Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993 TAG: 9303160142
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL GARREAU THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
`I CAN'T MAKE IT IN TODAY'
YOU awaken. You feel fragile, beat-up sore. You cough piteously. You reach for a thermometer, praying that it will not read something wimpy, like 99.5 - or worse, normal.You lie in bed in a semiconscious delirium, wondering what will be going on at work today that is so all-fired important. Will the world really end if you don't fix its hamburgers or its copying machines? Or take a meeting? Or do lunch?
Looks like you're going to have to call in sick.
Americans make that call more than 2.1 million times a month. And more do it right now than in any other season.
By region, Southerners and Westerners do it the most. In terms of age, teen-agers are the most absent. The industry that takes the most sick days is - your tax dollars at work - the government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than mining, more than construction. Almost twice as many sick days as retail trade, where if you don't work, sometimes you don't get paid.
And for most everyone, sooner or later, it's a judgment call.
"Certain people always get the other guy's flu," observed Lynn Writsel, of the American Psychiatric Association, on a day when three of the 12 people in her department had called in sick. "If there's one flu case in your office, that individual will be the one down next. I don't know if it's poor health, or opportunity. But I've recognized it over the years with lots of different individuals."
"My secretary called in sick the morning after a Georgetown basketball game," said David Dickieson, a lawyer with Silverstein and Mullens. "She said if I really needed her, she could be in by 1. But I'm a nice boss, so I didn't stick it to her."
"Those who call in sick are not necessarily sicker than the ones who do go to work," noted Bethesda, Md., psychiatrist Jeffrey Klein. "There are different perceptions of how sick is sick. A lot of it has to do with whether the parents held a child home, or sent him or her to school."
"The worst excuse I ever heard was a manager who called in sick after two weeks' vacation, saying he had been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war-and he'd been at a freshwater lake," said Don Knight, vice president of human resources for Geico.
The excuse most treasured by Pat Southerland of Robert Half & Accountemps: "I sprained my finger sticking it in the disc drive of my computer."
The recession has done wonders to cut down on sick days, says Michael Reidy, director of surveys for the Bureau of National Affairs Inc. There is nothing like getting up in the morning to one more series of headlines saying International Business Machines, Sears, Boeing and General Motors have laid off the equivalent of the population of Sri Lanka to motivate people to drag themselves in to work no matter how wretched they feel.
And mental-health days? Remember those? Apparently few people take mental-health days during a recession. Mental health now involves having a paycheck.
Except, maybe, for teen-agers, who take twice as many "personal" days as most people. One of their maladies used to be called the "Irish flu." But that name for a hangover is now so politically incorrect that the broader category "other" is frequently cited in the statistics. The flu is the big bopper for people calling in sick. In a 100-worker office, people will call in sick with the flu 76 days per year on average, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The common cold, by contrast, doesn't take as big a toll as its reputation suggests, accounting for only 21 sick days.
Postal Service hit hardest
That complaint about which no male boss ever asks any follow-up questions - "female problems" - accounts for about five sick days a year in a shop with 100 employees. But those fools who destroy themselves skiing and playing tennis - not to mention falling off roofs - they're the ones who are far more likely to wind up flat on their backs than anybody with the sniffles. Sprains and strains are good for 30 sick days per year. Fractures and dislocations, 23 days.
And in the federal government, yes, of course - you could have guessed this, right? The agency with the highest total number of sick days, according to the Office of Personnel Management? More than the Army and Navy combined? Hint: Their motto goes something like neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor sneezies nor drippy nosies stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Yes, the Postal Service, with 5,752,180 sick days, worth $702,921,000!
A spokesman who was asked whether all that snow and rain and stuff was making people sick responded: "That was never really our motto. It was on the frieze of the major downtown post office in New York. But it was the New York Central Railroad's slogan. It used to be their building." Besides, the Postal Service, at 7.4 sick days per employee, is no worse than most of the government, he sniffed. The Agency for International Development is the worst, according to OPM, with 12.87. Never mind that in an average week in 1991, 3.4 percent of full-time government workers missed at least part of the week because of illness, according to the BLS. That's a third more than the 2.6 percent of private workers that called in sick.
Meanwhile, the government entity with the lowest number of sick days per employee - 3.44 - is the Peace Corps. The second most healthy and/or diligent is the White House, at 3.51.
"Maybe if you feel important, you just get to work," said one government demographer.
Poor people call in sick more than rich people.
Men approaching retirement age take more sick days in a row than most others.
It may be that Northeasterners call in sick less than those in balmy climes because of remnants of the Protestant work ethic. But many marketers of cold remedies believe that in Northeastern industrial gritty cities people are used to being miserable. They figure - of course I have a cold. I live in Buffalo, don't I? How much worse can life get? And they hie themselves off to work.
People who abuse sick leave are telling a lie - so there are few reliable data about the phenomenon. But "people take the most sick days right before they quit," said Accountemps' Southerland. "You can see the pattern when someone's ready to move on. Especially if you also see them taking unusual lunch hours, like 3 p.m. That's a job interview."
It's Oprah time
Still, there's something wonderfully sinful about the pleasure of calling in sick. Once you get past the notion that if you were a real professional you would find a way to power your way through the day, once you get past your infantile reactions to whether your boss will think of you as a laggard, sick days are wonderful.
They are, after all, days off in their most pure form. You haven't planned for them, so there is no list of things to do. If you're feeling so wretched that you don't bother to eat, who can object to you watching Oprah?
Actually, there's a lot to be said for being childlike and helpless. It is the ultimate antidote for the control freak. You are forced to surrender the adult.
Face it. You feel terrible. So prop yourself up in bed. Even if you have not the will to live, and talking at this exact moment to that over-controlling distrustful micromanager, your boss, seems like a more impossible task even than that of getting to the bathroom - steel yourself. Reach back to time immemorial and realize you are joining the ranks of mortals throughout the millennia.
Take as deep a breath as you can amid your adenoids, sinuses and post-nasal drip and bellow into the phone the sound of true liberation.
It is the voice of freedom, the voice of Peter Pan:
"I'b derribly sawry bud I'd gud dizz derrible code."