I understand this is not always true as with any of these kind of generalizations, but from what I have seen and heard, the trend seems to be that men (and you can count me as being one of them) “act like babies”, “get all whiny”, “think it’s the end of the world”, and get really lazy and don’t do anything when they get sick, while most women are able to suck it up and almost treat it as if it’s a normal day.
This makes me ask, how and why are women better able to tolerate being sick?
That has not been my experience but I have heard it. The first time my girlfriend got a cold I rushed her to the emergency room thinking she was dieing.
Without knowing whether this is true, I can come up with some WAGs.
Women deal with feeling-the-under weather every month. And they know they can’t retreat to the sick bed that often (you only have a limited number of sick days you can take, generally). So they just suck it up. Over time, they become tougher to all kinds of malaise.
Women are often in caretaker roles. Children, significant others, elderly parents, etc. So they can’t afford to surrender to illness since someone else is relying on them.
My thought too. Short of being unable to move or constantly vomiting, most people these days suck it up and just go to work. I had a hacking cough last month (was a bacterial lung infection) and although I got sent home from work, I never would of thought of just staying home. After all the many workplaces that combine sick and vacation time really make it hard to justify taking the day off.
Hospital workers do. Some anyway.
I got sent home once for it, I looked sick when I came in to work.
They took my temp, it was like 99.5, and off I went.
The person who made me leave was the co-worker who had to pick up my work.
That’s how serious we took the matter, to protect the patients and the other employees.
Not all colds are the same. If all I have is a runny nose and an occasional sneeze, then I’m not really sick. But a runny nose, head ache, fatigue, and a sore throat? Likely they will keep me from having a good night’s sleep. Taken altogether, this is sick day worthy.
That is, if I have a big bank of sick leave. If I’m down to just a day, I’ll save it for when my appendix bursts.
In my family sick means vomiting and/or physically incapable of moving around. Someone who’s sick is in their bed, in their room in the quiet dark and they want it that way. If you have the energy to lie on the couch and whine and call for soup and make a pile of tissues you’ve the energy to be a productive part of the household. I have not noticed any gendered differences in living this policy.
Yes, of course. When you work in an office with dozens of other people, it’s not a matter of just sucking it up. You have to think of everybody else you’re potentially passing your cold to.
Like Max the Immortal, the term/idea “Man Cold” really only entered my consciousness–and from what I’ve heard, that of the people around me–when commercials using the term appeared. I’m definitely whiny when I’m sick, but so are my friends, gender irrespective.
Heh, interesting. This is my logic, but I came to the conclusion of not being able to justify NOT taking the day off.
Also, you’re not doing your company any favors by going into work sick. It winds up hurting the company more in the long run because employees are passing off their sickness to their coworkers.
Recently we had a coworker on his hiring probationary period. He ended up not being hired permanently, mostly because he took too many sick days. Unfortunately people have to look out for their own interests first.
You are more contagious (and frankly, disgusting) when you are spraying viruses all over everything. Viruses have evolved to elicit sneezing for a reason.
Serious question: how much would wearing a surgical mask prevent this? I know in some places it’s customary to wear a surgical mask when you’re sick, but I’m not sure how much good it does in reality.
Anyway, if this is true I’d put it down to women being used to feeling icky at least once a month. My other guess is some sort of weird cultural condition (we expect women to be tough/men to be weak while they’re sick so they subconsciously fulfill that role). That said, I’m not really sold that it is, in fact, true.
That’s influenza, and you should not leave your house except to seek medical treatment.
Yeah, my mother used to drive home the “Mommy doesn’t get a sick day” thing by rearranging the living room furniture whenever she was sick. :smack: She did that several times, until we caught on to her. :rolleyes:
A surgical mask is very useful, but it has to be worn correctly to be effective. It has to be crimped over the bridge of the nose on top, and under/around the chin on the bottom. I say this because I’ve seen them worn incorrectly by about half the people I’ve run into wearing them in public around here. I don’t know if they were wearing them because they were sick, or if they thought they would be protected from being sick (CTA drivers!).
I was one of those lucky folks who caught H1N1 back when it was running rampant. (CTA again, I’m sure). I stayed home for two days, and the recommended time off work then was an additional two days after symptoms were gone. I was doing relief work at our Spay/Neuter clinic on those two additional days, staying home was not an option. It was a pain in the ass (I find them uncomfortably hot), but a mask worked well, and no one else got sick.
It keeps you from not just sneezing and coughing onto surfaces, but from touching your mouth/nose and cross-contaminating with your hands. This would still not work if people were to raise the mask to blow their nose, wipe, eat, whatever, and then not wash/sanitize their hands immediately. So due to mostly user error, they’re not perfect, but they really can help. The doctor I was working with at the time was pregnant, and she hadn’t gotten the vaccine, so I was most concerned with not getting her sick.
I really don’t see the gender difference. It seems pretty individual.
I find I can often ward off a lingering illness by taking 24 hours to do nothing but sleep as soon as I feel it coming on. I’ll sometimes take a day off of work to do that, as I find once a cold does “take,” it tends to hit me really hard and last for weeks.