I still feel awful about the time I had to go work making food with what was either a VERY bad cold or a mild case of flu.

But if I had not come in I would have been fired on the spot.

If I had been fired I would have been evicted at the end of the month, as would my husband.

So, what the heck was I supposed to do? If it had just been me I might have risked it and hoped I could get another job straight away; except I was only working that job because there were no effing jobs.

This isn’t limited to food service jobs, either.  When I worked at a fortune 500 company, I got chewed out for calling in with the Flu, and told that because it caused such an inconvenience (one of my other co-workers ALSO had the flu), in the future, I would have to give 24 hours notice.

(The boss in question was a prick and got shitcanned shortly thereafter for other shady shit, but the point stands)

It’s absolutely not, but food service and retail are larger public health problems. A food service worker at a busy fast food outlet can infect a lot of people.

I’ve worked at job like that years ago and yes, the absolutely expect you to come in sick.  We were told we’d get fired for calling out sick.  Our manager flat out told us that if we went to the doctors and he said we’d need to go to the hospital we were to refuse and come in to work.

I currently work in a library within a college with a health allotment of sick days and have for the last 15 years, working for 3 different colleges.  Let me tell you, while technically we have the time, the culture of each of the three places I’ve worked for really discourages taking time off for sick days.  

The first place just flat out expected me not to be out.  It was okay if I came in late (when other people were on) but the shift I worked solo?  Nope, I definitely needed to be there for that.  The second place was cool if I was out…as long as I was not missing any of my “commitments” like teaching (yes librarians teach) or attending meetings.  Please note that both of those examples involve meeting with lots of people.  At this place HR called me in to talk to me about how they want me to stop taking time off to take care of my kids when they’re sick.  So that was encouraging.

In my case, my job involves interacting with lots of people on a college campus (not to mention townies) so while I don’t think it’s as bad as when I worked directly with food, I’m still working directly with a lot of people a lot of the day.  And those people?  Largely college students that often feel like they can’t take time out from classes because they’re sick.

On another note, my son’s school has been sending a lot of emails out this year along the lines of: “Well of course we wouldn’t want you to send your kid in sick but even missing a couple days can have a huge impact on their academic career and you wouldn’t want that right?”

It’s just…this is culture we have in America.  If we’re not productive in each and every second, we’re bad, lazy, value-less.  Idleness is a sin.  And this is the culture that this coronavirus is going to hit.

“Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.” This leftover Puritanical bullshit is going to kill even more people than it already does. Goody.

Yup.