I didn't have swine flu, but if I did, I could still work!

I was sick the last couple of days, to the point where I actually took a day off. I never take days off for illness. Maybe once a year, at the most. But there I was Thursday morning, calling into the out sick number at work and sending my boss an e-mail just to make sure. I spent the day with the cure to anything: nyquil, sleep and bad tv.

I know it's really too late to write about swine flu. The fear of pandemic appears to have escaped our national consciousness. Now people are arguing about what Nancy Pelosi knew or didn't know about waterboarding (care?) , whether David Ortiz is finished (wow, Ortiz's power numbers dropped right as steroid testing got tough ... isn't that weird) and whatever it is that is or isn't going on with American Idol.

But write about swine flu I must. Not the disease itself, but my company's response to it. Maybe this is part of being in a big company that I've just never seen before. But right when things were at their apex with this whole pandemic thing, I started getting near daily e-mails from work about how our company was responding to this. My thought: who cares what you're doing? If this is as bad as people on the news are saying it could be, I'm not thinking about work. I'm listening to the news, and reports from the CDC, my work isn't on the list. But there I was, getting e-mails attempting to soothe me:

"Given the extensive media coverage of Swine Flu, I thought it might be helpful to reassure you that we have dedicated professionals within each of our businesses monitoring the situation and communicating locally with specific instructions as and when required. This includes a daily teleconference to ensure we share intelligence and coordinate action as appropriate across the company."

A daily teleconference? Really? How is that making me feel better? Are you all going to find the cure?

The next thing just kinda pissed me off. We got an e-mail from the big boss of our department saying that we hoped swine flu didn't affect our office, but we had to plan in case it did.

Plan for what? Um, if there's a global pandemic and thousands of people are dying, I'll be in my basement with an outbreak suit thank you very much. I shan't be thinking about my job. But apparently, my job not only thinks that I should be thinking about it, but thinking about WORKING. I had to fill out a survey about my internet and phone connections at home in case we were all required to work at home. Who are these people kidding?

Then the final kick in the ass came a couple days later. We received yet another e-mail with guidelines on what to say to customers in case they called in asking what we would do in the event of a pandemic. Again, this assumes that thousands of people across the country/world are dying of an easily spread flu with no known cure. My company provides advertising/publishing. WE DON'T CURE CANCER. The response to anyone who calls in asking if their webpage will stay up during the Black Plague Part II is "Put a gas mask on and get over yourself," not "we are actively monitoring the situation and if necessary, will adjust our continuity plans accordingly."

I guess this is part of the big company mindset: we must, and will, be ready for any situation and our employees will be too. That's not exactly my kind of thinking. I'm more like: I will do whatever I have to do to succeed in my job, unless that involves working through smallpox version II, then you can all go screw.

Oh, and to keep the streak going, read Cara's blog.