The Neverending Cold

Is it just me or is someone always sick in an office?  You constantly hear coughing, sneezing, complaining.  You try your hardest to not get whatever is going around.  Airborne, Theraflu, cough drops.  But as much as you try it is going to migrate throughout the office and hit you!  It doesn't help that you are sitting in an open room where the air is circulating all day throughout the office and you are breathing in all of those germs that people are releasing into the air.  

If it starts at a cube far from you, you fear that soon you will be hit.  You hear the person furthest from you coughing, or saying their throat is hurt.  They call in sick but come back and of course still have some of their symptoms.  Soon after their neighbor comes to work completely hit with the sickness feeling like crap, dragging herself into work.  Then it begins to migrate and slowly people in cubes closer to you are starting to hack and cough.  Then bam!  You wake up one morning and your throat is hurting, you feel light headed and the last thing you want to do is go to work.  

That was me today.  I finally am starting to get what is going around!  All I can do is pray that it is just a sore throat and it won't develop into more.  You may ask if we are all sick why not just use a sick day and call in?  Well if our company offered a decent amount of sick time that may be an option.  Unfortunately we are only allowed 5 sick days per year.  I swear most of my friends that work in corporate offices get 10 per year.  The other catch is if we don't use all 5 days in the year once the next calendar year starts we lose whatever days we didn't use previously and start all over again.  

As of right now I have one sick day left.  I have to treat that baby like gold and really use it for something good.  While my first option would be to use it for a long weekend (can you say Vegas??).  I'm thinking with the winter coming up I should probably save it in case I really do get the flu or a bad cold.  

The best part about this use it or lose it sick day thing is that my manager gets mad that all of a sudden in December people are calling in sick like crazy.  Why get mad about it?  We have to use them or lose them, and who the heck wants to lose a day off??  Instead of getting mad about it maybe he should work on changing the policy so our sick days carry over, but for now if that is the policy don't bitch about it, deal with it.  I hate people that complain but don't work on changing anything.  

For now I will drag my sick ass to work, suck it up and save my last precious sick day.  We will have a neverending cold going on in the office because I'm sure most people think the way I do...