2022年经济学人 请病假越来越难（1）（在线收听）

Business

商业板块

Bartleby: Working under the weather

巴托比：带病工作

It is becoming harder to take off a sick day

请病假越来越难

If you have a high temperature or are recovering from heart surgery, it is difficult to use machine tools.

如果你在发高烧，或者正处于心脏手术恢复期，操作机器会很困难。

And if you are having a nervous breakdown, machine tools are best avoided.

如果你正经历精神崩溃，最好不要操作机器。

Sick days are the remedy.

病假才是良药。

They are meant to prevent people from hurting themselves, their co-workers, customers or passers-by on the job.

病假的存在，就是为了防止人们在工作中伤害自己、同事、客户或是身旁经过的人。

Working from home has flipped this logic on its head.

但居家办公颠覆了这一逻辑。

If you can work from the kitchen table, today’s hybrid workers increasingly conclude, then why not from bed—so long as the brain is on and the Zoom camera off?

如今，越来越多混合办公者总结道，如果在厨房的桌子上都能工作，那为什么不能在床上工作呢--只要大脑在工作，把Zoom会议的摄像头关了就行。

The work-from-home revolution has raised the bar for what counts as being sick.

居家办公的革命提高了生病的门槛。

At the height of the pandemic people worked from home even with nasty symptoms such as fever, shortness of breath or nausea.

在疫情最严重的时候，人们即使有发烧、呼吸急促或恶心等严重症状，也会在家工作。

Many still do.

很多人现在还是这样。

Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University has been tracking work-from-home habits since before the corona-crisis popularised them.

在居家办公因新冠危机变得更为普及之前，斯坦福大学的尼古拉斯·布鲁姆就一直在追踪这种习惯。

In a recent working paper he presents the results of a randomised controlled trial at a large Chinese multinational company, where sick days fell by 12% for employees working from home two days a week relative to those coming in full time.

在最近的一篇工作论文中，他展示了在一家中国大型跨国公司进行的一项随机对照试验的结果：每周居家办公两天的员工，病假天数比全职员工减少了12%。

Your columnist, a guest Bartleby, can sympathise.

本文作者是巴托比专栏的客座作家，她表示能够理解。

In the past, while convalescing, she had no qualms about wrapping herself in a blanket with a hot toddy, toast and some tissues.

以前，在生病康复期间，她会毫无顾虑地把自己裹在毯子里，纸巾放在旁边，就着一杯热棕榈酒吃吐司。

When she got covid-19 early this summer, by contrast, she kept going with her phone and laptop sunk in the duvet.

而在今年夏初患上新冠肺炎时，她一直把手机和笔记本电脑裹在羽绒被里工作。

Her managers strongly urged that her work should be passed on to a colleague.

她的经理强烈要求把她的工作转交给一位同事。

For her, this was unthinkable, at least until she almost passed out.

对她来说，这简直难以想象，至少在她快要晕倒之前是这样的。

To be in bed not doing anything connotes not only physical discomfort but also cognitive impairment.

躺在床上什么都不做，不仅会让身体不适，还会导致认知障碍。

Salaried workers, who are often evaluated on the basis of their input rather than output, find it hard to say they are off the game for a few days now that they don’t need to worry about spreading germs in the office.

对受薪员工的评估通常是看他们的投入而不是产出，既然现在他们不需要担心在办公室里传播细菌了，他们发现自己很难偷几天懒。

For high-achievers, putting in the hours is not a chore but a way of life.

对于成功人士来说，加班不是一件苦差事，而是一种生活方式。

Unplanned breaks are antithetical to the pervasive anxiety to perform.

计划外的休息对保持良好表现的焦虑很不利。

As recession looms and puts future job security into question, showing yourself to be useful becomes even more important.

随着经济衰退逐渐临近，并导致人们对未来的工作保障产生质疑，展示自己的有用性就变得更加重要。

Hybrid-work etiquette is fluid and many companies have yet to update their sick-leave rules for the new era.

混合办公的规矩不固定，许多公司还没有针对新时代更新病假规定。