Working While Sick
Why Do We Do It?
Anyone want to guess how I’m doing?
Anyone want to guess what I did today?
You’ve probably done it, too. Camera off, mic-checking with a mask on, slithering down the hallways at work looking like death.
If anyone in your office has an ounce of empathy, they’ll often ask, “Why are you here?”
And you’ll pause, wait for a few neurons to fire, and then wave your hand around to indicate… stuff.
In the back of your mind, buried in the catacombs of meningeal snot, lie the reasons you cannot articulate.
1. There’s Too Much to Do
What you’re thinking: I’ll never get my work done if I take the time off.
The reality: The workload expands to fill the time you give it.
Of course there’s too much to do. There’s this perfectly logical (but incorrect) myth in our heads that if we just worked more, the work would get done.
I could write an entire series over why this is a fallacy. For now, just remember:
The work will be there when you get back.
This isn’t a race. Even if you have deadlines, those are often artificial and can be extended.
Take the day off and go to bed.
2. You’ve Overestimated Your Importance
What you’re thinking: But everything will fall apart of I don’t do X, Y, and Z today! I’m the only one who knows how to do this. I’ll be delaying everything and letting everyone else down. If I don’t do it now, it will make things harder for everyone else.
The reality:
The place is not going to burn down if you take a few days off. They’ll figure it out.
Don’t forget that it’s your boss’s job as a manager to manage when and how the work gets done.
Illness happens. Emergencies happen. People go on vacation, have babies, undergo surgery, attend funerals, and, dare I say, die.
If you were completely incapacitated tomorrow, would the business get along without you?
Not to hurt your feelings, but, uh, yeah. They would. Maybe not smoothly, but they’d make it work.
Take the day off and go to bed.
3. COVID and Remote Work Has Blurred the Lines
What you’re thinking: It’s not a big deal; I can just work from home… even my bed.
The reality: It used to be that if you were sick, you had two options:
Come in and power through it
Stay home
Now there is a third option.
Stay home and power through it
Let’s imagine back in the days when you had to physically show up to your job 100% of the time, back in the era of degaussing your monitor and submitting TPS reports. If you came into the office while sick, there were no N95 masks or air filters; you got everyone sick. So you were likely encouraged to go home or stay home.
Then everyone got sent home with laptops and the entire Microsoft 365 suite. If they were nice, your company even paid for headphones and an extra monitor for your card table-in-the-kitchen set-up.
Most people either had COVID, thought they had it, or were exposed to it once. So even when we plugged the photocopier back in and delimed the coffee makers, people were sent home all the time.
But the work still had to get done. And you had everything you needed at home to do it.
This leads us to our next reason… but first, a word from your mother.
Remember when you were a kid, and you wanted to stay home and watch cartoons all day, so you faked being sick? — only to find out that she made you stay in bed staring at the ceiling the whole time?
Her excuse was that to truly recover, you needed to sleep.
Well, guess what? She was right all along.
Taking calls, answering emails, and putting out digital fires all day uses a lot of energy — all of which should be dedicated to recovering from your illness.
Take the day off and go to bed.
4. Your Work Culture Encourages It
What you’re thinking: Everyone else does it. I’m expected to be available like they are. I’ll appear lazy or like I’m milking it if I don’t log on.
This is more subversive from the age of remote work. Some work cultures have been steeped in the working-while-sick model for a long time, and worse, it’s often modeled and perpetuated by management.
In the United States and many other productivity-obsessed work cultures, hard work and showing up are paramount to success and promotions. People will brag about never missing a day of work. Showing up when they’re sick becomes a badge of honor. For all the reasons outlined in this article, people continue showing up sick so often that it becomes the norm.
Go to mainland Europe and get the culture shock of your life. I once knew a French guy who took 6 weeks off for a broken wrist. In the U.S., he would’ve still worked, fumbling around trying to type with one hand.
That’s a mildly amusing example, but it was a wake-up call for me to see how other cultures and even other workplaces within my own country treat illness and injury — and that there is an option to rest when you need to.
If you get the unwritten memo that working while sick is encouraged, remember that you are not obligated to do so. What others do during their illness is their business — not an instruction.
Perhaps caring for yourself will set a good example for your peers.
Take the day off and go to bed.
5. You Lack Permission
What you’re thinking: I’ll get reprimanded if I don’t show up.
In some cases, yes, you lack permission… to be sick.
Weak Labor Protections
I’ve had jobs in industries and states where we were very directly threatened to be fired if we didn’t have a doctor’s note.
And to get a doctor’s note meant spending $400 at urgent care just to be diagnosed with a cold.
Others say that they are afraid they will miss a promotion if they take sick leave. And it happens. Although illegal, people lose their jobs or their upward mobility over taking short-term disability, FMLA, and parental leave.
This is unfortunately the reality for many people, and it can be worse in countries with even weaker worker protections.
Poor Management and High Turnover
Sometimes it just means that you’re pressured to work when you really shouldn’t be — and that you are not given permission to heal by your employer.
Basically, “Suck it up. We need you.”
Your boss says there’s no one else to do your job… “so, could you please come in?”
And healthcare workers know that the guilt of leaving people to suffer without adequate care is enough to force them to put on their scrubs, mask up, and power through.
Unfortunately, this has more to do with staffing issues and poor decisions by executives on head count than it ever will reflect on your work ethic or moral compass.
For workforces that are stretched thin, where the demand for your labor is so high you feel like you have no choice but to work while you’re sick — that’s a really rough spot to be in.
But remember — you must always put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. If you continue to work while you’re ill, then you’ll extend your own illness and do a disservice to everyone when you’re burned out.
And management’s poor decisions cannot dictate how you take care of yourself.
Stand your ground.
Take the day off and go to bed.
If nothing else convinces you…
If you saw a small child sneeze so hard a snot rocket the size of a banana slug shot out their nose, would you make them go to school?
What makes you any different?
GO TO BED.
That’s what I’ll be doing… just after I send this email.
Yep, it’s definitely one of those things where senior management will say “you really should take a sick day if you’re not well” while also managing to make it clear that you’ll pay for it if you do. And it will requite such a radical shift for working when sick to stop being the norm.