Sick Leave Hero

The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic was, in many ways, a horrific shared experience for our country.  Even out of (sometimes especially out of) the worst of times, however, a few good things have the potential to emerge.  From COVID-19, one of those silver linings was a new, shared, appreciation for a piece of wisdom that too many people had been unwilling to accept.

If you are sick... STAY... HOME.  Above all, don't go to work.  Not only are you depriving yourself of the opportunity to rest and get better, you also run the risk of spreading sickness to your coworkers... not all of which may be human.

Zoos are often run on a shoestring staff, and there is a constant (and not unrealistic) impression that if one or two people call out, the entire foundation will collapse. A former director of mine, referring to our staffing levels, said "We can usually manage - as long as the sun is shining and no one calls out sick."  Unfortunately, things had a tendency to get cloudy.

Complicating things is the fact that zookeepers a) tend to like their jobs and enjoy being around their animals, and b) tend to have savior complexes, fearing "letting others down."  They also tend to be young, and perhaps more inclined to believe that they can power-through a sickness (which may not seem that bad to them) and do what needs to be done.   I know I have.  Once, my entire team was struck by a terrible stomach flu (it didn't help that most of us lived together).  I was pretty sick, but perhaps one of the least sick, which was still pretty awful, so I decided to keep going in).  I was (barely) able to work, but even so, I had to make several sprints to bathrooms - or, if one wasn't close enough, to improvisational solutions.

I'm pretty sure our tigers never recovered from what they had to witness in their holding building that day.

Some teams have stricter policies about sick leave, especially teams that work with animals that are more susceptible to human illnesses.  Our primate keepers, we like to joke, were wearing masks long before it was cool for the rest of us in 2020, in order to protect apes and monkeys from human diseases.

At the end of the day, it's your employer's responsibility to have staffing levels that can survive an unplanned absence due to illness - or a planned absence, such as vacation.  So drop the guilt, heat up some chicken soup, fluff a pillow, and reach for a book or a remote, or the snooze button.  You can't take care of your animals unless you're willing to take care of yourself, too.