January is the month to sign up for things you probably won't continue doing later. Like cooking classes or hot yoga. It's also the month for setting goals, especially at work, where goals often come with lunch and a little office politics.
Suffice it to say, January is not the month to be sick.
opinion columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and living life in America.
And yet, millions of us are. A wave of infections has 38 states facing “high or very high” levels of respiratory illnesses due to COVID-19, RSV and the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms range from sore throats and coughs that won't go away to fevers that refuse to go away.
So far there have been more than 100,000 flu hospitalizations this season and 6,500 deaths. COVID is increasing, but More than 80% of adults have not yet received an updated booster dose. The CDC expects the wave of illness to spread to virtually the entire country.
That's why doctors advise people to stay home and not go to work if they are sick. But who wants to take advantage of sick days in January? You have 11 more months left and you could end up much sicker later. Also, what does “too sick to come to the office” mean for workers who can do their jobs remotely? If you are too sick to go to the office, that should mean you are too sick to work. However, we work because we don't that sick. We are something in between.
There is a glitch in hybrid work life. Before the pandemic, staying home from work meant something. You were sick, people knew it. Friends would show concern. In a cutthroat workplace, perhaps rivals would take note of how many days you miss and see signs of weakness to exploit.
That's what I heard anyway.
Since the pandemic began and so many people have worked remotely, staying home from work means a lot less. It's harder for people who can work remotely to justify using a sick day, because technology makes it so easy to accomplish our tasks when we should be resting. It's an unspoken rule that benefits capital, regardless of how much sick time workers can theoretically take.
This current wave of illness has many hybrid employees in this strange limbo where we're productive enough to keep going, but we're sick and should probably stop.
But how do you tell your supervisor that you can't work from home while you're sick, when we've all just watched civilization work during a global pandemic?
And even if you took a legitimate sick day, you're probably still checking email or Slack because technology is addictive, too. And we love moving. This is how I learned that 2024 is a year of “eight” in numerology: when you add each digit in 2024, you arrive at a total of eight, making this an auspicious year to take action. Go after your dreams.
Except many of us are starting these “eight” years sick. And those who can work from home are likely doing so despite not feeling well, because that's the new normal: We were working when we had COVID. We work with long COVID and brain fog. Now, unless you're in the hospital, you just… work.
Last year, A record 44% of employees worldwide said they were stressed, according to Gallup. Before you start blaming younger generations, the stress level of employees around the world has been rising steadily for over a decade. It would seem that the more advanced our technology becomes, the more stressful work life becomes.
So here's an idea for goal-setting season: Maybe your ambition for this year should be to take a real day off when you're sick.
