John Linton
I can't really swear to this - but my memory of a 40+ year working life to date is of maybe one or two days every 10 years or so when I've actually not done any work because I was "sick". I actually can't remember the last day/part day I didn't work but I'm sure there probably was one in the past five years.
I can't take any personal 'credit' for this achievement - it's obviously a combination of a genetic inheritance, a protestant ethic upbringing and schooling (in days when such things still existed) and significant intakes of alcohol ever since rendering my blood stream so toxic that germs and bugs can't exist in it.
However my personal 'good health' pales in to insignificance compared to my wife's, or for that matter any other mother of my acquaintance including my own and my grandmothers, both of them, who as far as I've observed have never been 'sick' for a single day of their lives. My paternal grandmother died at the age of 93 from a heart attack while scrubbing her kitchen floor; as she once told me when I was a boy - "I'm far too busy to get sick; that's for those that can afford it".
I sometimes despair at the low standards of hygiene in so many Australian eateries - how do these places manage to stay in business when they so regularly poison so many of their patrons? I make this point because so many people I've been associated with over the past 20 years seem to be unable to attend work on Fridays and Mondays due to food poisoning picked up at restaurants in every geographic location of the Sydney Metropolitan area.
(I imagine they still manage to survive because the particular food poisoning they inflict on their customers only lasts a day and leaves the victim in the peak of health when they return to their job after destroying their ability to work for a period of 24 hours).
Apparently motherhood confers instant immunity, to every physical and mental ailment known, on those females lucky enough to bear children - or perhaps, they are far too busy (and far too responsible). Something we males can never get the benefit of. Females before becoming mothers don't seem to be as fortunate and males seem to be particularly prone to being poisoned by Sydney food at what appears to be an alarming regularity.
Maybe there's another reason or perhaps more than one other reason? If there is, then the various State and Federal governments aren't aware of it and seem to be aware that the hygiene standards in Sydney restaurants continues to fall as the various NSW State agencies responsible seem to indicate that sickness increases in a direct proportion to the amount of time each person spends working for the same employer.
This lack of hygiene in Sydney eateries is a concern to small companies such as Exetel who are leanly 'staffed' and when some ptomaine loaded meal strikes down one of our employees it puts an unreasonable burden on the, now short staffed, part of the operation who have to do the work of their stricken colleague. Of course it doesn't impact larger organisations and especialy not government agencies who are able to calculate the likely daily incidences of personnel stuck down by sudden illness and actually over staff their operations to compensate for what is effectively a permanent absence of a percentage of their total employees.
Not having the luxury of over staffing nor having any form of legitimate medical knowledge I've found, what appears to be, equally effective ways of improving the general health of people relied on by others over the past 20 years or so. These ways are based on monetary reward for those people who manage to avoid ptomain risk laden restaurants and who regard over the counter phamaceutical items (Panadol, Codral, Fisherman's Friend etc) effective ways of supressing the more disagreeable symptoms of 'coughs and colds'.
According to State and Federal Government beliefs (and those of the remaining militant unions) it appears that any individual's general health deteriorates alarmingly in direct proportion to the time they stay with the same employer. Apparently working for any employer for a second year results in the employee's health being serious compromised by 60%. What other construction can be put on the fact that "sick leave entitlements" assume that every employee's perfect health when they join a new employer protects them from ptomain and flu as NO sick leave entitlement is present for the first 3 months but the deterioration in their health requires five sick days in the next 9 months which increases by 60% from 5 days in the first full year to 8 days in the second year?
Clearly the solution to maintaining perfect health is only to work for an employer for a maximum of three months.
I've actually found that the reverse applies. Employee health actually improves in direct proportion to the way they are rewarded for doing the work of people who are continually struck down with sickness that prevents them from working for periods of 24 hours. It seems that if a person who hasn't taken any unplanned time off for short term "sickness" is paid a bonus at the end of each year equivalent to 2 weeks of their average pay in that period their health improves markedly.
Similarly if their next remuneration increase carries a 'multiplier' based on the number, or rather the lack of the number, of sick days they've been forced to take in the previous year most people seem never to get 'sick' at all.
Pretty much people seem to become like me and every mother I've ever known - they never get sick and minor ailments are dealt with by non-prescription pharmaceuticals. (or maybe like me they increase their alcohol intake to the level requred to eliminate bugs from their blood stream)
I wonder whether I should write to the Australian Medical Journal or Lancet about this world shattering health breakthrough?