I am more than usually tweakie about the flu and colds this year. My baby sister is preggers (yeah!), and I’m not going to be getting her or the baby (ETA February) sick. She’s getting the flu vaccine, of course. My sister takes no chances when it comes to microscopic nasties. And I’m thinking that since she’ll be protected I’ll wait until late in the season to get my shot. That way either I’ll catch it, and have my own immunity by the time the baby arrives, or I’ll have the most possible time to protect the smidgen.
Of course, my personal tactic for not getting the flu myself is to attempt to control the behavior of other people. They’re all germy but thee and me. And I’m not so sure about thee. And even if I was a plague carrier, I know how not to spread contagion, and I’m sure you do to. But you just see so many people who just don’t seem to have a clue: the blast coughers, the walking wounded and the great unwashed. And you’d think that covering your mouth when you cough and washing your hands would have been covered in pre-school. Or at least in a public service announcement during the cartoons.
But the whole staying home when you’re sick thing is actually kind of new. At least since I’ve been an adult. It used to be a sign of toughness and dedication to show up at work looking like a zombie, a box of tissues under one arm and slugging Vick’s 44 straight out of the bottle. It’s that Puritan streak we Americans have that makes us feel decadent and immoral if we try to stay home and really enjoy a good illness. Malingerer!
But now when we realize that one good carrier - “Oh, no, it’s just a slight fever . . . really, I’m fine!” - can wipe out most of a department, and if you’re not lucky enough to get good and sick, you’ll be the one stuck in the office picking up the slack hoping for a temperature spike and a solid cough. So anybody who does show up to work trying that “slight fever” bit gets looked at with as much affection as a Medieval sewer rat.
I’m back stocking posters about how to cough properly and what to do if you have the flu to plaster all over the office. And I’m planning on getting boxes of whipies and hand sanitizer to encourage the liberal application – no, really! Use as much as you want! Healthy or bust, baby.
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2 comments:
what I like is that BOTH of Bravo's star workaholics - Jeff and Rachel - were shown in the past few weeks getting royally sick and flat out on their backs -- good cautionary tale for us all.
And one of them is a dyed-in-the-wool germ-a-phobe. It's the Fickle Finger of Fate. You can run, but you can't hide.
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