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Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#161

Post by rboyd »

whoru007 wrote: post #119
jackhack wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting sick people to not fill a room with hundreds of millions of aerosolized particles when that could be clearly avoided is a result of simple respect for those around you and evidence of manners and good breeding. Cover your sneeze. Cover your cough. Stay home when sick. These are kindergarten-level cultural learnings.

> Cover your sneeze. Cover your cough. Stay home when sick. These are kindergarten-level cultural learnings. A friend/colleague of mine is suffering from Chronic sinusitis and she usually sneezes every morning for around 20-30 times (random number, I know!) over period of few hours. The 'sneezing fit' is 100% of the time non-contagious yet loud and 'full with watery substance', She covers her sneezing most of the tim…

this used to be me. constantly sick with sinus infection (like out of action for ~10 days every 2 months). I started dating someone who ate a vegan diet, and after adopting that diet I've been sick twice in 4 years and both times were very light and ran for only 2-3 days.

I have no idea why it had that effect for me, and everyone is different, but if she's suffering enough that she's at the point where she'll try anything you might pass along my anecdote. I wish I had chanced into it earlier.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#162

Post by tcfunk »

jackhack wrote: post #106
tcfunk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting that people should control their sneezes is a ridiculous cultural norm.

Expecting sick people to not fill a room with hundreds of millions of aerosolized particles when that could be clearly avoided is a result of simple respect for those around you and evidence of manners and good breeding. Cover your sneeze. Cover your cough. Stay home when sick. These are kindergarten-level cultural learnings.

Im not telling people not to cover their mouth. That's a reasonable expectation. I'm saying don't expect people to hold in sneezes.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#163

Post by trhway »

protonfish wrote: post #103
tcfunk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting that people should control their sneezes is a ridiculous cultural norm.

And what about saying "bless you?" People sure have superstitious hangups about sneezing. And I don't mind, it doesn't hurt anything, until I get a sarcastic "you're welcome" from people for not thanking them for blessing me. I seriously don't get that. When did saying "bless you" require an official display of gratitude? I didn't ask for anything and would just like to sneeze in peace, please.

>And what about saying "bless you?"

correct answer to that is "not in your lifetime" (from the joke about a very old very rich grandpa who sneezes and his relatives :)

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#164

Post by realbarack »

mattrices wrote: post #133

This makes me wonder how many of those additional absences in open plan offices are due to depression / introverts recoiling in horror rather than increased biological pathogen transmission.

It's definitely not just introverts either—me and a number of friends are not introverts per se but definitely take advantage of WFH whenever possible just to have some privacy and a break from the chaos.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#165

Post by gertef »

gumby wrote: post #156
protonfish wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about saying "bless you?" People sure have superstitious hangups about sneezing. And I don't mind, it doesn't hurt anything, until I get a sarcastic "you're welcome" from people for not thanking them for blessing me. I seriously don't get that. When did saying "bless you" require an official display of gratitude? I didn't ask for anything and would just like to sneeze in peace, please.

Thank the sneezer instead. If they wonder why you thanked them you can thank them for the aerosol of bacteria and crud they sent your way. In east Asia it's customary for sick people to wear masks to avoid spreading disease via coughing or sneezing. A practice that ought to be adopted everywhere. I know I'm promoting a passive-aggressive strategy which is also social corrosive, but it's a way of spreading (!) the mem…

"Gesundheit" means "health". Sneezing is an indicator of health risk.

It's a tradition, not a superstition.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#166

Post by pqhwan »

louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

Something better; pinch your nose when you're about to sneeze. This kills the sneeze immediately.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#167

Post by Consultant32452 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #91
zebraflask wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This fits with my experience. My department has some cubicle farms and some shared but much more private office suites. The cube farm people are always getting sick. Somebody comes in with a cough and promptly spreads it. It then can take weeks before there's a week without somebody sick. Getting people to stay home when they are sick has been harder to implement than you'd think. I've tried with my work team. A numb…

Ever since companies ditched vacation and sick leave in favor of combined PTO, I work while sick. When I had sick leave, I used it. It may well be that they don't want to cut their July vacation short by a day because they caught a cold in January. And to compound the issue, it was probably a cold they caught at work, because the company leave policy reinforces the behavior. People who stay home when sick are punishe…

My employer has taken it to the next step and even all the holidays are floating and part of my combined PTO.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#168

Post by gertef »

jpindar wrote: post #160
pavel_lishin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time it's occurred to me that other people cannot control their sneezes. I've had the occasional "where the hell did that come from?" sneeze, but they're a rare exception, maybe a few times a year. I cannot fathom not being able to control something like a sneeze; to me, it would feel like not being able to control farting, coughing or talking.

One of these things is not like the others. People should be able to control talking (assuming they know it bothers the people around them).

People should be able to control all of them, at least for timespans of a few seconds.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#169

Post by ijafri »

as an HR manager, we had to adopt open plan, for our own reasons, however before we did so, we have made our hygienic rules 10x stricter, But I guess solely chalking up sickness to open plan is bit too far-fetched, there are still too many public places, commute, public washrooms etc that one can't avoid ... having said, this also depends higher than usual standards for hygienic at work.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#170

Post by gertef »

debaserab2 wrote: post #93
louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

Counter PSA: Did you know that your body is sneezing for a reason and taking all the air out of it may be counter productive and actually lead to more sneezing?

Your body is often sneezing because it has been hijacked by a virus that triggers the sneeze in order to spread infection.

Sneezes were evolved before the invention of the handkerchief and tissue.

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