Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Sick & Twisted
I had to leave early today cause I was sick. I have all the proper symptoms: stoned red eyes, Scooby-Doo voice, nose running like Niagara Falls, at least six people coming up to me saying I look like shit (including my manager). Nobody could understand a word I was saying, and the mountain of tissue on my desk threatened to hit Everest proportions, I left. At any other job that would be the end of the story, but that would make for a rather boring entry. This is the full-on Paul Harvey, rest of the story.
In the absurdist people farm I work at, simple visual indicators are not enough. Vomit all over your desk, sure that's a sign, but they want proof. Documented proof. Launch your own private germ warfare in the form of repeated sneeze sorties? Not nearly enough. Arm cut off? Blood spewing? Better come back with a doctors note or it's curtains for your ass.
I left work four hours early only to come home an hour after my usual arrival. The time in between spent doing that old fashioned remedy of running all over town in the muggy winter weather trying to find a doctor who would give me a note to prove what would be obvious to even George W. How retarded is that? I can understand the whole call in sick, come back with a note deal. Most everyone has gone through that once or twice. But when they ride you out of the office on a rail for being Typhoid m/a/z/e-y, do they really need documentation? I would be glad to give them a sample of the quart of mucus oozing out of my cranium as evidence.
It's annoying and trivial. But you take the minor aggravations and combine them with the major offenses like permatemping, raping the 401k's, mass layoffs etc., it's amazing there are not more instances of workplace violence out there. How much crap can you eat and still call it caviar?
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