I'm not sick, of course. Don't be stupid. What fool would waste a perfectly good sick day on being sick?! Where is the fun in that? Lying around, coughing and blowing your nose until it's raw; drinking weak tea and feeling miserable? If I want that, I'll just be hungover, thankyouverymuch. That's what all good people do. No, even if I am hungover, Mondays are for lying on the couch, eating taco bell, shooting at aliens with a game controller and otherwise wasting your life.
I personally love calling in sick on Mondays. It's like a religious holiday you give yourself through deceit and guile. So in this way, it's just like every other religious holiday. Plus, who can deny the sighing satisfaction of lying back in your bed, knowing every other sucker out there is at the office slaving like a schleb while you're kicking back eating day-old bbq? You can't buy that kind of happiness, but you can lie your way to it.
I'm in good company with calling in sick on Mondays. According internet statistics (the most reliable source of data anywhere), two-thirds of people who call in sick on a Monday aren't. I like that statistic. It lines up well with my behaviour: 2/3 of the time I call in sick I'm not.
Normally, I don't normally ascribe to a "follow the crowd" philosophy, but in this case, it's clear the majority knows what it's doing. Use Mondays as they were meant to be used: dodging work and getting paid to do it.
If you've never skipped out on work by playing sick (yeah, right), then let this old hat warn you: it's not all sunshine and lollipops. Calling in sick on a Monday can be a double-edged sword. There are consequences which you'll need to manage. If you screw it up, you'll be working late nights and weekends for months. I bear the scars of many a self-imposed three-day weekend early in my work-dodging career. Learn from my mistakes and let this old pro guide you through the process.
Calling in sick on a Monday is the easy part. Most rookies imagine quite the opposite: going face to face (or voice to voice anyway) with a boss to explain how you're under the weather, in need of fluids and rest and just CAN'T make it in, that's enough to send most beginners scurrying for cover.
Trust me: the calling in part isn't tough. You just need a little nerve, a well-practiced hack and a shot of rotgut right before you start talking (gives you the scratchy throat). These three guarantee you sound crappy enough to fool the best of them. A few other rules are:
- Keep it short. Don't explain things. Don't tell anyone how you started feeling sick on Friday after work and how it spread to your ears then your nostrils and how your chest started feeling plugged. The more you talk, the clearer your guilt is. These three words are plenty: "I'm really sick". Hack, splutter, lie and hang up. Oh, make sure they know it's you too. All that deception is wasted if your monkey ass has to call back and explain "by the way, it's Bill Peters, from Project Management."
- This may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how many dumb-asses get caught because they're just too goofed up by the idea of an extra day off: eliminate ALL evidence to the contrary of your sickness. Turn down the video game or hip hop CD or whatever you have cranked up in the background before making the call. It dims your chances of getting away with your crime if you're telling the boss' secretary how sick you are while your friends are yelling "chug! chug! chug!" in the background. Take your call into a back room.
- Space 'em out: again, sounds really obvious, but don't call in sick on Monday after Monday. Put at least a couple months in between each one. Throw in a Wednesday here or there to throw the man off the scent. Give your boss a little credit. How can he / she NOT notice that you get a cold every Monday morning and are miraculously healed come Tuesday?
- Hold back the maniacal laughter of having gotten away with it until AFTER you've hung up the phone.
The great thing about calling in sick is the obvious fact that of course you can't be openly refuted. No boss or HR manager can come right out and say to you on the phone "You're not sick! Get in here!" Sure, they'd love to. They know you're not sick; they'd love to bust your ass and call you to the mat for flaking off. That guy in the mail room saw you Saturday night in that bar doing tequila shots off that girl's cleavage. Your facebook page has you smoking a cigar and crumping Sunday afternoon at the game.
But that's the great thing here. They can't. They can't actually say it. No way, Jose. Not on the million to one chance that somehow, some way, you actually ARE sick. They have to suck it up and everyone knows it.
See calling in sick is the easy part. Tuesday, on the other hand...
After your free day of XBox and porno, of greasy fast food and another viewing of Die Hard, Tuesday does eventually roll around. Now you have to pay the piper.
This is where your acting skills have to crank up to the next notch. I'm talking real acting here. You try and half-ass it, try and throw out some Sara Jessica Parker bullshit, your ass is owned.
You have to put on a believable show of being " still a little sick". This is harder than it sounds. You have to show that yes you were sick and the tail end of it is still dragging you down.
This can't be half-baked. Your best friend would have to buy it, or the jig is up. Cut to Tuesday morning, you need to be coughing a little, blowing your nose, making good for the cameras as you sigh and heave your way to your desk. Too much Titanic overacting, and you'll catch more than one pair of eyes rolling. Not enough, and you're in pursed lips city. "She doesn't look that sick to me!" This is the razor's edge, people. Get zen with this. Whatever that means.
Guaranteed your boss will make sure to stop by and ask how you're feeling. The ball-buster knows you're a big fat phony. Take it in stride: brave-face a smile and say "much better, thanks". He'll smile and say that's great, but all the while he'd love to be able to prove you were at the track or boinking that shot cleavage girl. He'd give his right arm to throw down a photo of you at KFC with red eyes and a stupid grin. But don't lose your composure. Get back to work quietly and slowly. Sneeze from time to time. Leave lots of crumpled up tissues lying around. This is a guarantee to keep even the bravest at a distance. Nothing is more repugnant than a pile of gluey-looking tissues near at hand. If you've got hair spray at home, give some tissues a quick squirt then leave them lying in balls on your desk. This gives just the right glossy sheen to bring out the hypochondriac in even the healthiest office specimen.
For the rest of the day, you have to keep this front going. I've got it down to a pretty steady science. You need to fix yourself a lot of tea, slump a lot, sneeze into your lunch when people are watching (if you can get people to rush out of the room, you know you've got a really convincing act going). If you're a practiced veteran like me, you can even pull out the old "I think I need to go home early" trick.
But this is where you have to be careful. All too often the overconfidence of a successful early performance leads to your downfall. Start off swimmingly with your faux malaise, next thing you know you've forgotten the whole ruse and you're bullshitting with so-and-so from marketing, laughing, reading the paper in the break room, etc. Don't be a dimwit. Keep the gambit on course at least through the day. I've seen great performances turn to keanu reeves in the little buddha with one fuck up. Most important here: don't act too sick (too sick is like how you felt when you saw keanu reeves in little buddha), but don't "come round" too fast either. Let the sickness hold on at least through Wednesday afternoon.
Clearly, this is a long time to keep up the infirmity, but what did you expect? This is the real lesson to be learned with dodging work with a made-up infirmity. You scammed a free Monday out of the deal. Sure you didn't work, but you have to do something to pay for that free time. Nothing in life is free.
Playing sick is just a hell of a lot more fun.
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