Once a group of friends and I ate at a restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco. Our waiter was obviously sick. Within a week, everyone in our group was out of commission with the worst colds we’d ever had. I’d guess that everyone who ate there that night got sick.
When I was in the Air Force, I had a bad cold, and then I had to have the mandatory flu shot on top of it. Even when I’m healthy, I get sick when I take a flu shot. I got horribly sick, coughing, wheezing, and so congested, there was green mucus in my eyes. I was told that unless I was sick enough to be in the hospital, I was required to go to work.
My brother survived his cancer, but he was the same way. Get chemo on Friday, lay low all weekend and go back to work Monday. They have been very good to him I think because of how he handled that.
The worst I’ve done was go in with pinkeye after they told me to stay home for a week. I couldn’t afford to do that; I was just very very careful about washing my hands and disinfecting any time I was near my eye.
Not really sick, but…
I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled on my lunch hour, then went back to work.
Had wisdom tooth out, went to work at active job. Kept rinsing my mouth and spitting blood. After hours and hours they finally told me to go home, I was grossing other people out.
I worked for the Office of the Immigration Judge in the early 1990s. The Chief Immigration Judge of the United States was obviously sick with something really serious and was not really working for, I think, a year or more? He didn’t actually resign, if memory serves, until a few weeks before he died. It wasn’t until we read his obituary that we found out he died of AIDS.
You know, I’m sorry that happened to him. But when you have a job like that, and you’re that sick, perhaps it’s better to step down so that someone can do the work.
Oh yeah, and then there was the insane boss I had briefly (I quit because she was insane - I could tell stories) who ran a small translation agency out of her house. She was a not very well-controlled insulin-dependent diabetic. One day she had a pacemaker implanted in the morning, and was at her desk in the afternoon. I have no idea why; she was obviously not accomplishing anything.
I’m reminded of the delightful Allison Janney as CJ Cregg and her “woot canal” with accompanying wince and hand to cheek.
Not exactly personal experience, but . . .
Who remembers the day that Pres. George Bush the Elder puked at a State Dinner in Japan, sitting next to the Japanese PM? (According to some accounts, he puked ON the Japanese PM.)
ETA: Yes, the article at that link includes a picture ! :eek:
Not as awesome as my attendance at senior prom two days after I had my appendix out with my arm in a cast, but it’s my worst case involving work.
In the lead up to my National Guard annual training I had a pretty bad cold. I am allergic to dust so I am always congested. The risk of secondary bacterial infections after a virus are just a fact of my life. I noticed something new brewing but headed off to training. The second day in the field I was miserable and the bug had settled into my throat. So I went to sick call and got some antibiotics.
Pretty normal so far. Except I headed back to my tank platoon right after. Besides the antibiotics I had an ammo pouch full of OTC stuff from the company medic. Way too little sleep, no bed, cool and rainy weather, and bad food was the order of the day every day. Strangely enough the antibiotics weren’t enough in those conditions. :rolleyes: I got a little worse each day. Almost a week in I was really getting bad. I could barely climb up and down off my tank. I walked like a zombie. In proper tanker fashion, I just stopped doing those things as much as possible. My joints and especially my ankles were really starting to hurt in the last 24 hours.
I woke up with the “I really should go on sick call” thought but the morning’s training mission was pretty awesome. It was after the mission that I went over to talk to the Company medic. He had me take off my boots. Once the socks were off both ankles began quickly swelling before his eyes. IIRC his hand hit my chest and was pushing me back onto the stretcher before he got out the “Lay down sir!!!”
At the Battalion Aid Station I learned that Reactive Arthritis was a thing. The Bn Surgeon hadn’t heard of it being caused by a throat infection though.
It was totally worth it. I’d do it again.
Seen:
Last October, one of my mechanics came back from vacation looking like a walking corpse. He proceeded to tell us, in great detail, about how he spent most of the flight time from the US to the Middle East in one of the bathrooms on the planes, because that’s where his chest hurt the least. He went to the hospital the morning he got back here, was diagnosed with pneumonia, left with a bag of meds, and came to work that night for his first day back after vacation. He accomplished zero work that night. One of my other mechanics told me I should send him home; I didn’t think I had the authority to do that (later confirmed with my boss), and I didn’t think I should have to tell a grown-ass man to go home when he’s got pneumonia, so I didn’t.
Next afternoon at shift change, we found out he’d had a heart attack that morning and was in the hospital. He spent a month and a half on sick leave that the customer insisted on *and * was paid his full rate the entire time, which is actually against the host-nation’s labor law.
Then he tried blaming me, because I didn’t send him home that first night. Asshole.
Done:
Summer 2009. I was on long-tour Active Duty orders with the AF Reserve, and I had just returned home from a week-long trip, refueling a group of F-16s from the US West Coast to the desert, then another group of F-16s from the desert to the West Coast. I was dead-tired, tripped and fell in my living room, and broke my right hand. I had a simulator checkride in 3 days that I couldn’t reschedule, so I flew the sim and did all the paperwork with my dominant hand in a cast.
Thankfully, that’s the worst case of working through injury/illness that I have.
I was assigned to a 3-person group and we had only one more day to get a report done. I felt I HAD to help, as my name was on the report, too, and they needed me.
I was running a 103° fever, and coughing up a lung, but we got it done and it was well received. The next day was a Friday so I stayed home, and by Monday I was feeling well enough to come back to work. I used hand sanitizer and multiple clean tissues, but one of the guys got sick from me. 
His illness wasn’t near as bad as mine, thank goodness.
My former boss spent the whole weekend at the office without going home at all even though he was dead.
I think you win.
I was in the hospital for a bowel obstruction and had my laptop with me, logged into work’s VPN. Without me, there was no IT support.
A neighboring department had a guy die of a heart attack at his desk. Unfortunately he slipped down under the desk so they didn’t notice for a while. :smack:
About 20 years ago, I’d been unemployed for a few months after company layoffs (client had gone bankrupt and everything was cancelled), and after a lot of unsuccessful job searching my financial situation was starting to get dire, when my old company called me with a new job they wanted me for. Of course, I said of course.
The day that I was going in to meet the new clients and get the details of the new job, I came down with a cold from hell, but there was no way I was going to jeopardize this chance. I went through the introductions and briefings in a complete fever fog, which ended with “So we need you to at the remote site for two weeks to oversee the work there.”
“When?”
“Today!”
Still only half-conscious, I somehow managed to pack a bag and get my train, check into the hotel and pass out on the bed. Only the morning did I remember that my wife (then-fiancee) had been out at work and only knew that I’d had a meeting/interview, and I’d forgotten to let her know I’d be gone. She was panicking that I was dead in a ditch somewhere.
This may or may not count, but I stayed awake for 5 days and 4 nights once in college, cramming for some finals. Monday through Friday afternoon. I was taking 6 classes and working part time as a tutor, so spare time was really difficult to come by.
They were mostly project based so I didn’t need to be sharp, I just had to put in the work. I essentially needed to finish 2 large programming projects (a ray tracer for my Graphics class, and a Flappy-Bird knockoff for my Game Design class), 2 fifteen-page papers (one on GPU architecture, and the other on the P=NP problem I think), and I also had an exam in my Numerical Methods class (which was thankfully on Monday). None were especially difficult, but they all were going to take a lot of time.
Wednesday felt the worst I remember; it’s when I starting have micro-sleeps. My professor would be on one side of the room writing something, and then I would blink, and he would *instantaneously teleport * to the other side of the classroom. I stopped driving as this point as well, so I spent quite a bit of time walking to and from university.
I got by with a lot of coffee and caffeine pills. But had all the effects of sleep deprivation: mood swings, trouble concentrating, subtle hallucinations (basically jumping at shadows that weren’t really there), micro-sleep, etc.
By the time Friday rolled around I was done with everything, but had mandatory attendance at the end semester party to show off my game. I was a zombie, and just sat at my stall for 5 hours until I could go, then I walked home and slept for the next 13 hours.
It’s obvious that you aren’t management. Shit never stops with management.