"Never missed a day of work"
Oct. 21st, 2013 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherToday I read an obituary which said, despite the person's chronic disease, "he rarely missed a day of work."
As someone who has often called in sick, I'm always bothered by this common phrase; it praises people who put work before health. Not just their own health, but the health of others: coming to work while having a communicable illness puts others at risk too.
This phrase serves to enforce our place in a capitalist, production-oriented society, where work is the most important thing, and health and rest are distant followers. Workers are granted sick days, but to take them is some sort of indulgence rather than a necessary part of being a human being with a body. We also forget that sick days are something that unions have fought for.
Because I'm always sick to some degree, I often struggle with deciding whether I am sick "enough" to call in, sick "enough" to stay home and rest. Typically I will feel guilty if I call in sick, even though my body demands rest. Having a chronic illness means that I need much more rest than the average person, and something like a migraine or cold will add to my need for rest. Language valorizing people who don't call in, ever, doesn't help to alleviate my guilt.
As I saw someone say on twitter: self care is a radical political act.
As someone who has often called in sick, I'm always bothered by this common phrase; it praises people who put work before health. Not just their own health, but the health of others: coming to work while having a communicable illness puts others at risk too.
This phrase serves to enforce our place in a capitalist, production-oriented society, where work is the most important thing, and health and rest are distant followers. Workers are granted sick days, but to take them is some sort of indulgence rather than a necessary part of being a human being with a body. We also forget that sick days are something that unions have fought for.
Because I'm always sick to some degree, I often struggle with deciding whether I am sick "enough" to call in, sick "enough" to stay home and rest. Typically I will feel guilty if I call in sick, even though my body demands rest. Having a chronic illness means that I need much more rest than the average person, and something like a migraine or cold will add to my need for rest. Language valorizing people who don't call in, ever, doesn't help to alleviate my guilt.
As I saw someone say on twitter: self care is a radical political act.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-21 05:03 pm (UTC)Amazing how deeply this stuff gets ingrained in us, and how hard it is to root out even when we know that it makes no sense.
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Date: 2013-10-21 05:08 pm (UTC)*thinky*
You're so right; none of it makes sense. For some jobs set schedules are important, for others, they really really aren't! And it affects so many things.
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Date: 2013-10-22 10:22 pm (UTC)It's about how for some jobs, an eight-hour workday is unnecessary - there's three hours of work to do, and eight hours of desk time required - but it's part of the capitalist system that has to make our free time scarce so we'll spend more money on conveniences, things that represent the vision we have for ourselves, and so on.
Presentee-ism and the eight hour workday seem to be mostly about keeping us so tired out by our long "work" days that we can't evaluate our lives and make changes where we wish we could. Because that would bring down our wasteful economy.
And this is strikingly reminiscent of the impossible "beauty" standards for women, and increasingly for other people as well. If we are spending our limited time and resources on worrying about our failure to reach unattainable standards, how can we have any energy left to work on injustice and inequality, and towards self-acceptance and happiness? So insidious.