The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year!:
Around the colder months of the year, we all get a set of mixed-blessings.
Lots of fun new Winter sports, several new if inconvenient paintjobs on the landscape by Mother Nature that make everything a quiet wonder to observe.
And the inevitable disruptions in our body’s internal-balance that make us get sick in all kinds of glorious post-new-years-eve-vomit-jamboree ways.
Well CollegeHumor and U.Michigan have each gone their own unique ways to show us the different shades of awful this productivity-sapping season can go…
3 Of The 6 Usual Suspects:
And of-course up-top we have one of the worst offenders, The Soldier of The Common Cold.
The Soldier is someone who wants to carry-on regardless in the same way that people who think that a good night’s sleep is some kind of joke waiting for a punchline.
-Who then subsequently goes-on to infect most of the remaining employees still standing in the office. Especially-true since many colds can get worse before they get better.
Next Worst Is The Zombie:
The Zombie seems to be something between The Soldier and a walker from a biohazard-apocalypse movie.
He’s never as visibly sick-yet-toughing-it the way The Soldier is,
But he never seems to actually get better, either.
Maybe in that way, he’s actually worse because he seems like he could start a new epidemic at any time of the year, not just during great temperature-changes.
The term “Summer Cold” was tailor-made for The Zombie, and he makes up a large part of the people you see at the healthfood store who always look like they need a Doctor instead of more Echinacea.
The Third Offender Here Is The Phoenix:
A classic example of both the over-reactor, and the procrastinator.
The Phoenix will easily cost the team the most sick days allowable under current laws, packing it up as early as possible and getting back in to work at the very last minute.
News is still pending on whether this high-risk just-in-time productivity hail-mary is a strategy that actually succeeds, or fails miserably and the team or department goes through the pearly gates on-fire; backwards.
And as much ground as those 3 stereotypical sick-people go, CollegeHumor has 3 more over at the link.
Where Productivity Goes To Die (besides buzzfeed):
What’s more astonishing is the consequences these 6 horsemen have for the overall economy.
Whether you count the varying impact on their work-teams, companies as a whole, or all the other expenses incurred as a part of actually getting well again,
The last big study on this subject which done by the University of Michigan, states that the minimum total cost to the US economy was $40 Billion a year!
-And that was awhile ago.
The Soldier & Friends Cost A MINIMUM Of $40 Billion/Year:
It’s entirely-possible just between Inflation & Population-Growth alone, that the number is now closer to $60 Billion a year!
And this is even more likely because a more recent study by researchers from Albert Einstein College estimates that during common-cold sickness, productivity goes down by an average of 26.5% everywhere it hits.
So watch out for those 6 people wherever you are, take your Vitamin C & wash your hands A Lot!
Stay healthy out there!
Check the Links for CH’s other 3 types of sick people to avoid & more details:
Photo Credits: “The Soldier”, “The Zombie” and “The Phoenix”, all by Jacob Andrews, Caldwell Tanner, and CollegeHumor
Links:
• Source(s): CollegeHumor | UMich
• Source Study: CurrMedResOp-Impact of cough and common cold on productivity, absenteeism, and daily life in the United States: ACHOO Survey
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