Having just gotten my butt kicked by a virulent form of the flu that’s making its way around San Francisco, I’ve been thinking a lot about sickness and productivity recently. It’s a complicated issue. Certainly, there’s the battle being waged between your desire to get work done and your desire to sleep. You also don’t want to look like a slacker to your boss and colleagues but at the same time you don’t want to risk getting them sick by coughing all over them at work.
Both the Shifting Careers blog at The New York Times and LifeHacker discuss this exact dilemma, though people in the comments seem pretty divided about how to deal with sickness, from the viewpoints of the afflicted, his boss, or his coworker. One thing they all seem to agree on, though, is that–if at all possible–cold sufferers should try to work from home.
Does your workplace have any good ways of dealing with illnesses? Let me know in the comments.
