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October 28, 2011 at 10:42 AM
I get a lot of press releases from health insurers, government agencies, think tanks, etc. that seem to assume that we workers all have stay-at-home spouses to take care of us, employers that offer easy access to sick days, and, to boil it down, long, lazy days to work at setting up doctors’ appoints, meandering from one heavily discounted independent blood testing or radiology center after another, and enjoying back issues of People magazine in waiting rooms.
To paraphrase what a marriage counselor said to a harried friend during a recent office visit, “You can make time for these things. You have to manage your priorities. You can always get another job.”
Of course, there is no greater joy in life than to read an old People magazine in a medical office waiting room, but the truth is that, in this economy, you can’t always get another job.
An employer might offer the most generous sick-leave policy possible, and the managers may genuinely want employees to get care when, for example, they are starting to cough up dark green phlegm or have 103 degree fevers, but that doesn’t mean that the employees believe they can really take off a day from work just because they happen to have a 103 degree fever.
