You're Not Really Sick Are You?

By londonist_mark Last edited 217 months ago
You're Not Really Sick Are You?
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You've already phoned in, coughing and spluttering and sobbing as to how you'll not sure if you'll ever see your family again, and now you're at home watching C-Beebies and eating AWT's snickers pie.

But don't worry. We won't rag on you. You're in great company. Although if you're a boss, please stop reading now or we'll get people in trouble. Because apparently more of you have pulled a sickie today than on any other day of the year. At least that's according to the Telegraph.

Sky travel interviewed over 4000 employees to find that seven in ten prefer to pull sickies on a Monday and that most of them have opted for today; with most of them living oop North and most of the Northeners living in Liverpool. Insert your own lazy scally joke here.

This Londonista once foolishly owned up to pulling a sickie and was hauled over barbed wire for an ounce of honesty that was never to be repeated in a work environment. Since then we may or may not have not been ill whilst being ill. If we hadn't, we'd probably have done what the majority of you have done:

Those who choose to face their managers employ their acting skills, with 28 per cent pretending to cough and splutter in the office before their sick day and 55 per cent carrying on with the act after their return.

'Those who choose to face...' That's because one in five of you are not only liars but cowards as well since you had to do it by text. Damn we did that too.

So why do we resort to such treachery?

The main reasons, a poll says, are likely to be increasing workload combined with a dissatisfaction with the perceived small amount of holiday entitlement employees are given.

Unwilling to sacrifice a paid holiday day so soon in the year, workers are apparently resorting to less official options.

Now we have no problems with that, work sucks mainly, but it's a shame to think that we've lost some of our finesse from yesteryear. Gone are the days when we would take to the streets en masse to protest about our rights, or our holiday entitlement. Long gone are the days when we'd have pitchforks and torches and guillotines with us. That really learnt 'em. For a while at least. So come on folks. Enough of this silliness. If you're not happpy at work, don't go pulling sickies. Get a few of your disgruntled mates together and burn your office to the ground with all the management trapped under their over-sized desks. But don't forget to let us know when. We'll bring the marshmallows.

Last Updated 06 February 2006