I’m Over Being Sick
Fri, May 20, 2011
I wanted to post something super amazing today, but I have contracted cooties somehow and can’t even think. Sore throat, fever, chills, body aches, coughing, sneezing… It’s horrible. I rarely get sick - I have like 150 sick hours built up at work because I’m there every day - but today I only lasted about three hours.
I despise being sick. I hate going to the doctor ($30 copay), taking medicine ($15 copay), and buying all the OTC meds necessary to feel like a human ($17 just today). So I put off going to the doctor even though I’m fairly certain I have a sinus infection.
It amazes me how work-centric we are in the United States. I work with kids, so I should have no business being at work with a fever. Yet my phone has blown up all day with people making sure I’ll be back tomorrow. I felt guilty for going home even though there’s no way I would have done anything productive. And I’ll be there tomorrow even though I know I won’t feel any better.
My boss praises me for coming to work “no matter what.” And its been that way in every job I’ve ever had. My evaluations are full of accolades about how responsible and dependable I am, all because I work when I’m sick. How messed up is that? Measuring people by how much they’ll suffer for their jobs is crazy to me. Yet I buy into it by working even when I know I shouldn’t.
Someday I’m going to find a way to earn money without running myself down. I don’t know how, but it’s about time I quit whining and figure it out.
This is where Europeans have a leg up on us. Obviously, it hurts their competitiveness since we work longer hours and more weeks out of the year, but their governments MANDATE that they get annual vacations. How awesome is that? Most places, it's 5 weeks! *sigh*