head head head

Winter sickness: Are you a mucus trooper?
1.) How ill would you need to be before you took a day off? a bit of a hangover from last night

cold - sore throat, runny nose, and a husky phone-voice

stomach upset - likely to spend more time in the loo than at your desk

flu - you can hardly feel your head any more, and the office seems to be swinging around you

bubonic plague
 
2.) Your colleague is looking very pale and keeps slumping onto her keyboard whilst she's trying to finish a key report. What do you do? feign her symptoms and get your coat to go home, saying you feel as bad as she looks

give her a big hug to make her feel better (isn't it odd how you always seem to catch these office colds?)

make her a nice cup of tea, but bring it to her at arm's length to avoid the germs

take the opportunity to compare symptoms and show everyone how ill you are too

suggest she goes home to bed and steal the glory for her report, like in the cold cure ads
 
3.) How many days off sick did you take in 2003 for routine illnesses? (eg not hospital treatment or long-term problems) Rugby World Cup days and every third Monday morning

6 or more

5 or less

none

none in the last 2 years (a fact I always remind my boss of when I'm due a rise)
 
4.) When you have to phone in sick, how do you go about it? stuff your mouth with cotton wool and hold the phone a metre away, to make yourself sound really, really ill

leave a short answerphone message before anyone else gets in, so you don't have to answer questions about how ill you are

phone to apologise personally to the boss as soon as they get in, to minimise the inconvenience

ring some of your colleagues to brief them on anything you're doing that might come up that day

Come in to work personally to say how ill you are, and end up staying all day
 
5.) When you get a cold, how do you treat it? with a day out shopping, followed by a movie

take a lie-in with the heating up, and come to work in the afternoon when you've perked up a bit

nothing special - they tend to get better pretty quickly anyway

keep up your vitamin C levels, chew the odd sore throat lozenge, and put on a warm jumper

keep chugging away at the range of industrial-strength pharmaceuticals you keep in your desk drawer for any kind of illness
 
6.) A nasty bug has put you in bed for a few days, but now you're starting to improve slightly. Do you... take the rest of the week off for good measure - might as well enjoy it whilst it lasts

give yourself another day to assess the situation - no point making yourself feel worse again

think whether there's any work or reading you could do at home, and set up shop on the sofa

stagger back to work and spend most of the day telling everyone how ill you've been

come out from under the desk where you'd been staying anyway, working on a deadline you couldn't miss
 
 
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