(This was written on 27th Jan 2020, just as international media outlets were picking up news of an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in China, and we in the West looked on with mild interest…)
Among the many things I despise about working in an office environment, perhaps the most pathetic is the trend of people turning up to work sick. I don’t mean hungover; that’s an argument for another day. I’m talking about this modern obsession with work, which spreads its tentacles to smother your concern over your own health and wellbeing.
I once had a colleague who would come in to the office whilst clearly suffering from some kind of respiratory illness. She’d repeatedly reassure us she was ‘fine’, in between coughing her lungs up. By midweek she had accumulated and assembled a miniature mountain of used tissues on her desk, in the same way an origami novice would proudly perch their two disproportionately shaped birds beside their keyboard as a conversation starter. Oh these beauties? I made them. Working on a helicopter now. Oh that? Just my pile of mucus-infested tissues. Yeah, I’ll be fine!*.
The following week she was absent, and for the next six weeks she was bed-ridden with tuberculosis. I think she was just so lonely and consumed with work that she had preferred to come to the office than stay home alone, despite being in the early stages of a serious, contagious illness which could have affected us all. As a result of this close shave, I now take any opportunity to stay away from the office if I hear so much as a sniffle from a colleague. A nasal-sounding voice means a blocked nose, which means accumulation of mucus, which is bad. I’m not a doctor, but that’s bad. So I make an ultimatum to the office; the invalid leaves or I do. And invariably I end up getting the day off.
Am I being selfish? If anything, they’re being selfish. How inconsiderate must you be to force your illness upon your colleagues because you have work to do? Is it that urgent? Can you not work from home? Although perhaps I should direct my anger at employers who opt to pay the minimum statutory sick pay, which requires you to be off sick for a minimum of four consecutive days. Or at the government who’ve designed this policy, in which being sick for less than four days doesn’t get you anything other than a text from your boss at 8.23am asking if you’re coming in, followed belatedly by ‘how are you feeling btw?’.
Other colleagues act as enablers which is equally as tragic. There’s always one who offers a range of cough syrups, paracetamol tablets and herbal remedies from their drawer which they call their ‘mini pharmacy’ (that alone should be a sackable offence). ‘Jane’s got a mini pharmacy on her desk, she’ll have something for you.’ Jane has an ominously high number of opened cough syrup bottles for one person and ought to be investigated by HR for possible substance abuse.
Then you have others who sycophantically entertain the whole ‘look at poor, poorly me, still coming to work, what a soldier I am’ story. Soldier? Have you heard of friendly fire? You ought to be court-martialled. I am the brave, noble conscientious objector in this scenario, bound by house arrest for my beliefs.
I realize I’ve basically extrapolated my office experiences to cover all offices; perhaps in other offices people use their common sense and stay home when ill? I don’t know. For context, I work in an office in which colleagues only leave their desks to leave for the day. During fire alarms, we’re routinely the only people left in the entire block according to building management. The only way my colleagues would leave, probably reluctantly and puffing their cheeks, would be if there were flames literally licking their ankles under their desks. ‘Bloody fire. Can’t you see I’m busy?’
Of course, a straightforward way to solve all this would be to abolish this antiquated system of office working in which employees are obligated to attend a fixed location for a fixed number of hours per week. Instead, we all work from home, or wherever, and communicate online to achieve our tasks. No need for personal human contact – a relief to many – and thus no chance of contracting SARS from Kevin in Marketing.
This week, we have a colleague who has the flu, but solely by virtue of the fact she is Singaporean and therefore presumably is constantly around Chinese people, others (idiots) suspect she could have the coronavirus. Bit of a stretch isn’t it? Anyway, if you need me I’ll be ‘working’ from home until she’s been given the all clear.
*That phrase really gets my blood boiling. It’s not a binary issue; survival or death / fine or dead. You can be somewhere in between the two extremes and sick enough to pass it onto me. So tell me, how are you exactly? What are your symptoms, current temperature, diet in the last 24 hours? That way I can assess whether you are genuinely fine or on the verge of spreading bird flu around the office.
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