problem working, especially if I really needed the money. I have worked in my younger years with flu symptoms worse than this. And as bizarre as it seems now, I have worked at places where people who worked sick were praised and rewarded by management. I have also worked around people working with the flu and caught it myself.

when you are sick. I worked while I had un diagnosed Mono for 6 months and got down to 85 pounds. The administrator didn't give a shit. I also lost about 2/3 of my blood with Pneumonia which I had and still worked (same admin) and collapsed on the parking lot, in the hospital with transfusions for 3 days, out a full month, etc. I had flu shots every year and was still sick 99% of the year. That is why I had to stop teaching, the doctors said the job was going to kill me.

I know from my friends who are still teaching that the admin is pulling the same shit...pressuring teachers to work while sick and harassing them if they take time off. No wonder teachers are leaving in droves.

was visiting a great grandchild last weekend who had started Kindergarten the previous week. The scheduled teacher was there on the first day, then out sick with Covid. I can well understand a teacher not wanting to miss the first day, or maybe with no symptoms yet so she didn't know. Maybe even tested negative. Tests aren't 100% accurate.

It illusrates how these things spread. From teacher to who knows how many students to my current location 150 miles away. And if I didn't have test kits, my symptoms are so mild it would be easy to think it was just a cold. And I was not sick until I got home, so how about the waitress at the Denny's where we stopped for lunch on the way home? We could have given it to her without realizing it. I just feel lucky we avoided it until now. Although, it wasn't all luck. We have all our shots and have been very careful. We really worked at it.

I have 16 test kits saved up now and will use them if I start to feel odd (not my usual health issues). I also always mask and don't go indoors without one so when I went to join my sister and mother for a birthday lunch I was surprised that people were eating indoors when tables were outside. Then I got a real slap in the face from my own mother who thought I was being overly cautious for insisting an outside table. Too bad! I stayed firm and said that I will eat outside or not at all. I think it was the first argument I have won with her in the past 30 years.

I caught COVID prior to cases officially detected in the U.S., so did the RN caring for our patient prior to his demise, both of us naive to what that was prior to symptom information coming out, both of us heaved the "oh that's what that was blanked out our taste/smell" in restrospect. Both of us were back at work still sniffling and short of breath, neither of us were appropriately there in retrospect, falling far short of quarantine times later imposed.
My boss was not very understanding about my absence, gave me a rash of shit even when I couldn't even stand up or move air. I didn't get seen because the ED doc on duty those days was one I could not tolerate, would have done nothing for me anyhow. I exhausted two whole asthma inhalers for two miserable nights. After several entanglements with both those characters resulting in my leaving that job, in retrospect I wish I'd come in to work and coughed all over my boss's office and that pretentious excuse of an MD...
I've had jobs before that made me wonder what possessed me to stay there so long in such miserable conditions. Nearing retirement I've become far more particular about workplace nastiness and horrible bosses. Damn, I've had some doozeys.