Sick days


Went to bed feeling like hell last night and woke up feeling worse today. Aches, pains, lethargy, you name it I've got it.

Except nausea. Thank god I rarely get sick to the point that I throw up.

The last time that happened I was working in a small office and I took (gasp) two days off in a row because I was honestly just puking everywhere. It was awful.

When I went in on Wednesday the office manager said "hey just so you know our boss noticed that you took two days off and you're on his radar."

Apparently he had calculated that if I kept taking sick days at 2 sick days per month (this was in January) omg I'd wind up taking 24 sick days that year.

So I walked into his office and said:

"Hey, if you have an issue with the sick time I'm taking please speak to me about it directly. Making assumptions about my sick days isn't cool and if you're going to start accusing me of abusing my sick time in advance of me doing so I'd appreciate it if you didn't go through the only other person in the office to let me know you thought it was a concern."

Which I thought was reasonable. I like to think of myself as a relatively reasonable gal.

It didn't go over well.

A few months later when I left and started running Starling full time I promised myself that whenever I felt sick I would take the damn sick day if I needed it, and I've been doing pretty good so far.

There have been a few days when something unavoidable is planned/due, but overall I handle them pretty well, I think.

Usually my sick days look like this: sleep in as late as I need, tackle as much necessary work as I need (responding to emails, reviewing copy, reviewing reports, etc) and then I make lunch and engage in a low-energy task like reviewing ad performance or adding to a content library.

If I need to lie down and nap or something, though, I do it so I can get back into the swing of things in the AM. No sense over-exerting myself if I'm going to be useless for the next few days as a result.

I don't kill myself if I'm feeling sick, and I don't expect the people who work for me to do so, either.

Like I said, I like to think of myself as a reasonable gal.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go have a little lie-down. My head is killing me.