Brain Cell Reboot

You know how there are just some days when you NEED to call in sick? Not because you’re actually rockin’ a cold or whatever...no. It’s that you just need a day to yourself. Some peace, quiet along with a few small indulgences.

Back a zillion and a half years ago when I was the Delivery Diva (*ahem* OK Manager) for a printing/copying company and then, later, Production Manager for the main pressroom, I’d schedule my sick days.

¿Que?

You see, I’m rarely sick and, unless I’m in hospital, I generally work through whatever’s illin’ me. That’s just how I’m wired.

At this particular printing company we were allotted five paid sick days and a couple personal days (on top of our paid holidays and three weeks vaca) per year. Decent if not gorgeous bennies, no?

 Vacation days had to be taken in five day blocks. The owner felt that having a solid week off was important for stress relief and rejuvenation. Smart man—he got that a chilled out worker bee is a more effective, successful working bee and one day alone wouldn't do the trick in toto.

Personal days were always eaten up by, ya know, personal shit. Doctor visits, family-type errands and issues, plumber and electrician consults, interestingly, all seem to happen during those pesky 9-5 working hours.

So then, what to do, what to do when you’re this close to strangling the ever livin’ excrement outta your co-workers and then torchin’ the joint?

Schedule a sick day. Why not just bang in? Because that’s really wickedly disruptive. It leaves the rest of the team scrambling to get your duties seen to, if that’s even possible. 

I referred to these as Mental Health Days and usually spent them in wonderfully dark movie theaters like the Nickelodeon in Kenmore Square or the Orson Welles in Cambridge. It was awesomely restorative.

At the fucked up joint where I worked before my current fabola gig at Granite Print, there were no personal days and, though we all had paid sick days coming to us, we couldn’t schedule them. They were not ours to use as needed.

Need a therapeutic day at the cinema (or elsewhere) in order to avoid nasty, embarrassing and, possibly, paycheck killing ballistic-ness? At this company, your only option was to make the call on the day and pretend to be physically ill, thereby mightily inconveniencing your co-workers and pissing off a few key customers. Of course, this means that a lot of folks didn’t take the very important down time for themselves which, naturally, led to a mega load of hostile, quick to anger worker bees. Great environment. //snort//

Not a lot of big picture thinking at that dive. Management seemed to view employees as drones, pawns, possessions, not as human beings. It amazes me that they’re still in business.

Why’s this on my mind today? I guess I’d like to go sit in a dark movie theater, eat buttered popcorn and watch some odd little film that none of my clan’s interested in. Like Dancing in Jaffa or The Grand Budapest Hotel or Finding Vivian Maier.

Yep, I think it’s time to schedule a Mental Health Day.