As a general rule of thumb I don’t take sickies. Okay, okay so I admit it, at the tail end of last year I may have taken one to have rampant, wanton sex with my then fuckbuddy but I’d never done that sort of thing before and he really was uber persuasive. And, honestly? I’ve only pulled about 4 sickies in my seven year working life. Brownie’s honour.

See, most people who know me know that I’m not good with guilt. I’m not entirely sure how to manage it and so I let it fester away and bother me like an irksome boil.

Take today for example, I’m not feeling too clever, am full of cold with a screaming headache and high velocity sneezes that would ensure this virus survives into Burkina Faso. Yet even with this phlegm-filled palsy I have managed to worry non-stop about my two direct reports, MSN messenged one of them to check they’re all right and have even done some work.

So if it’s this bad when I’m genuinely ill and the guilt weighs on my mind this much, then you can see why pulling a sickie is really a big No-No. What would be the point? It’s not like I could enjoy the time I had illicitly taken anyway because I would be wracked with guilt.

And that’s why I love the idea of those companies who are ‘all about their people’ with little, genius ideas like ‘duvet days’. Duvet days, for those not in the know, are company-advocated days given to each employee. These days (usually 2/3 a year) are given on top of annual leave, the philosophy being that you can just phone up and use a duvet day on a day when you just can’t be bothered to go into work. In theory this increases honesty, completely reduces the number of sickies that employees pull while keeping the employee happy, and ta daa, everyone’s a winner.

Okay so I know that companies who are ‘all about their people’ are a myth.

But wouldn’t it be nice if they were real?

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