My S.O. will be so happy

My S.O. gets infuriated with people who go to the office when they're sick...including me. I am definitely of the ilk that I will go in unless I'm on death's door. He will stay home with a hangnail.

Turns out, at least according to the NY Times, that he may have the better approach.

As a resident, my greatest pride was in never having missed a day for illness. I’d drag myself in and sniffle and cough through the day. Once, I’m embarrassed to admit, I trudged up York Avenue to the hospital making use of my own personal motion sickness bag every few blocks while horrified pedestrians looked on.

Now, though, I see the foolishness of this bravura. And I confront it almost daily in my primary care practice. No one can miss a day — a minute, even — of work, carpooling, volunteering, vacation, anything. “I don’t have time to be sick!” my patients wail. Everyone must soldier on, leaving sick days to those with less important things to do.

Yes, I agree there is a certain sense of arrogance inherent in the idea that people cannot live without me coming into the office. I already work from home one day per week, why not more when I'm sick?

But I also think it's a kind of denial. Like "...if I can make it to the office and work a full day, then I must not really feel so bad..." and it's mostly ourselves we're trying to convince. Combine that with the underlying belief that how sick you are can actually be influenced by how you feel mentally, then it would seem like good medicine to convince yourself you're not so bad off, and go to work.

It all seems pretty flimsy when I write it out in black and white, but time for true confessions...how many of you think exactly that way?