Two Cents: Chuckin' a sickie

Thu, 03 November 2011 18 Comments

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Two Cents

Sam Geer and Alex Ryan are two young thinkers trying to make their way in a big agency. Working at MediaCom, they're passionate, media savvy and unashamedly opinionated, standing up for the belief that young people need a voice in this industry.

Australia is a country with proud traditions and in a country as multicultural as ours, it’s difficult to find one common tradition that can infiltrate all areas of society. However after much deliberation we have managed to find one Aussie tradition that is ubiquitous across the nation. That is of course, “chuckin’ a sickie”.

We’ve all woken up in bed one morning (usually a grey, rainy morning), hit snooze on our alarm and thought, “I just don’t have it in me today”. That thought is then very quickly followed by a mental review of your daily calendar with the hope you don’t have anything “unmissable” on today. Meetings? Presentations? Deadlines? Nothing… could it be true?

A wave of euphoria washes over you with the realisation that the stars have aligned and by some miracle today could actually be spent remaining under your doona (or duvet for our English readers).

This feeling of awesomeness however is swiftly replaced with dread, as you begin to rehearse the phone call to your boss. The next five to ten minutes is what we like to call limbo, a period in which you know that a sickie is looming. You can touch it, smell it, feel it ever so close, but until the phone call is made you don’t want to let yourself believe it.

After some internal debate around which type of sick you’ll be, food poisoning is decided upon. Guilt tells you not to use the fabled dying grandmother (again), the flu could be more difficult to miraculously recover from tomorrow and for some unknown reason the very acceptable and often appreciated “truth”, that you honestly just can’t do it today but will be back better than ever tomorrow isn’t even considered.

The much-agonised phone call ends with about the same amount of anti-climax as the iPhone 4S release. And then it’s done. You now have the rest of the day to masturbate relax and literally do whatever you want!

Sickie activities or “sick-tivities” can vary greatly depending on your motivation but most likely end up in a combination of Dr Phil, nakedness, ignoring phone calls, and watching the same TV channel because you can’t be bothered to get up and find the remote.

Rookies will often endeavour to “make the most of their day off” and get out and about. The more experienced will realise that their time is actually preferred spent doing nothing and the risk of having to try and explain sunburn to your colleagues after having a sickie outweighs any thought of leaving the house.

Another area of consideration is the “Successive Sickie”. This is the theory that two sick days in a row are more believable than one and can be sold in with the good old “it’s best I recover fully, and don’t infect the rest of the team”. Oh yes, this is a completely unselfish act and one that just happens to result in another day of blissful self-appreciation.

In the case of premeditated sickies you have two options. You can get all your work done in advance so there is less to worry about and ease the pressure on your colleagues. Or you can do the opposite and leave all your work uncompleted because this “will seem more authentic”. Either way you must have at least one mention of a cough or sore throat prior to leaving the building.

I recommend not going straight to the boss for these clues but rather picking a busy body and planting the seed with them. Therefore the next day when the boss says, “Oh so-and-so has called in sick,” they will come in with, “Oh yes they mentioned something yesterday.” Brilliant.

However you choose to enjoy your “sickies” we would recommend it be done guilt free. We all work very hard, particularly in our industry with long hours and much of our personal time devoted to work we aren’t always on the clock for. All workplaces can survive a day without us, no matter how important we consider ourselves. So please, next time you feel the urge, just go for it!