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What do you do if you turn up to work and find yourself sitting next to someone with a streaming nose, a hacking cough and other signs of a full-blown cold or flu?
This question arose the other day when I arrived at the start of a day-long business conference and sat at a table where another attendee plonked his loudly snivelling self on the seat beside me.
As he spluttered and honked away, all hope of concentrating on what was being said on stage evaporated. Visions swam of the shattered work schedule, the missed appointments and the headachy days in bed that his pathogen-spraying presence threatened.
I turned and fixed him with what I hoped was a meaningful glare each time he coughed, then sighed, loudly and repeatedly, none of which he noticed. Eventually, I packed up my things and moved to a distant table.
In the coffee break a bit later, I spotted a man who had also been sitting near the snuffling offender and said: “That chap at your table sounds as if he has an awful cold.”
“Yeah, I told him to move away,” the man replied. “I’ve got a board meeting this week and I can’t afford to get sick.”
I stared at him, awed by this forthright approach and mildly livid for failing to adopt it myself.
Back in the office, with flu season bearing down and Covid rates rising again, I kept thinking about this incident and wondering why, years after the pandemic made us hyper-aware of workplace contagion, we can still be so useless at handling it.
I suspect there is a need for a constant reminder of one of the first rules of office etiquette: if you cough, you’re off.
As far as humanly possible, this should be the default option for infected workers. Coming in to work with spreadable germs is not just bad manners. It’s also bad for productivity if it fells others.
This should be completely obvious. Alas, it is not because too many bosses set a rotten example by coming to work when ill themselves in the misguided belief that showing up at all times enhances productivity. In fact, researchers have shown for years that sickness presenteeism, or working at less than full speed because of illness, can cut productivity by a third or more — and can also be more costly than absenteeism.
There are of course legitimate exceptions to the cough-off rule. A cough can last for weeks, long after infection levels should have subsided.
Also, if you fall mildly ill before an event that’s been months in the making, where hundreds of people are relying on your presence, it may be reasonable to guzzle Lemsip, keep your distance and hope for the best.
However, since most of us are not required to host the Oscars or get sworn in as US commander-in-chief, it is fine to stay home instead.
I say all this as someone who has come to work unwell myself for fear of missing some big event or deadline. But that was a) idiotic and b) before the rise of hybrid working. If you are lucky enough to have the option of working from home, you can sate your Stakhanovite urges without unleashing microbial mayhem on office colleagues.
But remote work can present different problems. Before the pandemic struck, the data showed that people who did their jobs from home tended to work more days when ill than those who had to be in the office. As remote working rose, it sparked complaints that people felt obliged to stay on the clock when unwell. As many as 65 per cent of US workers polled said they had felt such pressure in 2021.
This is unfortunate. The first rule of getting over a cold quickly can be summed up in four words: “Get plenty of rest.” That means flaking out in front of the TV. Or lying in bed. Or wallowing in a hot bath. It does not mean spending hours answering emails, logging on to Zoom meetings and writing up reports.
Again, this should be obvious but again, it often is not. To be fair to overburdened managers, it is harder to figure out if an employee is overdoing it instead of resting if said worker is at home.
Harder, but, like so many sensible office behaviour rules, far from impossible.
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