As I’m sure you’re well aware, corporations have discovered that by combining sick time and vacation time into one pool, they can actually save money in the short term, while creating the illusion that you’ve got more paid vacation days.
In the good old days, you got something like two weeks of honest to God vacation — it was yours, you _earned_ it, and if you left the company you got paid for it. In addition, you had unlimited sick leave, the catch was, you had to prove you were sick if it lasted for more than three days or you had quite a number of days off compared to everyone else. When you weren’t feeling well, you’d stay home, the office wouldn’t be affected, you could return sooner, and companies were more productive over all. Then HR and CEOs got involved.
Now all that sick time comes out of your pocket. Sure, you get three weeks of combined sick and vacation, and if you don’t get sick at all (highly unlikely), you can, in theory, make out with an extra week. However, in reality, it doesn’t work like that. You get sick, your kids get sick, your car breaks, and all of the sudden these things start eating into your vacation time. The greedy corporate world loves it, because the more you’re sick, the less you are on vacation later.
But, what happens next is almost as predictable. Employees not wanting to burn their vacation time on sick leave come into the office coughing, sneezing, pushing elevator buttons, opening doors, and infecting everyone. The net result is that far more people get sick and start passing infections back and forth, so just as you start to get well, but have your immunity down, you catch it all over again. Productivity suffers, and usually HR and the CEOs are so out of the loop as not to notice.
Whenever I’m at death’s door, I always make sure to put on my best game face and wander the executive halls, shaking as many hands as possible before the Grim Reaper finally takes me. I figure if the people making the decisions are affected by their decisions, perhaps they’ll change the policy.
As an aside, I worked at a health care company that employed a lot of statisticians — these are the guys who could calculate projected profits and losses. We had unlimited sick time, but it was rare for people to use it. How did they pull this stunt? Easy. They put a water cooler right near our offices. It was easier to get a glass of purified water than it was to walk down the hall and get a Coke. It was cheaper for us, and we thought we were getting special treatment. Then I talked to HR. Nope. For the few bucks they paid to have water brought to us, keeping us healthy and hydrated, they more than made up for it in unused sick leave. In fact, by making us go home if we didn’t feel well, we were more than likely to return the next day. I got to see the statistics once, first hand; through common sense, cold-hearted calculations, and the willingness to spend a little now, the company managed to save hundreds of thousands. Very clever.
Needless to say I do not work for a health care company full of statisticians at the moment, which is why I’ve been dragging when this winterly cold weather front moved in two weeks ago. Sure, you might like global warming with the 70 degree weather in the middle of December, but when it alternates with 30 degree weather, it’s enough to put congestion in one’s sinuses. And that it did.
I’m not sure why our sinuses are designed the way they are. One minute you’re having a pounding headache where your brain is trying to claw its way out of the front of your skull, and the next they want to flush in the middle of a conversation. And, the problem with that flushing action is that if you blow your nose, it all clogs back up. You have to let it gently drain like water. It’s as if the mucus wants to do things on its own time or not at all.
Even sleeping has its creative side. You can feel fine during the day, but when the sun goes down, you feel like crap. You wake up in the morning and your throat is dry, sore, and raw. Post nasal drip, something you think would be moist and comforting, gags you, keeps you up all night, and irritates your throat to the fullest extent.
Cats don’t seem to be plagued by the same diseases we humans do. My cat, Nova, is sporting quite the attitude with me. I’m watching something on TiVo, feel my sinuses break into labor, and I go running into the restroom before my water breaks. There’s Nova lying on the sink, which is filled with water so he can help himself.
I come running in, flip up the toilet lid, and dangle my head over it. Right on cue, my nose starts leaking this clear stream of stringy liquid. Nova stares at me. The next nostril opens up. Two strands start flowing. Great, now I’m choking, it’s seeping down the back of my throat. I open my mouth, and now I look like this hellish pez dispenser dribbling goo from all holes in the front of my face. It’s like clear, melting silly putty drizzling under it’s own weight.
I’ve never seen a cat do this, but he cocked his head sideways at me, shook it gently from side to side, and had this expression on his face that clearly said, “Dude, can I tell ya something? That’s friggin’ gross…”; and with that, he cop’d an attitude, slid down from the sink, and walked out the door in the “yeah, like I can drink anything while you’re doing _that_” flip of his tail.
I don’t know whether to laugh that I just grossed out my cat, or be offended my own cat just knocked me down a peg. In all seriousness, I did the only thing I could, face streaming with goo. I yelled out to him, “Oh yeah?! Well you lick your ass!”
I suppose it’s an event like this which makes my wife think she has to drug me without my knowledge and haul me away for a week, which by the way, I think you need to know a little something about Ms. Andretti:
We’re coming down I-66, the popular hangout for cops that have finished their donut break, and we’re coming over a hill and there’s an authorized vehicles only sign — a major indicator of speed trap potential.
She starts out at 55, but as time goes on, the car starts creeping faster and faster until 60, 65, 70… and about this point I start to say something when the ticket goes from speeding to reckless.
Oh, and I’ve learned, too. You can’t say “sweetheart, you’re speeding” — that’s wrong. First of all, it’s direct and accusatory. I thought maybe I’d have to share in the blame, “we’re speeding.” No good. “Oh hell, we’re gonna die!” is right out. And “Slow Down!” sounds like I’m telling her what to do, even if preceded by a “please”, or a “please, dear God,….”
No, the correct course of action, I’ve been told, is to casually say “check your speed.” Which allows her to look at the speedometer and decide just how many MPH’s she wants to shave off, if any. I raise her awareness level, but am not a prick about it when said in this manner.
So, back to the story, we’re cruising down this hill, the flux capacitor is about to trigger, and I say ‘check your speed’ as we are doing 87. Her foot comes off the gas, and the needle drops to 85. …as we pass the police cruiser parked on the median pointing the radar gun up our engine block.
“Oh, you are *so* busted.” And I’m looking behind us for the flashing lights.
Nothing.
“What?!?” I’m looking back there, he must be waiting for break in traffic.
Still no lights.
“See?” My wife explains, “I’m driving safely. He’s not gonna get me.”
“Safe?!?” I’m still trying to mentally process that comment as I’m analyzing what in the world is going on. “Crap. He’s radioing ahead. Slow down before this next hill. There’s probably a cop car there.”
“I am slowed down,” she said as we crested the hill, the car actually leaving the pavement for a split second.
“You’re doing 75!” And, still, no lights behind us, no cops in front of us, no drag nets, and no swat team pulling in from helicopters.
“Told ya,” she insists. “It’s not like I’m driving all in and out of traffic, changing lanes, and besides, there’s no one around.”
“No one around?!?” My mouth drops open, and I point to the six cars in front of us. “Who are they?”
“I have a car’s length, maybe two.”
“You drive like this when I’m not here?” which was probably the wrong question to be asking at that moment.
“Nah,” she tries to comfort me, “I’m careful when you’re in the car.”
When I’m in the car?!? Hell, she’s the most precious thing to me, and I learn that she takes her life into her own hands just for the sporting thrill of it when I’m not around? Egads!
Then it dawns on me what happened.
“He saw you were a chick, that’s why he didn’t come after you.”
“He did not know I was a chick.”
“I bet he did. He saw me, figured red hair, nice smile, awesome bod, had to be a chick.” For guys, we don’t even have to be in a car to get a moving violation. Cops just like to play mind games.
You know those electronic signs on the side of the road that say ‘POLICE — YOUR SPEED IS’ and then it flashes your speed? You, however, are so certain a cop is going to jump out if you’re one mile over the speed limit, and write you a ticket. So you go real slow. MIND GAME. The real purpose of those devices is to measure the average flow of traffic on the road because the state is required to update the speed limits in accordance with traffic flow. However, the population sees those signs, slows down, and each year the speed limit drops lower and lower. What you should be doing is accelerating. This throws off the curve, and if enough people do it, they have to raise the speed limit. When they put them up in my neighborhood and side streets, I make multiple passes with a higher than average speed to push the bell curve to what’s reasonable.
“So you’d tell the cop that? That there was no one around, and that you were driving 85 safely.”
“Yes. Why yes I would.”
“It’d probably work, too,” I grumbled to myself. “Oh, you see officer, I had to speed, my breasts fell out of my bra and I was trying to adjust myself to put them back in, would you be a sweetie and go get me a crow bar? I may need a hand. Oh, what large hands you have,” I mocked in a deep southern accent.
“He didn’t know I was a chick!” my wife insisted.
“Well, I do,” and with all this sexual tension building from running from the cops, she was lookin’ pretty hot I might add. Luckily, I was feeling much better from the week long vacation, and could do something about it.
Unfortunately, for me, I now had to pee like a race horse.
We pulled into the drive way, I unlock the door, and go running into the bathroom. Nova’s sitting on top of the toilet reservoir as I run in, flip up the lid, and start to whip it out. He looks at the lid, my belt, and slowly draws his face up to meet mine.
His concern is obvious: ‘Oh, hell no. You are not pissing on me, I’ve seen what comes out of your face.’ Again, he snuffs me as he leaves.