My parents instilled in me an outstanding work ethic. Part of that is because we were poor and neither of them had the security of sick time, but even if they did, I can confidently say they wouldn’t use it.
The thing is…. They no longer have the jobs they had when I was a child. The company my father worked for the majority of my life doesn’t even exist anymore. Do his former coworkers think back on their time working at Lakeside and fondly remember him as the guy that always came to work? I don’t believe they do. The church where my mother worked kept her on for decades after software was developed that would make her job obsolete. In the blink of an eye new pastors came in and eliminated her job with said software. Do her coworkers remember her as the person who never called off? No… actually, her only coworker passed away a few years ago. And the pastor has Parkinson’s dementia. In moments of clarity does he think about my mother, and her attendance? I don’t believe he does.
I’m saying all this because I have bronchitis. This is the first time I’ve been sick- sick since I had covid in April of 2020. I work in a very small department. There are four of us, and two doctors. Me calling off inconveniences 5 people.
My intense anxiety rarely allows me to call off. Even when I worked inside the store, and I was treated so terribly that I wanted to dîę every single day of my life, I still rarely called off. It never got me anywhere. 98% of the people I’ve ever worked with no longer work for the company. Do my former coworkers/managers remember me as the woman that never called off? I don’t believe they do.
So anyway! I’m calling out sick-sick for the second day in a row, and for the first time since April of 2020. No one is going to remember this except me. And I have to remember that.