This morning I woke up feeling like hell. Actually, that's incorrect. You can't really "wake up" when you never really got to sleep. But the "feel like hell" part is accurate. So, rather than cough my germs all over the office and my co-workers, I chose to just spread them amongst my beloved family. Except the dog. I don't share dishes with him, so he's safe.
I took a sick day.
As I sit here typing this, waiting for the Sudafed to kick in and knock me out, saving me from the indignities of morning TV, I'm struck by how the sick day has really changed.
Already this morning, I've finished and sent two client memos, sent out a variety of e-mail correspondence and reviewed some client-related newsclips. All before 9 am.
What the hell happened to the good ol' sick day -- wearing torn sweats, sucking down orange juice and watching bad 80s movies on the VCR while drifting in and out of sleep on the couch. My personal sick day favorite was "Better Off Dead." The title appealed to my male tendency to inflate my symptoms to near death. A headcold and a slight fever might as well be malaria. Yeah, I'll admit it.
But VCRs became DVD's, cell phones got smaller, Al Gore invented the Internet, everybody got laptops and now we can check e-mail and phone messages ANYWHERE, ANYTIME.
Don't get me wrong. A substantial portion of the time, these are good things. Technology gives us greater flexibility.
But it also killed the sick day as we used to know it. Even when you'e running to the bathroom every 10 minutes with stomach flu, you can still check e-mails in between "driving the bus."
I'm not making any value judgement. But I miss "The Breakfast Club" while comatose on cold medicine.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
A job quiz...
A quick one. Tell me what would happen at your job.
You're arguing with a co-worker one day about a bet on a college basketball or football game. As a joke, you decide to pull out a couple of guns and lay them out on the table as an illustration of what happens if the co-worker doesn't pay up. Guns that you've decided to keep at work, because you don't feel comfortable keeping them at home. And it's currently illegal to keep them in the locale you live and work in. But hey, they're not loaded.
Your bosses find out. Do they:
A. Immediately fire you.
B. Immediately suspend you, without pay, pending the police investigation of the matter
C. Allow you to come in to work as if nothing had happened, because you acknowledge that it was a dumb thing to do, but hey, they weren't loaded
I think for most of us, the answer is A or at the very least B. But then, most of us are not NBA millionaires. Because that's what happened to Gilbert Arenas, current NBA superstar/idiot for the Washington Bullets -- er, Wizards. Sorry, I slipped a little bit on the irony of the franchise name change.
This guy played in the Wizards game against Philadelphia last night. It's like you or me pulling a weapon on a co-worker, joke or not, and still being permitted to lead the staff meeting on Wednesday.
I love sports, but situations like this show where they've really lost touch with reality. David Stern, NBA czar, has done NOTHING. The Wizards themselves, nothing. NOTHING. And this, Mr. Stern, is one of the reasons I don't watch the NBA. Oh, and your league is boring, but that's another subject.
I know, it's just the latest in a long line of superstar, or even mediocre, pro athletes bumbling along without any consequences for their actions. They lie. They cheat. They get in bar fights at 2 am on a Wednesday. They drive drunk and kill someone. Because they can put the ball in the hole, because they put asses in seats, the rules don't apply. Or, no one has the gumption to MAKE the rules apply.
And folks wonder why some people grow more and more disillusioned with sports.
You're arguing with a co-worker one day about a bet on a college basketball or football game. As a joke, you decide to pull out a couple of guns and lay them out on the table as an illustration of what happens if the co-worker doesn't pay up. Guns that you've decided to keep at work, because you don't feel comfortable keeping them at home. And it's currently illegal to keep them in the locale you live and work in. But hey, they're not loaded.
Your bosses find out. Do they:
A. Immediately fire you.
B. Immediately suspend you, without pay, pending the police investigation of the matter
C. Allow you to come in to work as if nothing had happened, because you acknowledge that it was a dumb thing to do, but hey, they weren't loaded
I think for most of us, the answer is A or at the very least B. But then, most of us are not NBA millionaires. Because that's what happened to Gilbert Arenas, current NBA superstar/idiot for the Washington Bullets -- er, Wizards. Sorry, I slipped a little bit on the irony of the franchise name change.
This guy played in the Wizards game against Philadelphia last night. It's like you or me pulling a weapon on a co-worker, joke or not, and still being permitted to lead the staff meeting on Wednesday.
I love sports, but situations like this show where they've really lost touch with reality. David Stern, NBA czar, has done NOTHING. The Wizards themselves, nothing. NOTHING. And this, Mr. Stern, is one of the reasons I don't watch the NBA. Oh, and your league is boring, but that's another subject.
I know, it's just the latest in a long line of superstar, or even mediocre, pro athletes bumbling along without any consequences for their actions. They lie. They cheat. They get in bar fights at 2 am on a Wednesday. They drive drunk and kill someone. Because they can put the ball in the hole, because they put asses in seats, the rules don't apply. Or, no one has the gumption to MAKE the rules apply.
And folks wonder why some people grow more and more disillusioned with sports.
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