The best part about not bothering to go to work for a week is that no one can really say anything - I still have a much better attendance record than most of the people there.

Less fun is finding a convincing way to present myself as still slightly sick.

This time, I've opted to keep it simple - bags under the eyes, scratchy voice, and a bruised face.

Why the face?

Well, I've decided my recent illness is actually going to end up being some form of allergies. As of such, my face has swollen to massive proportions, which means a bruise would logically result.

There are three good ways to do this.

1. I can walk into something, very fast.

2. I can rig a bag of apples to swing from the ceiling, and hit me in the face.

3. I can get someone relatively strong, like Logan, to slap me.

The key to any of the above working well is to get ice on it right away, to bring the bruising out. Otherwise, I will simply end up with a sore face.

Should I be unable to successfully get a bruise, and, more importantly, some nice, big junkie sized bags under my eyes, I will revert to plan B.

This consists of two steps to be executed throughout the week.

Firstly, I will need to vomit at least once a day. This is pretty easy - when you spend your life drinking, you learn to puke on demand - but is quite gross, and I spend the rest of the day feeling my stomach acid eating away my teeth.

Secondly, I need one good collapse, preferably on camera, but when no one is around. I have not intentionally done this before, though there is enough significantly wrong with me healthwise that it will invariably happen after a few days without proper food. I plan to do this in the staffroom - the thump will be audible to pretty much everyone in the store, but no one will be around to instantly offer aide and fuck up my "lie down and twitch for a minute" act.

YOu might be wondering, why all this effort? Why not just say "I was sick" and leave it at that?

There is a simple answer and a complex answer.

Simply put, it's fun, almost like acting, really. I enjoy nothing more in life than always being something and someone new, and "plague victim" is a role I've been keen on for a bit. It's also much more plausible to have taken a week off when you're still a little sick at the end of that week.

Complexly put, if I can miss enough days and still seem legitimately sick, then I am likely to get "laid off", which means I will get both a good reference and a hefty severance package. This is ideal because not only does it give me a problem free way out of my shitty, hateful job, but it will also leave me with a month's pay that I did not need to work for, something which upright quitting would not do. Before this happens, I would like to take advantage of our company's dental plan, so this go around will be nothing more than a trial run. I would also like to take advantage of the fact that my predecessor had a nervous breakdown by emulating it slightly, thusly getting myself a prescription for Valium, which will cost nothing with the company's healthcare plan, and can then be sold to support me financially for at least a month, should I somehow have an issue finding new work.

And really. I am not skipping work because I am lazy - I am doing so because I work with the absolute worst fucking people I've ever met and hate being there. Sitting at home with jack shit to do for a week is really, really fucking boring. Finding creative ways to get fired, and coming up with plausible illnesses, is much more fun that just sitting here and thinking.

More than any of that, I feel my employers deserve shitty performance, because as much as they are rather nice people, they have no management skills, blame me for nearly everything that goes wrong whether I had anything to do with it or not, do not give me any days off, have not given me a raise in two years, and allow the people I work with to fuck around incessantly, to the point where I cannot do my job properly even if I wanted to. They have created a massively shitty work environment, to the point that they're kind of lucky the staff is just lazy and resentful, and not actively suing them or eachother.

Possibly more importantly, despite all the shit I get for my co-workers fuck ups, they are so oblivious to what is going on there that despite the fact I will straight up tell customers how shitty the store is and that they should buy things elsewhere, and it is well known amongst pretty much everyone who works there that I am just itching to say FUCK YOU and quit, no one has ever even remotely commented on it.

So yeah. I'd much rather put my time and effort into something I find entertaining than give it to them.

Let's see, what else is new?

Oh, that's right, nothing. Because I haven't left my house in a week!