Get back to work
I'm sitting here on a wet, miserable Monday afternoon, typing this wet, miserable blog update with a wet, miserable respiratory virus passed onto me by the kids, knocking me for six. On Saturday afternoon it struck with the usual symptoms: an aching body, sore throat, nasal congestion, and coughing. It hit my 57 year old frame at full speed during the subsequent night of much-interrupted sleep, with respiratory fluid emanating from every mucus membrane in my upper body. Thankfully, I had no jobs to do on Sunday, so I could rest up a bit.
Then Monday slams into the frame. Prior to the stupid pandemic, it was vital to disregard one's own welfare, and force yourself to go to work when ill with a virus (unless you were lucky enough to be in some sort of cushy public sector role obviously). This would result in others around you suffering the same condition a week or so afterwards, and this would inevitably affect productivity for a prolonged period of time.
The Coronavirus changed things for a year or so, with people generally being a bit more sensible in their approach to common illnesses, and maintaining distance from colleagues for the common good. Colds and other respiratory viruses were reframed as possibly-Covid, and workers looked after themselves so that they could recover at home, and return in a non-infective state - thus keeping diseases at bay in the workplace. Sensible, reasoned, and human. Not any more though.
Things are well and truly back to normal, with the need to "man-up" being bandied around by those who love to lord it over others less fortunate than themselves. I've worked with hundreds of these idiots over the years, and they now reside in huge numbers among the retired, middle class homeowners, and conservative decision makers. The latest one was interviewed by Kay Burley on Sky News this morning:
https://www.mylondon.news/news/cost-of-living/government-minister-blasted-suggesting-people-23967613
This attitude that people should be working longer hours or simply get a higher paid job runs through the overprivileged like the letters through a stick of rock, and shows the ignorance they're brought up with. Some of these idiots would love to implement something approaching the 9-9-6 system that prevails in Chinese tech firms (working nine to nine, six days a week with only public holidays), regarding British people as among the laziest in the world. Read the book "Britannia Unchained" to see what the toffs really think of you. Resting and recovering when poorly should be a right for all people who work, but unfortunately it's a rare beast.
Anyway, today I had a job in a rural area, a short drive away, so dragged myself over there to find it shrouded in thick fog, and deluged in heavy rainfall. My job in Teeside on Tuesday had been cancelled, so we took the decision to move today's job until tomorrow - meaning a well deserved day of R&R to get some of this illness out of my system. If I'd been in an office, shop, warehouse position, I'd have been forced to go in and infect everyone else, while trying to do as little as possible under an umbrella of self medication. Self employment has at least one benefit it seems.
