Let’s face it, we all take mental holidays or at least the majority of us do. If you don’t and you’re pathologically excited about going to work then carry on you crazed little workaholic weasel. The rest of us need that day off and your job is to cover for us since you’re having such a grand time.

For those of you who are still with me on the mental health holidays, I think we need changes to our work rules. I propose that we be given at least 4-6 mental health holidays a year – kind of like a floating holiday. The advantage is we wouldn’t have to call in at 3am pretending to be suffering from some debilitating 24 hour thing. Just an aside, I read a tip in a magazine that suggested calling early while laying on your back and hanging half of your upper body off the edge of the bed is supposed to do wonders for your voice. Think of the advantages of calling in and simply stating, “look, I’m totally fine, I don’t have much to do tomorrow and so I thought I’d watch the all day Sentinel marathon on Sci-Fi. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

A former supervisor used to call this “calling in with a vision problem”. When I first heard that and had to ask what she meant she said, “Beth, I figured you just couldn’t see yourself here.” She was right, I do occasionally suffer from vision problems.

Plus, think of the potential embarrassment this will save. There’s nothing worse than coming in the next day after goofing off and either you’ve got a fresh tan, new hairstyle or you’re simply too healthy. People come and ask the obligatory, “how are you feeling?” You both know that being out in the sun after getting your hair styled was completely refreshing, but you have to go through the ritual and your job is to say something lame like, “much better, thanks”. The other advantage is that it would open up new areas where you can be while horsing around. No more will you have to tell your friends who work elsewhere “sure, we can meet but errr… how about in this small town 45 miles away where there won’t be any chance of anyone seeing me. I’ll be in the dark sunglasses and large hat.”

Why I’m not in charge of people just boggles me.