When You are Sick, Act Like You are Sick

I have been sick these days...really really sick. Things already started to look pretty bad at the beginning of the week when work as usual started on the 20th floor of Rakuten Tower. In the sales floor where nothing besides smooth sales talk is usually allowed during work time, I can hear coughing and sneezing across the floor. Yes, someone has brought in this summer's first cold virus from somewhere, and his or her determination to come to work no matter what has allowed all of us to share his pain and suffering.

When you are crowded into an office space with (literally) hundreds of people sitting right next to each other and no air circulation (besides barely operating AC system to save electricity), there is just no way you can escape a spreading biological terror. I was feeling fine at the beginning of the week, by as people right next to me began to succumb to the disease, I know it was only a matter of time before I fell apart.

And, fell apart I certainly did. Still cheerfully having lunch on Wednesday, only couple of hours later, I began coughing so much that both my chest and throat felt like they were on fire. Migraine headache, delivering face-twitching sharp pain every few minutes, followed. I was still making phone calls through all of this, but obviously, the main concern became not how to sell Ichiba, but how to make myself talk normally while my mind tried its best to suppress all sorts of physical aches.

With no improvement on Thursday, I barely got through the day by popping one Tylenol every four hours. Sudden temperature drop on Thursday night with strong rain and wind only made things worse. Shivering constantly as I walked from the company to the train station, I knew tomorrow, Friday the 13th, was not going to be a good day by any means...and for that, I was again correct: headache just would not stop from the moment I woke up (from the pain around 5am), and the pain was now beyond the capacity of my trusty Tylenol...

So for the entire Friday, I was practically in hibernation mode, getting up only to get a sip of water and go to the toilet, while literally sleeping through 22 hours to minimize the headache. Even now as I write this post, coughing, along with the cheat and throat pains, would not stop. But, thankfully, headache has gone away for the most part, allowing me to focus my mind on something other than how much pain I am feeling.

Now the reader asks, why am I writing about this? It is not like I (or anyone) never get sick before, and no one would be really interested in hearing how sick I was. But couple of points are worthy of notice. One is the fact that whoever that got sick first at the workplace refused to call in sick and stay home. And as others (including myself) got sick, they also refused to stay home until they got to the point where they are no longer physically capable of showing up to work.

Of course, this also has something to do with reading the "air" in the workplace. Being perceived to use "I am sick" as an unjustified excuse to not show up to work cannot possibly reflect well later on in personal evaluations. So people tend to physically "show" that they are really sick by coming to work sick BEFORE using it as valid evidence to call in sick later on...certainly not helpful for stopping a certain virus from going around the densely packed floor.

The second point is one about living by myself. Having been doing it for 5 years now, I have already been dependent on a combination of hot showers, excess sleep, painkillers, and easily digestible food to combat sickness. But when all of those do not lead of serious improvement (even in a short amount of time), it would not be surprising for the guy living by himself to think about the cost of keeping up the life-style...and at the same time, re-imagine the merits of keeping up certain family values or finding a life partner to look out for himself now and then.