How the Attendance Award Ruined Us

This week, I have spent two days home with sick kids.


Monday, Noah, who always wants to go to school, managed to whimper, "I don't think I can go to school today."

That wasn't really a question.  His temperature was nearly 104, he had a nasty stomach bug and slept 20 hours the day before.


Then he asked, in his delirium, if that meant he wouldn't be able to get the Attendance Award this year.


It suddenly hit me.  The Attendance Award is a horrible byproduct of our educational system.  (I know that sounds overly-dramatic, but go with me here for a second.)

  Image from brainwaves.net

Early on, we are taught that simply showing up, everyday, is a reason to parade you around in an all-school assembly.

And now we're grown ups.  We get sick.  Sometimes really sick.  Or worse, really, really germ-y.  Yet, we show up.  We play the hero.  We laud the people who haven't taken a sick day in 10 years.  We fight through it.  We cough and sniffle and complain (and drive all of our coworkers and cubemates crazy). 

Why?  Other than the obvious "I'm trying to save PTO," I think there is something else going on.

I think we just might have this strange thing we learned in our childhood.  I think we are still trying to win the attendance award. 

We are still trying to be the good student employee.  And defining good by the fact that we were there.

Consider the flip side.


Eli is in daycare.  He spiked a fever of 103 on Wednesday and got sent home.  I had to sign a form agreeing that I would not bring him back until he was fever-free for 24 hours.  And while, as a working parent, that can be a bear to hear, I get it.  No need to share the germs.  Go home and rest and just be sick.  Watch a soap opera Yo Gabba Gabba and get better.  Don't be a hero.  And don't get the rest of us sick.

I wish we could all adopt the daycare model.  People get sick.  And that is okay.  We're still good people, we just got sick.

Simply said, I think the Attendance Award needs to go away.  I think it just might do wonders for the American work psyche.


(This is not specific to any job or employer.  And in full disclosure, I say this having been a pretty sickly kid who never won the attendance award.  So maybe I am just bitter that I never got the medal, but I don't think so.)