In sickness and in wealth

I did something this week I don’t think I’ve done in years. Monday, I woke up hacking and sniffling. I battled through the day. I loaded my pockets with tissues and throat lozenges. All day long, I consciously sneezed into my sleeve and not my hands. I succeeded in getting through the workday with little or no damage to my routine. Still, by evening, I felt worse than in the morning. I woke up the next day feeling beaten and threw in the towel.

“A cold has me by the throat,” I wrote in my e-mail to the program co-ordinator at the college where I teach. “I don’t think anybody wants to share what I’ve got. I’m taking a sick day.”

As commonplace as such things seem, these days, as I say, it was the first time in a long time that I called in sick, told the college I wasn’t coming to work and asked somebody to fill in for me – for perhaps a day. To me the whole idea of missing a workday was odd. It’s partly because I’m the sort of person who fortunately doesn’t face too many such physical setbacks. I’m also the kind who feels awkward about missing obligations – such as teaching time, meetings or deadlines. Consequently, rather than give my body a rest, I’ll often fight through minor illness so that I don’t fall behind or miss those commitments.

Of course, I’ve learned over the years that sometimes you shouldn’t ignore Mother Nature. On more than a few occasions, I’ve decided to battle through a head cold, a bruise, an aching shoulder or swollen ankle only to discover I’ve neglected something serious – a flu or a broken bone. There was the time I ignored chest pains so long that the cold I’d contracted developed into pneumonia. I was literally laid-up in bed for a week as a result. Sometimes trying to fight through physical ailments amounts to little more than stupidity.

“Listen to your body,” my mother often said to us.

Of course, another issue to consider in the “take a sick day” debate is the impact of absenteeism on the rest of the society and the workplace. Particularly in the business world, being away from work is often measured in dollars and cents. Last year, for example, American Airlines reported that on an average day about five per cent of its workforce was off work; it said the absenteeism cost the airline more than $1 million a day. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the average sick leave among some professionals was eight days in the 2004-5; it cost the city more than 50 million pounds.

A study, done by an American consulting firm and recently published in USA Today, showed that 70 per cent of employers considered absence costs as their top business priority. Not surprisingly, employers there have come up with a uniquely American way of combating the problem. Businesses reward good attendance. Some even pay employees in lieu of sick days. A company in Fort Lauderdale allows six sick days a year and pays $100 for each unclaimed sick day, which means an extra $600 a year if an employee makes it through the year in good health.

But the practice of specifically paying for sick-days-not-taken, triggers such aberrations as the case of Fred Weissmann. One weekend in 2000, the St. Louis construction worker had a heart attack. Apparently, he was extremely grateful that it had happened on a Sunday. He was back to work by Wednesday and relished the fact he would be docked only two days, not three, from his sick-leave pay. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that civic employees could bank all sick days not taken in exchange for lump sum payments or a higher pension when they retired. When Fred Weissmann hung up his work boots in 2007, the city issued him a cheque for more than $54,000 for those sick days not taken.

As legal as I’m sure that labour-management contract was, and as loyal as I may think I am to my work, I’m definitely not in favour of getting extra pay for sick days not taken. Incidentally, Statistics Canada says that work absences in this country have declined steadily since 1979. Even though the Canadian workforce grew from 10.6 million in 1987 to 13 million by 2002, workplace injuries or sickness increased only 1.4 per cent, down from 8 per cent a decade earlier.

But that’s all numbers. I was back at work Wednesday, like Bob Cratchit, “driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.”

For me, sickness doesn’t pay; I had two days’ work to catch up.


About Ted Barris

Ted Barris is an accomplished author, journalist and broadcaster. As well as hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to the national press, he has authored 18 non-fiction books and served (for 18 years) as professor of journalism/broadcasting at Centennial College in Toronto. He has written a weekly column/webblog - The Barris Beat - for more than 30 years.

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