I woke up this morning and my head hurts so bad.

I’m fine and certainly not sick, it’s just that I slept pretty late last night. I slept around 1 AM which was pretty unusual for me because by 10 PM, I usually have an appointment in my dreamland with my crush!

Honestly, I slept late because of… the Shopee 5.5 sale and I know I’m not alone! 😜

Shopee is like the Philippine version of Amazon, as Amazon is not quite popular and easily accessible here in my country. Every month they put on a sale at around 12 MN and people would stay up late for it because of the huge discounts and free shipping vouchers. 

Let me just defend myself, I don’t usually splurge that much and most of the things I buy online or in Shopee are needs. If they are wants, I'd make sure I thought it through and I had an excess of money for it. Okay, I'm a little defensive there! HAHAHA.

To let you in a bit more, the things that I bought last are the following:

• The subtle art of not giving a fuck and Everything is fucked by Mark Mason - I’ve been really wanting to buy these two books. It’s already been months since I wanted to get it and I started reading the first book in e-book but I really wanted a physical copy of the book. I also feel like this is a reward for myself for surviving another busy season at work.

• Gas Stove - we noticed that our gas stove is not functioning well anymore, just like me. HAHAHAHA. And lately, we also noticed that we have been buying gas tanks more frequently, so we decided that it would be a good mother’s day gift for our mom. Hopefully, it gets delivered before Mother’s day!

• 18 Shopee parcels for our little sister - my little sister is turning 18 next month and since we’re pretty much still locked in our houses and can’t really celebrate the trraditonal way, we wanted to spice things up and make a quarantine version of a debut. It’s just a simple one, she just needs to open 1 gift a day up until her birthday. I’m probably gonna write a whole article about this and I’m pretty excited for it! I think she would really love it.

(I’d also love to know what you checked on Shopee or Lazada today or if you’re one of the mighty ones who didn’t check out anything? Congrats!)

So after checking it all out, I immediately went to sleep. I woke up at 6 AM, the usual time I would usually get up, but today my head feels like it’s gonna crack. My work starts at 8:30 so I decided to sleep more. 

I woke up at 8:45, a bit late but we are working on a flexible time in our work from home arrangement, so it's fine and I still can go to work. But a sudden thought struck me,

"What if I call in sick today?"

I decided to do so and call my manager and colleagues, I don’t have much to do anyway today so it wouldn’t have an impact or extra load to my other colleagues.

I didn't do much today and I just came here because I wanted to rant about,

WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE A MORTAL SIN IF YOU CALL IN SICK?

First of all, the company gives this “benefit” to us, the same with vacation leave but why does employers usually don’t allow you to take it?

In this hustle society and the culture of overworking in my country, I feel like you should be in a life and death situation before you can file a sick leave. And filing a vacation leave would take months of notice before you can use it, then at the end of the day when our sick and vacation leaves expire, we’re the one to blame because we didn’t use it?

No, honestly, you didn’t let us use it.

I don’t even want to begin at how few our leaves are, the mandatory vacation leave in the Philippines are as listed as below:

Vacation: Thirteen (13) vacation leave, with additional 1 day every year starting on the 3rd year of service and convertible to cash at the end of each year. Maximum vacation leave is 18 days.

Sick Leave: Twelve (12) days for the first two years of service and additional 1 day every year starting on the 3rd year. Maximum total sick leave is 15 days. All unused leave are convertible to cash at the end of the year.

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If you compare this to other countries, Brazil has 30 days of annual leave, the United Kingdom and New Zealand have 28 and Italy has 26, this excludes their sick leave and annual public holiday. We only have 15 days and those 15 days are not usually given as freely as it should be. 

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Another frustrating news is the recent announcement of the president of removing the dates November 2, December 24 and 31 as non-working holidays. I just can't! This frustrates me even more because these are all holidays we usually spend with our family. I know it’s needed for the boost of the economy but if they did a decent job with this pandemic we wouldn’t have to be here, but that is for another rant.

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I wish we can live in a society where we can take sick leaves because we’re pretty much burnt out at work or we’re having a hard time getting out of bed. And when you do take one, I wish it wouldn’t make us feel guilty and we can really rest and do the things we wanted for the day because honestly some employers still call you even though you already had permission to take a leave.

I’m having a hard time setting this boundary for myself because of how demanding my job can be, but I read it on a Facebook post where they ask a 100 year old man what advice would he give and one of them was “Use your vacation and sick leaves”.

I am slowly learning to practice in using vacation and sick leaves even if I'm just gonna be at my room reading a book, watching a series or even doing absolutely nothing. This is needed in order for us to not resent our jobs and not to dread to go to work everyday. I do hope employers realize that their employees or work force are assets too!

I know I rambled a lot, I’m just really frustrated at how employees are being exploited and the concept of corporate slaves should not be a joke anymore, as people would make it as a joke and honestly I don't even know why they do this!

This culture will never end if the government itself won’t change up the regulations but mehhhh… we can’t expect much from our government. I don’t know if this can change anything, I just wanted to rant about this and tell you why I called in sick today.

See you around! 🌤

Lead image: Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash