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I have zero desire to be a workaholic like many. Addiction to stress is real, and ends with an early grave typically.

These are the same types who are always trying to see if they can be the sickest person in the office when they come down with something. It’s like it’s some type of badge of honor to them, yet it wrecks overall productivity when they infect everyone else. If you were to walk into another employee’s office and sit on their desk and yak endlessly such that they couldn’t get anything done you’d be disciplined and probably fired if you kept doing it. Yet, if you come in sick and end up causing that same employee to have to stay home with something, or kill their productivity while they’re in the office because you get them sick, then you’re viewed as some kind of hero because of your “dedication.”

Makes no logical sense, and should hopefully be a thing of the past after COVID. I’m retired now, but these people who would act like that used to infuriate me. They’d sit there all day hacking and sneezing all over everyone else, and nothing could convince them to just stay home, even though they weren’t accomplishing much anyway.

Just to add one thing: My work philosophy was always that what matters is what you produce; it’s the end product. With some exceptions, depending upon the type of job, for the most part how you accomplish that is irrelevant. Yet many managers (especially incompetent ones) get all wrapped around the axle over the process rather than the product. They’re the ones who are more focused on the irrelevant minutiae of an employee’s daily life than they are with actually producing the best product. They equate “butts in chairs”, or hours expended, or personal sacrifice with success, which is just foolish.

If I hire someone to paint my house, for example, and he produces a quality result within the time we agreed and for the price we agreed then why on Earth should I care if he used a 2-inch brush or a 4-inch brush, or a roller, or how many breaks he took, or whether he was on the phone, etc.? One of the silver linings to the COVID circus is that it did force companies and managers to seriously consider the benefits of remote work, and to rethink the assumed need to have everyone in an office all day every day. If you have employees that you feel you have to monitor every minute, then maybe you just did a poor job of selecting them in the first place.

Some workplaces encourage working while unwell. I once called in and told the supervisor I had a fever. “Can’t you take a Tylenol and come in to work?” She asked.

And I worked in a hospital.