Any yeah, it’s great when they tell you to stay home from work but some places have a point system and you can point out.
I know if I’m running a fever and hacking up a lung that I’m going to stay home and get pointed for it. Anything over two days you have to have a doctor’s excuse.
I can understand that because some people can abuse time off but unless I feel any different than the norm for flu or cold and I can take care of it at home with rest and OJ why spend money on a doctor?
This is one reason some people go to work sick. You’re either worried you’re going to point out and lose your job or it’s just a hassle to go to the doctor for an excuse when it’s something that you can take care of yourself.
We have stuff to wipe down our keyboards, headsets and monitors. Hand sanitizer at the doors going onto the floors and posters up about hand washing and coughing into your sleeve.
Yeah, I totally get that, Kricket. When I was just out of college, I had a really sucky job that had no health benefits and no paid time off. My boss (who owned the place) came in one day and casually mentioned that he thought he had strep and would be going to the doctor after lunch to get a prescription. I went off on him about being there and he said, “What’s the big deal? If you get sick, just go and get some antibiotics!” Yeah, sure, and take a day (or two or three) without pay, pay cash to the doctor and more cash for the medicine. He had no concept that for some people, getting even a minor illness can be hugely expensive.
…which is even more reason for people to not cough on themselves and then offer their hand, or to not take even basic measures like washing their hands frequently and covering their mouths when they cough or sneeze. The teacher in the OP probably couldn’t get out of going to parent/teacher night, but he should have at least taken minimal steps not to spread his germs.
You may be fine in three days, but what about those of us with chronic health issues that can impair our immune systems? Frankly, I wouldn’t want to shake hands with that teacher either. Even if it’s just allergies, I don’t know that for sure and I sure as hell don’t want to have to spend a month dealing with bronchitis or worse yet, have it turn into pneumonia.
I remember having a nasty cough for a couple of months when we had no health insurance and very little money. When I finally did go to the doctor, I spent over a month’s worth of grocery money to get seen, get a steroid shot, and get lectured about pneumonia, dangers of walking around with. Then I got to spend more money on antibiotics. I probably didn’t catch pneumonia from anyone directly, but instead developed it after a cold.
Someone with a healthy immune system might have shaken off the cold. However, until I started getting a pneumonia shot every few years, I could count on developing pneumonia with every other cold I caught.
And anyway, even people with working immune systems can pick up diseases. Howsabout we all just try to a little more hygienic, and not swap every single germ in the world with each other? Trust me, even if everyone is using proper sanitary habits, there will still be more than enough germs to go around.
I just don’t see what good it’s going to do to cough into your elbow, not your hand. The germs are still going somewhere eventually, right? It just seems like we’re doing all this to make ourselves feel better.
The point of coughing into your elbow is that the germs go onto the elbow. Elbows are generally not used to open doors, pick up phones, and shake hands. In other words, the germs are less likely to spread when someone coughs into his elbow, or a tissue. Hands, on the other…hand…are the body part which is most likely to touch and handle objects and other people. Coughing into a hand pretty much guarantees that you’re gonna spread germs onto everything you touch with that hand, until you wash or cleanse it.
Even if a person is completely healthy, and just needs to cough to clear the throat, he’ll still get mucus all over his hand if he coughs into it. Frankly, I don’t want to handle my own mucus any more than I have to, and I certainly don’t want to deal with someone else’s mucus.
Yawn! Freaking germaphobes, this is why you have allergies and get sick all the time. Being exposed to people and their germs is what builds up our immune system, running from it only makes you weaker. Suck it up!
Incidentally, do us all a favor and look up Joseph Lister. He had some pretty radical ideas for his day. Most doctors scoffed at the notion of washing their hands between patients, and would go directly from an autopsy to a woman in labor. The doctors would wipe their bloody, germy hands on their coats. This lead to childbed fever, among other things. Lister was concerned about germs spreading, and managed to get the concept of antisepsis across to the medical profession. I’m sure that many surgeons of his time dismissed his ideas as "It just seems like we’re doing all this to make ourselves feel better. "
Except the teacher shook the guys hand, he wasn’t delivering babies or doing surgery. People are way too germaphobic these days. If he had snot on his hand it would be gross, but if there was a slimy residue, it was ignored by the OP. Also, disease != viruses.
The teacher wasn’t just shaking one person’s hand. The teacher was probably shaking EVERYONE’S hand that night. And teachers are supposed to be role models for our kids, not just in learning school subjects, but in matters of courtesy and hygiene.
Ok, whatever, you just carry your jug of hand sanitiser and cry about people’s normal bodily functions all day. The rest of us have normal immune systems because we don’t open the bathroom door with a hand towel.
There is evidence that the extreme “sanitation” procedures are actually breeding pathogenic bacteria. Non pathogenic bacteria actually do a good job of multiplying and using recources that dangerous bacteria would use if given the chance. The problem occurs when you kill all of those non problematic bacteria (with antibacterial soap and hand sanitizer) and allow the pathogens to flourish.
I never got that anyway. If we’ve all washed our hands anyway, where are the genital-germs coming from on the door? What makes it creepier than any other door?
I’m assuming it’s because not everyone who touches the door washes their hands beforehand.
I wash my hands more often nowadays because of the whole swine flu scare (I also teach kids, and the school is being very paranoid about precautions), but I’ve never been very concerned about catching other people’s germs. As long as they don’t sneeze in my face I’m fine.
Antibacterial soap, sure, that is definitely possible. I use regular soap at home and just cope with whatever soap it is we have in the dispensers in the hospital. I haven’t seen evidence that alcohol can allow resistant bacteria/viruses to thrive, though I admit it may well be out there.
Maybe you wash your hands before touching it. I know that I do. I also know that I’ve seen a lot of people who DON’T wash their hands touching that door. I guess they have prehensile, self-cleaning rectums or something. Or possibly their shit isn’t dirty and germ-ridden. But if you watch people in public restrooms, you’ll note that a good percentage don’t wash their hands. So the reason is that we, the cleanly ones, don’t want to touch what they, the Great Unwashed, have touched.
Despite knowing all this, I do shake hands with most people, and even hug people, even people I’m not all that close to. Unless, of course, they cough into their hands and then want to shake hands. I won’t QUITE squeal out that they have Cooties, but it’ll be a close thing.
From my 38 years experience as a male I can say for certain that quite a large %age of males do not wash their hands after going to the toilet, piss and shit. These people then go about their business and open doors, shake hands etc. all the time. No matter how careful you are you are getting lots of germs all the time.
I’ve never really worried about this kind of stuff. I just go about my day, touching things and then biting my nails etc. Don’t get sick more often than anyone else. In fact the one germophobe I do know is always complaining about being out of sorts.
The teacher at the very least is a bit rude. Even if you don’t care about germs I’d rather not have someone’s snot on me. Does this guy never watch Curb Your Enthusiasm?