Everyone is sick around me. On the train, on the street, in the office. Sneezing, coughing, vomiting blood (I assume). It's horrible. And yet, here they are, at work, tapping away on their computer. Why? Why are you spraying germs all over yourself and your coworkers? Would you come to work if you knew you had the Ebola Virus? "Hey guys, don't mind me, my limbs are falling off and I am going to die in five hours, but I need to shoot off a couple of emails before my eyes sink into my skull." No. Instead, you would rob a bank, and just as you're making your getaway, someone would trip the silent alarm and you be cut down in a blaze of gunfire trying to shoot your way out of the barricade. And after the cops confirmed you were dead, they would discover that your gun was loaded with blanks, and you were planning to send the stolen money to the Ebola Virus Cure Foundation. And the cop who shot you would go home that night sad and withdrawn, contemplating his actions. But then his wife would yell at him because it took her two hours to make braised lamb and it's going to waste because he's "not hungry." The next day she would wake up and find only a note in the spot where her husband sleeps. All it would say is, "Life is too short to live with a Harpy." And now the cop's wife is feeling regret and would probably start dabbling with cocaine. SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING WHEN YOU COME TO WORK SICK?
People who work in an office come to work because Corporate America secretly breaks into their homes at night and injects paranoia into their brains while they sleep. "Steve is sick? Bullshit! I bet he's hungover. Or he cheated on his wife. Or he murdered a homeless man in an abandoned house. Fucking asshole." And I'll be the first to admit that I've been injected. I am part of the problem. When someone is out sick, I assume they are in withdrawal from heroin. "I knew Devin was a dope-head - haven't you ever heard her talk about Irvine Welsh?" But most likely this not true. Most likely said person is home in bed, resting their body so they can return to work and not make everyone else sick. Or they are burying a body in the woods. One or the other.
I used to work with a guy who used a handkerchief. He would sneeze into it and then stuff it right back into his pocket. Then he would ask me what I thought about the Chargers or something. What? I am not having a conversation with you, there is a disease in your fucking pocket, what are you fucking crazy? I'll talk to you if you give me a fucking space suit. Someone should have thrown him in jail and stuffed his handkerchief up his ass. Who carries a fucking handkerchief nowadays? It's not 1904, when everyone was toeing the poverty line and had to be exposed to germs every nine seconds. There are hand sanitizer stations everywhere. Antibiotics are no longer a luxury of the rich only. Handkerchiefs? Really? Who do you think you are, Jay Gatsby?
I am lucky because I have a pretty good immune system. I usually get sick once or twice a winter, and for only a few days at a time. But this doesn't stop me from wanting to break a bottle over the head of anyone coughing on the train, because instead of rationalizing my body's ability to fight off germs, my brain always assumes the worst. Oh wow, this guy looks sick. And he's wearing a suit, so he's obviously in the CIA. Maybe some government lab exploded and he was the only one to escape. Haven't you ever read The Stand? Now he's going around and spreading his germs to everyone else and we're going to spread our germs to everyone we know, and then Kevin Bacon can kiss his ass goodbye because we're all only seven degrees removed from him, right?
Whenever I find myself too sick to go to work, I don't go. But the paranoia in my brain still buzzes, thus forcing me to make a conscious effort to prove my sickness. I usually leave a voicemail at 5am when I sound like I smoke 450 Kools a day, just to drive home the point that I am not feeling well. Then when I'm well enough to return to work, my boss will make a comment about how sick I sounded on my voicemail, and I will somehow feel vindicated, even though I really was sick.
It's fucking insane that my brain has been trained to think this way. In Europe people stay home if they have a headache, and I bet nobody thinks twice about it. In fact, I bet they probably send flowers or baguettes to the person's house. We should look to Europe and mimic their work ethic and morals instead of assuming every missing coworkers was arrested over the weekend for arson, and is using the flu as an excuse for being a firebug. Nevermind Europe's impending bankruptcy - it's more important to trust a coworkers who claim to be sick, if only so I won't get sick and then have to prove my sickness in weird voicemails.
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