Workplace competition is widespread and pretty common. It can also be ruthless and unforgiving. One missed meeting or one big mistake can keep you from getting a promotion over another person, or it can even send you as far as to unemployment. With workplace competition, who has the time to be sick?
There are two main truths:
1. The person who performs the best, works the hardest, puts in the longest hours, and creates the fewest ripples, tends to be the person who gets ahead (barring any family run businesses and transactions of bribery).
2. Any weakness - for any reason - can prevent you from moving up in a business. So you have to push through or hide any weakness to get ahead.
Well... illness is a weakness.
It doesn't really matter WHY someone is sick, or how long someone will be sick, any time taken away from work due to illness hurts the person's employment. It doesn't really matter why you missed that one important meeting. It doesn't matter that maybe you were in an ambulance being taken to the hospital... You were still absent from the meeting.
When people see someone, who is chronically ill, who is putting far too much pressure on themselves when it comes to work, they think:
'Take a break, you deserve it. You need it.'
'You're working too hard, you're gonna crash.'
'You are just going to get worse and worse if you keep pushing yourself too hard.'
And it tends to become criticism rather than compassion.
But can you really blame them?
Our employment world is ruthless and unforgiving. Although some gestures may SEEM compassionate, all it means is lost opportunity. So the instinctive thing to do is hide any chronic illness and push through any severe flare ups just to stay ahead at work. Because the last thing you want to hear is:
'Let someone else take the lead on this. Give yourself a break.'
'Maybe you should take some time off to deal with whatever this is.'
'Why don't you skip this meeting and we will fill you in on the next one.'
'We just want to make sure that your health comes first.'
Yes, they all seem generous and compassionate. But they can also seem synonymous with "failure". All of a sudden you cannot do your job properly - and they know it. So you spend your entire employment terrified that your illness is preventing you from fulfilling your duties. You constantly live in the stressful fear of losing your job. So you work harder and longer hours and push yourself to your breaking point. All the while being told that you need to reduce the amount of stress in your life.
It is a nasty circle.
I was devastated when my boss suggested me going off of work because of my illness. I had been so determined to do everything. I didn't want to leave work when I did. That being said, it was absolutely the best thing that happened at that point in time. It was the most helpful decision that was ever made for me. Why? Well my health plummeted after that. Being off of work has reduced stress in my life ten fold, and has given me the opportunity to truly focus on my health (which makes me simultaneously happy and resentful), and had I not gone off of work then, it surely would have happened a few months later.
I am lucky that I was in that particular position and circumstance.
The next time you see a chronically ill patient working himself/herself senseless, try and remember that the employment world doesn't change for people who are sick. The same unforgiving work competitiveness is felt by those who can't help it when they have to take days off. Chronically ill patients have to make money just like everybody else - and they have the extra burden of medical bills. They feel work pressure just as much as everyone else, if not more so, and it is much harder to get ahead when you are constantly viewed as a burden.
And if that weren't enough to make everything just a little more difficult - who is going to hire you knowing you have this unpredictable illness that can pop up at any moment? And if you have had difficulties with one job, who is ever going to give you that opportunity in another form of employment? Who is going to believe that you can handle more pressure? So you end up doing much better working several different jobs that are less involved. You lose opportunities and sometimes it forces you to take lower paying jobs just to make up for the problems created by your illness.
And none of it is your fault.