The average sneeze travels up to 3 metres in distance. (Comstock)

Achewww! Ewwww…could someone get me a Kleenex - quick?

How often in the dreary weeks between Thanksgiving and Easter do you find yourself backing away from a drippy, germy, sneezy, co-worker who can hardly stand up but just had to come to work? And how do you manage the year-round sniffling, coughing, and chronic illness of a hypochondriac co-worker who whines and complains and drags his soggy Kleen-exed self around the office all day, every day?

It seems there are two “sickness styles” in the workplace:

Type 1: Stoic Sick

This person is of the attitude that as long as you are breathing you’re well enough to work. These are the people who are so pressured - or maybe committed - to getting the job done that they will come to work barf bag in hand, with 105 degree fever and work through everything from minor heart attacks to broken limbs. They’ll cough their way through meetings while slurping cough syrup from the bottle and then act surprised when the rest of the team gets sick.

Type 2: Silly Sick

These people are of the attitude that the slightest ailment or injury warrants three paid sick days, complete with co-worker sympathies. (Gifts/card are a nice touch too.) These are the people who wear even the teeniest of ailments like a badge of honor and for whom even a little indigestion might be cause for withdrawal from meetings. They sniffle all day and make blowing their nose a grand gesture.

Extra-loud sneezing, low pathetic moaning, constant, “Oh no I’m fine” combined with continuous please pity me behaviours. This is the co-worker who is conveniently sick when there’s important work to do or who spends most of his/her energy complaining and whining about their seemingly significant, but really nonexistent health, issues.

Each style of managing sickness has its pros and cons. And while most employers would admit that when the bottom line and deadlines are at stake, having a whole team of Type 1 sick but stoic employees is helpful, statistics show that the added pressure of performing when you’re not feeling well can end up costing the company money.

A little illness in the workplace is probably unavoidable but general guidelines in most workplaces are as follows:

• If you know you are contagious, stay home
• If you’re well enough to work, work, and stop whining about every little ailment
• If you know you’re getting sick, slow down a bit and try to take care of yourself
• If you really aren’t sick, don’t pretend you are just to get the day off because if you do, no one will believe you when you really are sick
• If you get sick at work, excuse yourself and do what you have to do, don’t make your sickness everyone else’s issue

Did you know?:  A recent study pointed out that women’s’ desks, may harbour far more bacteria than the workplace restroom and the office desk of men. In fact, women have three to four times the number of bacteria in, on and around their desks, phones, computers, keyboards, drawers and personal items than men do, the study by University of Arizona.

Professor Charles Gerba found. Gerba, a Professor of Soil, Water and Environmental sciences, tested more than 100 offices on the UA campus and in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oregon and Washington, D.C. in a study commissioned by the Clorox Co.