trouble at work; it’s what you do do.
No. 2: Suffer in plain sight.
Don’t hide your suffering under a barrel of Flonase. Every cough, sniffle and snuffle emanating from your cubicle is an argument for why you shouldn’t be in the office. But don’t rush home immediately. What better way to show your loyalty to the company than by making everyone in the company as sick as you are pretending to be?
If you’re not lucky enough to actually be sick and you just want a few days off work enjoying your healthy self, hi-res digital recordings of coughing, sneezing and hacking are available. My favorite reached No. 3 on Billboard’s Otolaryngologist Top 10. It’s called “The Sounds of Sinus.” (Yes, it’s by Simon & Garglefunkel.)
No. 3: Call in sick when you’re already home.
Remote workers are at a disadvantage when it comes to calling in sick. You’re already home. That’s why a remote worker needs to ask permission to come into the office.
To make your case, show up at your next Zoom meeting with a mountain of cold meds in front of you and a wall of Kleenex boxes behind you.
“My health doesn’t matter,” you say. “I need to come into the office and work closely with the team.”
Chances are your manager will react to the possibility of you coming into the office by quarantining you on a company-paid healing vacation to a sun-kissed island in the Caribbean. This makes perfect medical sense. Science has shown that one honeydew margarita has more Vitamin C than any cold pill. Drink two and you’ll be ready to perform an adenoidectomy on anyone. Drink three and you’ll be ready to perform an adenoidectomy on yourself.
No. 4: Misery loves company.
Get your healthiest work friends together and schedule a mass sick-out. Coach each friend to point the finger at your manager as the reason that coming into work has become a superspreader event.
With any luck, by the time you return to the office, your manager will be hospitalized — if not for being sick, then for insisting they weren’t sick in the first place. No need to visit them, but you could give them something nice, like an adenoidectomy.
Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com.
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