happygoth
reshop till I drop
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2019
- Messages
- 4,887
She's salaried and would not have lost pay or gotten in trouble for calling out. Their workload has been light and the company has been taking precautions. This just happened a few weeks ago.As far as your sister's coworker, I can guess, seeing how I kept showing up while sick and then being sent right on home mid-February.
You want to believe it's allergies. No one wants to be sick, not even a bout of the common cold, it's easy to tell yourself that there's a reasonable explanation. If you're telling yourself that, then you are also going to tell others that. If the symptoms are odd, it makes it even easier to believe it's allergies on steroids because it's not fitting the sick blueprint that your mind knows.
Then add in that there's a ton of reasons to not call out sick. For me I was on salary but I also was in training and would lose valuable training time, and my training salary had a firm ending even if I was out sick and lost training days. Other people are hourly and don't have sick pay. Managers also don't want you sick, they want you productive, which is why one day that I wasn't sent home, near the end of the day I was probably suffering mild delirium (not uncommon when I have a bad cold or similar illness) but the manager didn't say a word.
I've often said allergies until I hit a point where my body feels like it was walloped repeatedly with a hammer and then dragged across the parking lot. Because if it is allergies then it's not going to get bad, I'll be able to function well, I just need my Sudafed and Benadryl. And it's an easy lie to myself, considering how many allergies I have, especially to the cats that sleep in bed with me. And trying to believe it's allergies may actually lessen the symptoms some, as the placebo effect is real. And if I don't go to work I likely won't be paid (most of my hourly wage working life), if I'm even allowed to call out. And if I have duties that are unique to me, then losing time at work means setting myself up for failure when I go back.
Besides, it's probably because I haven't changed the pillow cases lately and there's fur all over the pillows themselves. So it's gotta be allergies. I'll be fine, just need to pop the Sudafed and Benadryl.
But I agree that the coworker probably didn't want to even entertain the idea that it could be the virus, and my sister just wanted to believe her when she said it was allergies.