{"id":8675,"date":"2018-05-03T09:13:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T08:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=8675"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:54:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:54:23","slug":"taking-time-off-sick-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2018\/05\/03\/taking-time-off-sick-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking time off sick [or not]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I got up this morning, I was lying in bed listening to the radio – the Today program on BBC Radio 4. I was surprised when the people on the show started talking about me. Well, to be more precise, they were talking about people behaving in a particular way, with which I could immediately identify. The subject under discussion was people taking time off sick from work, or not doing so \u2026<\/p>\n

First off, I should clarify that this morning was not my typical start to the day. Normally, I would rise at around 06:00, go swimming, return home to have breakfast and start my day. I do not do lie-ins. Although I like an early start, I do need motivating to get moving and this regime seems to do the trick. However, from time to time, things change and, the last couple of days, I have remained horizontal until after 08:00. This is because I have a bad cold. It is nothing worse – just a cold. But that is not conducive to swimming and, as I get older, such a bug tends to depress my energy levels, so getting moving is harder.<\/p>\n

The news story that I heard was about a survey indicating that people were not taking time off sick, but felt under pressure to go to work, even when they were unwell. [It also mentioned people working when they should be on annual leave.] This interested me because, apart from feeling ill at this time, I have always prided myself in not taking time off sick. I should add that I have never felt under pressure from my employer(s) to do this; any pressure has been self-inflicted.<\/p>\n

In nearly 40 years of full-time working, I have taken, at most, 10 days sick. These have been when I just could not get to work. I recall on one occasion I was unable to confidently put much space between myself and a toilet [do not ask!]. On another occasion, I set off to drive to work, but the car would not go in a straight line; the car was fine, it was me that was malfunctioning [just a bout of \u2018flu]. I always felt that it was better to go to work and get something done. I may have been only 40% efficient, but I reasoned that this was better than 0% by staying in bed. I never took into account how much inefficiency I introduced by infecting other people, which was, with 20:20 hindsight, foolish.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, as I work from home, I am either in my home office, without the opportunity to generously share my bugs with anyone, or I am traveling somewhere. I could probably do a remarkable amount of work without getting out of my bed, but my office is just over the hall, so it makes little difference. I was due to travel to a meeting this week, but I cancelled. The long drive there would have been very hard work and the other participants would not have been pleased to see me.<\/p>\n

On reflection, I know that I have been blessed with very good health over the years and for that I am grateful. Maybe, with advancing years, I am also finally acquiring some common sense …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I got up this morning, I was lying in bed listening to the radio – the Today program on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10684,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8675\/revisions\/10684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8675"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=8675"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=8675"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}