I'm at home today, sick with the flu, which sucks, not only for the feeling crappy part, but also because it's costing me money. My employer has an excellent tool to encourage perfect attendance. Every year, each employee is alloted six sick days. Use 'em all, no problem. But for any of the six days that you don't use, you get an extra day's pay on your first cheque of the new year, a great bump for when those Xmas bills come rolling in. Technically, that means that there are up to six days a year for which you get paid twice. Thanks to this flu, I'm only getting paid once today. I don't expect people who aren't paid at all for sick days to be sympathetic, but I had big plans for that money. Okay, I was going to blow it on donuts and porn, but those constitute big plans for me.

The great part of this bonus system is that they don't tell you about it when you're hired. So one day, early last January, I got an email telling me I was getting a two-day attendance bonus on my next cheque. It's a little sneaky, since there were probably a few days when I could have dragged myself in to work for the extra money, but didn't since I saw no upside other than possibly infecting the very annoying, beanie-baby hoarding woman sitting next to me at the time. This year, I made every effort to stay healthy, and still I have managed to miss two days now. If this were December, I'd go in and infect the whole damned place unless they agreed to pay me for the day. Then I'd come home and suck down OJ while watching movies on cable, which is what I have been doing today.

Life is good.