Growing up, my family owned a restaurant where I worked under the table from the time I was old enough to hold a food tray until they retired and sold the business. Sixteen years of my life were spent there. The value of hard work and the necessity of having a strong work ethic was instilled in me long before I could even comprehend the system that took advantage of my dedication.
I've always prioritized work over my relationships, mental well-being, and health because that's what I was raised to believe I should do. My previous jobs always regarded me as the “team player” – the one who was most reliable because I would drop everything else to cover a shift or come in even when I was sick because I couldn't stomach the idea of letting my work fall behind. Since I was three, I believed that the success of the company would be my success.
And then I got cancer.
Now, I'll agree that for the most part, aside from early chemo when I was constantly ill, I tend to operate as normal. Most days I don't feel sick and even though I'm still technically in treatment (I hit remission last year but still have to stay on meds to maintain that status), my body doesn't bounce back like other people. A cold for a normal person might knock them out for a day or two but for me, it might take four or five days to fully recover. Although I do everything I can to take care of my body – exercising, eating well, etc – my immune system is just kind of permanently terrible.
Last year, before being fired from a job I loved (which is an entirely different story), I had a sit-down meeting with my boss because of the amount of sick time I'd been taking. The company offered two sick days per quarter and I'd more than exhausted my reserve with colds, bad chemo days, and GI issues. On average, I probably took three, maybe four, sick days a month. When she sat me down to go over what the company called a “performance improvement plan” because of the number of days I'd taken off, in addition to a host of other questionable “issues” they had with my performance (which was debatable; I think they were full of shit), I didn't even know how to respond. How could my dedication to my work even be in question? I was constantly bending over backward to be helpful – coming in on my days off, staying late or coming in early, getting things that we needed on my own dime because that meant that a customer was being taken care of, covering work for others that weren't even on my team, etc. Suddenly, I felt like my sick days were my own fault. I could have just sucked it up and come into the office anyway or taken more meds that helped manage the side effects. Surely, there was something I could have done differently.
Obviously, I was fired anyway.
Since then, I've switched directions entirely and now work from home. The difference is astounding. Even on days when my stomach or GI system is a bit wonky, I can still get work done. Working from home gives me the flexibility to still manage my priorities while wearing PJ pants because guess what – sometimes chemo means frequent trips to the bathroom. Sorry not sorry. It wasn't until about six months after switching to WFH that I realized how much more productive I actually am in my home office. There are fewer distractions overall, I don't have to lose time commuting or getting ready, and most importantly, I don't have to fall behind on anything because I have cancer.
It's been said before by many others but shifting to a remote work landscape can give so many more people the option of earning a living that would have otherwise been unavailable to them – the disabled, the permanently sick. It's ludicrous that employers are demanding people come back to the office because it really only guarantees them one thing – control.
TL;DR Working from home is a better long-term fit because I have cancer and get sick a lot. Suck it, America!