If Your Co-Worker Called in Sick Today, Are You Mad?
About ten percent of your office is probably absent today with a Super Bowl hangover, so this might not be the day for important decisions and ground-breaking meetings. Or should it be?
It's the food, the beverages, the game, the cleanup, and maybe the drive home after the party. The day after the Super Bowl is a slow mover. And it's been well-publicized that one in ten of us likely called in sickish today and decided to stay in bed. Are you mad at those people? I think I'm kind of happy for them and secretly a little envious that they're home with all of that leftover pizza.
USA Today said about 17.5 million workers have "Super Bowl fever" today and are missing work, and that's the largest amount ever since the Workforce Institute at Kronos Inc. began tracking it in 2005. Most people (11.1. million) who are taking the day off planned it ahead of time and they're using a pre-approved day that they've earned. Then there's the 4.7 million who called in sick, or sickish. And there's the 1.5 million who ghosted and didn't let anyone know they weren't going to show up.
Despite the absences, it's business as usual for most of us today. But is it a productive day? I hope so. I think I got five hours of sleep last night and ran 8 miles before coming to work because that's what I do almost every day and I like routine. I can't help it. But I can't wait to fall into fuzzy slippers later at home and watch recaps of the best Super Bowl commercials and maybe watch the new Taylor Swift Netflix documentary again and eat day-old guacamole.
If you took the day off today, good for you. Anyone who consumed six thousand calories in a four-hour period yesterday deserves some downtime, and tomorrow will be a better day. If you are at work today, go get it! And if you start feeling sluggish there will be plenty of leftover football food in the breakroom to carb load and push through. Maybe we should do this every Monday.