请病假的艺术

请病假的艺术 The Art Of Calling In Sick -- Or Not As flu season approaches, people soon will wake up to a tricky calculation: Should you drag yourself into work feeling awful? Or can you get away with staying home to heal? 随着流感季节的临近，一些人早上醒来将会面临这样一个微妙却又进退两难的问题：我是不是应该带病上班？或者，在家养病能成为不去上班的理由吗？ Staying in bed poses a risk of falling behind or being seen as a slacker. But showing up sick, and grossing out or infecting colleagues, can be worse, and a growing number of employers are setting policies to discourage it. 待在家里养病需要承担的风险是，你的工作进度可能会落在别人后面，或者，别人还会认为你自由散漫。但是如果你带病上班的话，不仅让人讨厌，还可能把感冒传染给同事，这种结果其实更糟。越来越多的企业正在制定一些规定，防止员工带病工作的情况发生。 'People get really, really ticked off at co-workers spreading germs in the workplace. There's nothing worse than being Typhoid Mary,' says Annie Stevens, a managing partner at ClearRock, a Boston leadership-development and career-transition consultant. 清岩公司(ClearRock Inc.)是波士顿一家管理层人员培训及职业介绍公司。该公司的执行合伙人史蒂文斯(Annie Stevens)说，同事在工作场所传播病毒，这真的会让人非常恼火。没有什么比把疾病传染给别人的行为更糟糕的了。 This year's outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis岸projected to be the worst in 53 years岸brings a new, highly contagious risk to the workplace, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recent outbreaks of hantavirus and norovirus are also raising concerns about transmissible diseases. 据美国疾病控制与预防中心(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention，简称CDC)称，预计今年百日咳的爆发程度将是53年以来最严重的一次，工作场所因此成了感染百日咳的高风险地区。最近，汉坦病毒和诺如病毒的爆发也加剧了人们对传染病的担忧。 While email, Skype and teleconferencing make it easier in some jobs to call in sick and still participate in critical meetings or decisions, a person may end up being drawn into doing so much work they fail to take time to heal. 尽管电子邮件、Skype和电话会议可以让人们在请病假的同时不错过重要的会议和决策，但有些人可能会因为工作量太大，没有时间好好养病。 And it isn't always easy to tell when you're too contagious for the cubicle or conference room. (Having a fever doesn't help decision-making, either.) The 24-hour rule pediatricians preach to parents岸that a child with the flu should stay home from school or day care at least 24 hours after the fever and symptoms go away岸usually holds true for adults too, says Loreen Herwaldt, a professor of epidemiology and hospital epidemiologist at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. 此外，你也很难知道，自己什么时候应该请假，以避免把疾病传染给办公室或会议室里的其他人（发烧对你的决策力可没什么好处）。爱荷华大学医院与医学中心(University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics)流行病学教授、医院流行病学家赫尔瓦德(Loreen Herwaldt)说，儿科医生常常告诉家长，小孩子得了感冒应该向学校或托儿所请病假，在发热和其他症状消失后在家里至少还要再呆上24个小时，这个24小时原则同样也适用于成人。 But people with the flu can infect others a day before symptoms set in, the CDC says. Bystanders can catch the flu from a person standing as far as six feet away, usually via respiratory droplets spread when the sufferer coughs, sneezes or talks. And people with pertussis are highly infectious when the illness often looks like little more than a common cold, in the first one or two weeks. 但是美国疾控中心说，携带流感病毒的人在出现症状之前就具有传染性。两个人之间即便隔着六英尺远的距离，流感病毒都还可以传播，一般是通过感染者咳嗽、打喷嚏或是谈话时的呼吸飞沫传播。百日咳发病后一到两个星期内的症状跟普通感冒差不多，但这时候的传染性最强。 Calling in sick can be awkward. Evelyn Hamilton of Washington, D.C., says her job as a customer-service coordinator for students with disabilities at a university requires a lot of energy and an upbeat attitude. Otherwise, she says, her clients feel she is 'not being sensitive to their needs.' While Ms. Hamilton's boss is understanding when she occasionally calls in sick because she's exhausted, 'I do struggle with how I phrase it so that I'm not lying,' she says. 'I don't want to say my mother is sick＃if that's not the case.' Instead, she is brief and straightforward: 'I'm not feeling well enough to come in today.' 打电话请病假是一件挺别扭的事。华盛顿特区的汉密尔顿(Evelyn Hamilton)在一所大学担任残疾学生的客服协调员，她说，她的工作需要付出许多精力，并且要保持乐观的态度。否则，学生们会感到她对他们的需要漠不关心。汉密尔顿偶尔打电话请病假时，她的老板都非常理解，因为她的工作确实是让她精疲力尽，不过她说，我在措辞方面确实经历了一番挣扎，目的是让自己听起来不像在说谎。我不会用我妈妈病了这样的借口来请假，除非事实真的是这样。她一般都会采用一种简洁明了的方式：我今天感觉不舒服，没法来上班了。 Many supervisors say they appreciate and respect a simple statement that an employee is too ill to work. Giving too many graphic details, or trying too hard to sound sick with 'a very artistic fake cough, or saying, 'Oh, I have such a headache I can hardly talk,'' can spark suspicions that an employee is lying, says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder, a hiring-consulting firm in Chicago. 许多主管说，他们希望员工在请病假时只做简单述，即“因病无法工作”就可以了。芝加哥招聘咨询公司CareerBuilder的人力资源副总裁哈夫纳(Rosemary Haefner)说，如果员工添加太多生动的细节，或是过分地表现自己生病了，比如非常造作的假咳嗽，或者说，“噢，我的头太疼了，简直没法说话了”，这会让对方怀疑你在说谎。 Just 85% of employees say they are always honest when they call in sick. And 1 in 7 women has lied about being ill, compared with 1 in 5 men, according to a 2011 survey of 5,250 working professionals by the career website theFIT, a unit of recruiting-software maker Bullhorn. 根据招聘软件制造商Bullhorn旗下招聘网站theFIT 2011年对5,250名上班族所做的调查，仅有85%的员工表示，自己从未在打电话请病假时说过谎。职场女性中，有七分之一的人曾为了请假谎称有病，相比之下，男性的这一比例是五分之一。 'A lot of employers are wrestling with the sick-time conundrum'岸how to get people to work when they're healthy enough, and keep them away when they're not, says Carol Sladek, a partner at Aon Hewitt, in Lincolnshire, Ill., a human-resource consulting unit of Aon PLC of London. 总部位于伦敦的怡安集团(Aon PLC)旗下的人力资源咨询子公司、伊利诺伊州林肯郡(Lincolnshire)的怡安翰威特(Aon Hewitt)的合伙人斯拉戴克(Carol Sladek)说，许多公司都面临着与员工请病假有关的难题──如何才能保证员工在健康状况可以的时候正常上班，生病的时候则在家休息。 Some employers have policies that encourage sick people to come to work, offering cash or gifts for perfect attendance. Sal DeConcilio of Staten Island, N.Y., says he sometimes worked shoulder-to-shoulder with sick co-workers on a former job as a mail carrier because their employer allowed exchanging unused sick days for additional years on their pensions. 'They'd be coughing and sneezing, working next to you,' Mr. DeConcilio says. 一些公司制定了鼓励员工带病上班的政策，为全勤员工提供现金或是物质奖励。纽约斯坦顿岛(Staten Island)的德康西里奥(Sal DeConcilio)说，他以前做邮递员的时候，有时就需要和生病的同事并肩工作，因为公司允许员工用没请的病假换取额外的领养老金的年份。德康西里奥说，他们在你身边一边工作，一边咳嗽、打喷嚏。 Many employers have stopped handing out rewards for showing up, in favor of allotting employees a specified number of paid days off for any purpose, Ms. Sladek says. Some 51% have such paid time-off banks, up from 42% in 2009, according to an annual survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional group. 斯拉戴克说，许多公司已经不再向带病工作的员工提供奖励，而是倾向于给员工一定天数自行支配的带薪假期。根据专业机构美国人力资源管理学会(Society for Human Resource Management)进行的年度调查，大约51%的人有带薪假期，相比之下，2009年的这一比例是42%。 To guard against people coming to work during a potential flu outbreak, Ms. Sladek says, some employers have prepared blanket no-fault sick-day policies that would temporarily allow employees as many paid sick days as they need without subtracting any vacation days. The message: 'If you have the flu, stay home. Just stay home, until we all get better.' 斯拉戴克说，为了保护在流感爆发高峰期上班的人们，一些公司推出了覆盖所有人的无责任病假政策，暂时允许员工根据自己的需要休病假，不会减少员工的带薪休假。这种做法传递的信息是，如果你得了流感，就在家呆着，别来上班，等大家都好了再说。 More than two-thirds of all health-related productivity losses spring not from sick people missing work, but from employees with chronic, contagious or other ailments who show up and perform poorly, according to a study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 《职业与环境医学》(Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine)杂志刊登的一篇研究显示，在所有与健康问题有关的生产力损耗中，超过三分之二并不是因为员工请病假耽误了工作，而是由于带有慢性病、传染病或是其他疾病的员工坚持上班时表现不佳。 Some employees 'have this sense that if I'm breathing, I need to go in and impress my supervisors,' says Laura Bedrossian, a senior account executive at Peppercomm, a New York marketing and communications company. She recently told an intern who wasn't feeling well to go home. 'If you have that drive to do something, you can ignore symptoms. But that's often the worst thing you can do,' she says. Young employees, in particular, sometimes don't 'realize how quickly you can bring an entire office down,' says Ms. Bedrossian, who helps supervise interns in her office of 70 people. 纽约市场营销和传播公司Peppercomm的高级客户经理贝德罗森(Laura Bedrossian)说，有些员工认为，只要还能喘气，我就得去上班，这样才能给老板留下好印象。贝德罗森所在的办公室有70个人，她协助管理实习生的工作，最近她曾让一名身体不适的实习生回家休息。她说，如果你有那种做事的动力，你会对自己的症状毫不在意。但这是最不应该做的事情。她说，尤其是年轻的员工，有时意识不到他们会让整个办公室都被传染。 Ms. Bedrossian sometimes uses work-at-home days allotted by her employer to keep going when she's afraid she might be contagious. She draws the line when her productivity falls too far, she says. If it takes her twice as long as usual to do a routine task, such as writing an email, 'it's a good sign that I should take a sick day.' 贝德罗森自己有时利用公司给她的在家工作日来带病工作（当她担心自己的病可能会传染给别人时）。她说，她设定了衡量工作效率是否下降的。贝德罗森说，如果我用正常情况下两倍的时间来完成一项例行的任务，比如写一封电子邮件，这是一个足够强烈的信号，代表着我应该请一天病假。 Doing career-damage control is better than playing the martyr and dragging yourself into work coughing and wheezing, Ms. Stevens, the career consultant, says. To allay fear of being labeled a slacker, touch base with co-workers via work-related emails, if necessary, she says. If you're missing an important meeting, ask to participate via teleconference if possible. 史蒂文斯说，与其牺牲自己、硬撑着上班，上班时咳嗽不断、气喘吁吁，还不如控制好生病对工作的不良影响。她说，如果你担心他人会认为你懒散，可以通过工作邮件与同事保持联系。如果你因病无法参加一个重要的会议，如果可能的话，通过电话参与。 Colds travel fast in the open-plan office where Fred Yantz, of Hackettstown, N.J., works. If a co-worker looks especially ill, the magazine print-production manager says he drops a broad hint: 'You're not looking so good. What kind of flowers do you want at your funeral?' His colleagues don't go home, but they often ask for an aspirin or Advil, which he keeps in a desk drawer. 'It's not going to cure anything, but if it makes them feel better, that's fine,' he says. 彦茨(Fred Yantz)是新泽西州哈克特斯敦(Hackettstown)的一名杂志印刷生产经理，他在一个敞开式布局的办公室里工作，感冒病毒在这样的办公室传播得特别快。他说，如果一个同事看起来病得确实很严重，他就会以调侃的方式给他以提示：你看起来状态不怎么好嘛，你的葬礼上想用什么花？他的同事们生病了一般不回家，而是跟他要一片他抽屉里的阿司匹林或是爱德维镇痛药(Advil)。他说，这些药对他们的病也许并没有帮助，但如果能让他们感觉好些，那也不错。