'Tis the season to be coughing, aching, sneezing with a stuffy head so you can't rest and need to take NyQuil, I guess, gauging from the coughing and hacking I've been hearing at work lately.
This happens every year when kids go back to school. You don't even need to have kids or work with kids to suddenly be exposed to extra germs this time of year. Everyone else who has kids will take care of that for you.
So I'm noticing that several over-worked, over-tired coworkers have been fabulously sick lately. So sick that I don't recognize their voices when they answer their phones and I become convinced that all new people have been hired without my knowledge or I'm in some useless work dream. So sick that it makes me want to constantly use Purell hand sanitizer even though I think it's a ruse and even though the smell of it makes me think that pantyhosed and mightily coiffed women from my mother's church group from the 1970s have just descended upon me with a can of AquaNet hairspray.
I effortlessly overhear my coworkers rambling on and on to each other, between coughs and hacks, from the other side of the cube wall about how much it sucks to be sick and how everyone they know is sick and everyone they love is sick and everyone they live with is sick and how they should really just be home and in bed. And I'm thinking, "Uh, duh." I went to college for such advanced analyses of psycho-social situations.
And then I hear it. I hear the unmistakable metallic crack-whoosh of someone opening a Can of Coke. I think, "Oh, My God. What the Hell Time Is It? It's 10am and You're SICK. WTF!?" But just in case I'm wrong I invent a reason to swing by their cubicles to sneak a peek. Indeed, they, The Sick Ones, The Coughing Up a Lung Ones were drinking Cokes for Breakfast.
I don't get this. I really don't.
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5 comments:
Well, it soothes the throat. And provides caffeine, which both provides energy and works as a mild analgesic. And then, it provides familiarity and comfort.
So, although I understand what you are saying in general, it also makes perfect sense to me that your pals would use their cola beverages as a tool to get through a tough day a little more comfortably.
Like Michael said, familiarity and comfort. The sad thing is that people are often obliged to work while they're sick, generally ensuring that they'll be sick longer and expose others to their illness.
People who have Coke or candy bars before noon freak me out as well. But you do have to wonder, how much worse is a Coke than 2 cups of coffee? How much less healthy is Snickers Bar compared to some of those chocolate granola bars?
Yeah... everyone knows you need to drink Dr. Pepper for breakfast. Coke is for after lunch only. =P
Ah, the smell of Aqua Net! Now that brings back some pleasant memories for me! I used to love Aqua Net back in college, do you remember Karin? But then, I had a thicker head of hair back then . . .
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