I’m Not Feeling Well. Can We Reschedule?
Oh no, you might be sick.
Your throat is dry, and you’re feeling a little fatigued. Your sinuses are congested. How is this possible? You’ve been going to CorePower Yoga, Barry’s Bootcamp and SoulCycle every week. You’ve hit 10,000 steps every day and consumed only 50 grams of carbs a day. You spit. There is a tinge of yellow. Or maybe it’s clear. Or maybe it’s green. You can’t tell.
You had your heat on at 72 degrees all winter, and you haven’t changed your filter in years.
You look outside. It’s cloudy. It’s 50 degrees. You don’t want to make yourself more sick in this weather. You should work from home. You don’t want to get anyone else in your office sick.
It’s Friday.
You draft your WFH email. It’s perfect. You even addressed the “To” line in order of importance of people at work: your CEO, your boss, your subordinates, then that guy who is your peer that you hate. He goes last. You hope that makes him feel a little bad.
You have to convey that you are available through all channels. That means people can send you a Gchat, SMS you, Slack you, call you, FB Messenger you, LinkedIn-message you or send a carrier pigeon. Availability is work. You are available.
But it’s likely nobody will reach out to you.
If you’re going to WFH, you shouldn’t expend yourself too hard. You have to put in enough effort to seem like a martyr, but not enough that you seem like you’re well enough to come in. You need to be just sick enough in the morning that you can’t go to work, but in case you run into a coworker in the evening, the absence can be justified. You self-diagnose. You go on WebMD. You use the symptom checker. Sinus infection. Wait. Could be strep.
You never know.
You check your calendar. Argh. You had so many meetings Monday–Thursday, and you tend not to put a lot in your calendar on Fridays…but this is nuts. How can you rearrange things to make things work so you can rest and fight off this “infection”?
That first call. The 10:00 a.m. The student who is looking for career advice. You can definitely move that one around. It’s not urgent, and you donate enough to your college anyway. You give back in other ways. You text the student at 9:45. You ask if you can reschedule for late next week or the week after. He responds immediately with a text suggesting a couple of dates.
You respond with the thumbs-up emoji.
You drink some coffee. You eat some breakfast. You take a Zicam. You’re on your way to a clean bill of health. You watch a few YouTube videos and listen to a podcast. But it’s almost time for your next meeting. It’s an internal meeting for 11:00 a.m., so not urgent. Time is approaching.
It’s 10:57.
You can’t decide what to do with this one. You’ll attend. You can be a silent participant. You don’t want to hurt your throat and talk and get yourself more sick. You announce yourself. You tell everyone that you want to save your voice. Everyone asks if you’re OK, because something’s been “going around.” You go silent and walk outside to get some fresh air. You’re well enough to walk.
Maybe the infection is improving.
You listen, chime in here and there with some yoda-like wisdom, and you wind up at the grocery store somehow. Wait, you walked into a grocery store? You don’t buy groceries in the grocery store anymore. You start browsing the aisles without the intent of buying anything. But you consider the chicken soup. The call drags on. No one wants to take accountability for this project, so instead of anyone doing anything, you just end up having meetings about building consensus. Consensus was reached months ago, but the meetings feel good because they create the illusion of progress. You walk toward your house.
A few drops of rain hit you on your way back.
This weather is going to play a major factor in the remainder of your schedule. You check the forecast on the Weather Channel app. Seventy percent chance of rain for the remainder of the day. Those are high odds. You check your calendar on the way back. Oops. Someone pinged you on Slack an hour ago. You never responded. Shit. You message back, “Sorry, I was tied up.”
You have a meeting that will require a seven-minute drive in two hours.
You’d definitely better reschedule that one. Forget about the drive time; there is also the parking time and the time to get ready, and you don’t want to shake hands with the person. She works for a company that’s trying to sell you a product, so it’s lower priority anyway. She’s been trying to sell you for four months, and it took three weeks to schedule this meeting. You kept repeating, “Something came up, and I need to reschedule.” Plus she originally wanted to do lunch. Felt like too much of a commitment.
You feel bad for a second. You email her. You suggest another meeting time in early June because you’ll be “traveling.”
You’re going to LA for one weeknight.
Looks like you also planned a social activity. It’s with an acquantaince. He’s just important enough that you don’t want to outright cancel, but you also don’t really want to go. He always wears that red “H” hat, but when you ask him where he went to school, he says he went to college in “Cambridge.” So annoying.
How do you approach this situation?
Maybe he’s hoping you’ll want to reschedule. Maybe you’re both hoping the other flakes. Maybe it will be a “chicken” flake, whereby you both essentially play a game of chicken to see who flakes first.
Too much risk.
You know what to do. You can give him a graceful out. You send him a message. “Hey, are we still on for today? Just checking because it’s raining. I know how busy you are, so thought I’d make sure.” You hit Send. This will give him a graceful out while also making you not the one to initiate the flake. Genius.
He responds. “Yeah, I have a crazy schedule, and I will have a meeting running over by about 30 minutes anyway. Let’s push to May.” Mission accomplished. He’s the chicken.
It’s almost the end of the day. You feel like you didn’t do enough. You ping a few random people over Gchat at 4:00 p.m. to show that you’ve been active all day. You let your boss know that you’ll look into that issue that she asked about “over the weekend.” You don’t intend on working over the weekend. Unless you feel better.
But it’s the thought that counts.
So glad you made time for yourself today. You know what? You needed this day. It was a mental health day. You feel so much better. And that yellow stuff is not coming out anymore. You drank lots of water. You rested. You need that solid alone time. And you still managed to do that internal call.
But will you feel good enough for that birthday party tomorrow in Marin? Maybe not. You let Autumn and Joaquin know you probably won’t be able to make it because you are sick. They have to understand that by moving to Marin, they basically will have a 50 percent no-show rate to all their parties. But you know what to do. You send them a flower arrangement from BloomThat. The price point is high enough that your guilt feels absolved.
It’s 4:30 p.m. You pour yourself a glass of wine. You didn’t even have to set an OOO message today. No point in putting one up on the last hour of the day. Unnecessary bad PR. What can’t wait till Monday?
Your phone rings. It’s your best friend. He can’t hang out tomorrow night.
He’s under the weather.
