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Throwing a sickie

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Ganesh

12:31 / 08.07.04

I'm off work today, having thrown a sickie ie. 'phoned in and explained that my throat is sandpaper-raw, my nose has been tap-dripping all night, and I'm sneezing every other picosecond - all of which happens to be perfectly true, but going through the process nonetheless makes me feel somehow inauthentic. I find myself exaggerating the croakiness of my Frostrup tones, and adding a camp little cough, just to drive the point home.

I have, of course, previously thrown sickies on days when I've been perfectly well, merely hungover, underslept or undermotivated to face my pawing public. Perhaps this is why the act of telephoning is tinged with guilt.

What are your thoughts/experiences of sickies? Does your inner Calvinist disapprove? What's your most inventive sickie?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:36 / 08.07.04

I've pretty much only pulled sickies when I was sick. I mean, when I was temping, if I had something like a migrane or menstrual cramps, I'd say I had 'flu because otherwise theey're going to be thinking "Urgh, she's going to pull this crap every month, let's not have her again." Sometimes I'd plead a plumbing emergency, which is better than calling in sick (damaged property exites more sympathy than damaged temps).

Mazarine

12:38 / 08.07.04

Pleading a migraine is always convenient. It was very amusing when I actually had mono in college, and all sorts of people around me started insisting that so did they. Like I'd been going around just licking people.

I find if I start thinking about calling in sick or about how badly I don't want to go to work I tend to make myself psychosomatically ill. Maybe it's a theater thing.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:39 / 08.07.04

(Lack of fake sickies not due to work ethic, BTW, but to loss of earnings. I'm bone idle but greedy.)

sleazenation

12:44 / 08.07.04

Being freelance means being too ill to work is the same as being too ill to get paid thus i soldier on turning up to work despite blood gushing out my almost severed limbs...

w1rebaby

12:47 / 08.07.04

They regulate them much more strictly over here so I try to reserve them for particularly bad hangovers/can't-be-fucked-days or, even, for when I am actually sick.

I think there's two things to avoid:

1. Croaking and coughing into the phone sounds fake. If you call just after you've woken up, you'll sound quite shit enough. At least, I do. Maybe have a fag first.

2. Going on at length about your illness sounds fake. "Oh I was up all night vomiting you should see the state of my toilet I think it must have been that curry I had but can you get food poisoning from sag aloo I don't know"... a simple "Hi, sorry, I'm feeling really ill and I don't think I can make it in today" is fine. Multi-day sickies need some sort of excuse but for a day, "some sort of bug" and a vague reference to nausea and/or headaches is okay.

Ganesh

12:53 / 08.07.04

Oh, I'm well aware of the croaky/coughy fakeness thing. It's very hard not to do, though; like 'not filling the silence' during psychotherapy. I'm getting much better at avoiding lengthy sickie anecdotage, though.

Tryphena Absent

12:57 / 08.07.04

Perhaps this is why the act of telephoning is tinged with guilt.

I only ever feel guilty when I'm actually ill. When I'm lying I feel perfectly fine about it... is that weird or are other people the same? I find that illness is a lame excuse to take the day off, going to the Tate Modern because you feel a little depressed to sit with the Rothkos is far better.

Kit-Cat Club

13:11 / 08.07.04

I don't like calling in sick because I'm no good at lying convincingly, and strangely this has transferred itself to occasions when I am genuinely ill. The result of this is that I tend to go in to work even if I am feeling dreadful, and then have to go home again halfway through the day.

I haven't been ill for a long time though - surely I must be due a bug by now?

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:38 / 08.07.04

Perhaps we can get nesh to pop over and infect you?

(damaged property exites more sympathy than damaged temps)

absolutely. In the bad old days, when I took sickies like coffee breaks, I quickly learnt that burst pipes are much more worthy than burst bloodvessels... And I was scum at that point, ie not above killing off relativse if I really couldn't face it.

These days, as the only 'work' I do is voluntary and fab, I don't take sickies. Oh, except for last week, where I made up an excuse when I could really have just told my supervisor that I couldn't face it.

Hmmm?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:07 / 08.07.04

I'm in a weird situation when it comes to sickies...

Where I work, if I (or anyone else) don't turn up, it doesn't leave any more work for ME the next day... but it DOES mean everyone else at work has to have a shitter night of it because there's more work to do.

So no, I tend not to pull 'em. (Although it's fucking tempting... a few years back, when my gran died and I kind of lost it for a few days, my flatmate phoned in sick for me, and my boss started having a go at HER about it. Cunt.)

foot long subbacultcha

17:31 / 08.07.04

You pretty much have to throw fake sickies when you're looking for new places to work. I've had to pull a few to go to interviews. I thought it was pretty common...

Triplets

17:32 / 08.07.04

I get the same way, I can call in a fake fine, but when I actually have a migraine I ham it up worse than pantomime.

'Yeah, I gottt *hack* a really baud thrroaahtttt ahhhh'

Bear

17:33 / 08.07.04

You know I never had one day off in about 5 years when I worked in Scotland, when I moved down here it seemed that everyone down here used them as a few extra holiday and I've started doing the same, probably why I'm in the shit I am...Always feel guilty though but more often than not these days I can't face going in, my flat mate is actually signed off for 3 months and I wish I could do the same...

A guy that used to work with us was terrible at them, went in one day and said he had to go home because he had really hurt his ankle and then skipped passed our boss at the tube station (he really was skipping) then he phoned the next day with the croaky voice before stopping half way through when he remembered he was phoning about his ankle problems...

trouser the trouserian

17:47 / 08.07.04

I used to pull sickies all the time at my old jobs - with the current bunch I don't have time to be 'sick' - hell, I had root canal work t'other day and still managed to pull an 11-hour stint (tho' I did grumble a bit). My all-time favourite 'sickie' excuse is an ex-manager who couldn't come in to work one day 'cos "my toaster exploded and I just had to clean up all the bits!"

pointless and uncalled for

06:19 / 09.07.04

I'm a temp and therefore I do not take "sickies". In fact, given my rule of "if you can get to work you're well enough to be there and get paid by the hour", I have turned up to work in some of the most frightening conditions. If I'm going to be miserable I may as well get myself out of the house and get paid to be miserable.

As a concession I may work short but other than that I'm quite content to be Typhoid Mary. I do appreciate the ethical considerations of this but any manager concerned enough to enquire after my health will be made aware that if they are willing to pay me for the rest of the day I will gladly go home. This has happened once.

Suffice to say, should anyone else get suffer from whatever contagion I happen to bring to the office, I'm more than glad to help clear the backlog created as they string out how sick they actually are and all at my usual hourly rate.

Jub

06:42 / 09.07.04

SK - niiiice - using infection to create more work for you.

Um, I've thrown the odd sickie, but feel bad when I do. I also feel bad when I am too ill to leave the house. It's not so much I feel inauthentic doing it, but thinking my boss thinks I'm skiving.

I can hear it in her voice when I ring.

No star here laces

07:20 / 09.07.04

I've found the best way to escape detection is to claim something really outrageous.

I once took three days off, claiming to have been hit by a car. Turned up at work with a plaster on my forehead, and everybody spent several days being really solicitous. It was top.

Offering to work from home and forcing them to say "no, you take it easy" is also a good tactic.

"I think I can make it to the laptop in between bouts of projectile vomiting - I know how much the company needs me this week..."

Ganesh

07:26 / 09.07.04

I'd agree that the home appliance thing is good: my washine machine has flooded a couple of times. (In my mind!) I've also once, in the distant past, claimed that I witnessed a robbery on the way to work and had to spend the morning giving police statements. Then there's the root canal work...

I guess it's because I'm not temping, and do get sick pay that sickies are a temptation. If I do take a sickie, I generally try to do so on a day when I don't have appointments which must be cancelled, and I'm not shitting on any of my colleagues by so doing. And Monday's a bad sickie day, on the grounds that it's a little too obvious.

Jub

07:38 / 09.07.04

no, no, no. You can get round that "oo he said he was `sick' on Monday - so clerly skiving" feeling of colleagues by taking Tuesday off *as well* thus proving you were really, quite genuinely seriously ill!

Ganesh

07:48 / 09.07.04

Well, yes, quite. But Monday alone is a no-no.

Jub

07:53 / 09.07.04

yes. Answering calls of "part-timer" when you've been ill on Monday isn't a very pleasant welcome to the office after being (genuinely) sick.

pointless and uncalled for

08:08 / 09.07.04

I used to know someone who had "sick" pills. Empty blue and red capsules for the day after a sickie. No one argues with pills. If memory serves me correctly he referred to them as Phenylpterodactylene.

What else would you suspect from someone with a rather compulsive jelly habit.

Ganesh

08:12 / 09.07.04

Being asthmatic and ostentatiously touting one's inhaler around the office The Next Day is also, quide liderally, a good wheeze.

pointless and uncalled for

08:17 / 09.07.04

I remember one occasion when a habitual skiver was given the usual ribbing for yet another day off. Naturally everyone felt really bad when she was discovered collaped in the bathrooms mid-morning and carted off in an ambulance.

Her absences weren't questioned as much after that.

Ganesh

08:21 / 09.07.04

Mmmm. We had a similar situation with a junior doctor who was always moaning about chest infections (which we reckoned were colds) in order to get off doing on-call - and dumping on your on-call colleagues is perhaps the ultimate sin in the Junior Doctor Bible.

Imagine our surprise when she was found collapsed in a corridor at around 3am, having developed septicaemia. She needed IV antibiotics, and was delirious for days. Luckily, we saw the funny side.

Jub

08:21 / 09.07.04

Her absences weren't questioned as much after that.

ah yes - the old "collapse in the bathroom and wait for the ambulance" ruse. Carte blanche for sickie throwing.

Styx

08:34 / 09.07.04

Flooded kitchen, knee deep in water. Nobody believed me.

Ganesh

09:00 / 09.07.04

See, the "knee deep in water" goes too far. You don't need melodrama; ankle deep will do.

Sax

09:08 / 09.07.04

I can't do sickies. Even if I'm sick. Northern working class guilt complex.

wembley can change in 28 days

09:21 / 09.07.04

Am I the only one who texts in sickies to avoid the scratchy throat routine?

pointless and uncalled for

09:26 / 09.07.04

Damn.

You're good.

Ganesh

09:27 / 09.07.04

Texting sickies is terribly bad form. Are you Phil Collins?

Jub

09:56 / 09.07.04

I'm not allowed to text in sickies, we have to ring... and soooo if I really can't deal with the unbelieving and disapproving voice of my boss, I'll ring her direct line as soon as I wake up - knowing it will go to voice mail, leave a quick message in my best ill voice and hey presto - back to bed! (or straight out the door for a day of fun-filled goodness, depending on the situation!)

w1rebaby

10:12 / 09.07.04

Officially we can't even leave voice mail and have to keep calling back until we actually get the boss - a terrible imposition on a sick person, I say, and also nearly impossible to do in any reasonable length of time, if you don't know when they get in and they're likely to then go to a meeting. So I leave voice mail, and if anyone were to ask I'd pretend I called repeatedly but always got voice mail again.

I've sent in a sickie by email before.

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