If you’re sick and you take a paid sick day off from work (or even just take off from work), do you feel obliged to stay home in a “sick mode” even if toward the evening you’re feeling much better?
I had to consider this issue on Wednesday when I awoke with congestive heart failure (just kiddin—merely bad congestion), called in “sick,” took a couple of decongestant pills, and returned to bed. After a full morning’s rest, however, I was feeling much better. Enough to go into work? Well…that’s the sticky issue: where I work, when you call in “sick,” you’re supposed to be “too impaired” to return the same day miraculously out of the blue. If you do, they wonder why you didn’t just come in normally because you are “obviously well” enough now—so you probably weren’t really sick, just “slacking”! It’s a Catch-22.
So it’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m “sick” but feeling much better. And because of the workplace’s expectation that I not return to work (they do not believe in miracles), I don’t. So far, so good: I was legitimately sick and work relieved me of my obligation by issuing a “stay-home” expectation. But I’m feeling much, much better (I do believe in miracles!) and so I decide to step out and cut the grass. And trim the hedges. And that work in the hot sun seems even to further purify my system and now I’m starting to re-attain that familiar inner body-mind glow. So I think: what the hell—I feel plenty well enough to get a hair cut—so why not?
Ah! The haunting “stay-home” expectation now comes into play! Or does it? What if I wait until 4 PM when it would clearly be ridiculous to return to work for the last half hour of the day? I’m still getting paid for the time, but if I’m feeling well enough, so why not go out and play tennis? Or go down to the pub, have a beer, and enjoy an afternoon baseball game? How long must I stay “sick?” And in the evening, when at 80% recovery I’m already feeling much more vital than 99% of my co-workers when they are at the height of their health, should I not take that run down by the beach or through the cemetery? Or take in a carousing evening at club?
“Go ahead and do it,” I’ll be advised, “but don’t get caught!” Caught? Doing what? Acting out of renewed health yet consistent with the workplace’s expectation not to show up? Give me a break! Next time I’m really sick and get better quickly after calling off, I’m going to run around the building where I work ALL DAY and run into the boss on his way out and see what he has to say! Or maybe I just take a six-pack to the park, sit on a boulder in the middle of a stream, murmur *OM* and get drunk!
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