For Amy Poehler, taking a sick day wasn’t an option during her years of working on “Saturday Night Live,” “Parks and Recreation” and other film and TV projects.
Poehler, 54, told actress Olivia Colman that she “never missed one day of work” due to illness in a Sept. 16 episode of her podcast “Good Hang with Amy Poehler.”
“People think that’s a weird statistic because they’re like, ‘Well, okay. Maybe not something to brag about.’ And I’m like, ‘Is it not?'” she said.
Poehler recalled filming a movie scene with actor Alec Baldwin while she had a temperature of 104 degrees. Despite feeling like she was “in a fever dream,” she wouldn’t have considered taking a sick day “in a million years,” she said.
For her part, Colman shared that she’s had pneumonia twice while filming, but never took a day off work — a choice she also acknowledged was “potentially stupid.”‘
Still, Colman, who won an Academy Award for her performance in “The Favourite” in 2018, expressed surprise at how often young actors call out sick.
“Some of the younger people — I don’t know where it comes from — but if they have a little bit of a cold, they won’t do the show, and I don’t understand,” the 51-year-old actress said.
Poehler, who joked that the conversation was “very Gen X of us,” offered an explanation for the generational divide: “I think that we were sold a productivity myth — like, hustle, hustle, hustle — and it’s really ingrained in us.”
According to Allison Tibbs, a wellness-focused executive coach based in the Bay Area, many successful people can be reluctant to step away from work to engage in self-care.
High performers may avoid taking time off because they feel “their worth is tied to their productivity,” she says.
Busy schedules are often seen as a “badge of honor” in the workplace, Tibbs says, and workers often feel pressure to “push through” exhaustion or illness.
“For so long, that’s just what we did,” she says. “We feel guilty when we take the day off. We feel guilty when we say no.”
According to Tibbs, Gen Z is taking a different approach than their predecessors and prioritizing work-life balance.
“I think they’re seeing us, and they’re like, ‘I don’t want to look exhausted. I don’t want to look burnt out. I don’t want to experience that,'” she says.
The Covid-19 pandemic also prompted a shift in attitude toward sick days: more than ever, it’s “irresponsible” to come to work with a potentially contagious illness, Tibbs says.
“If you’re sick, just stay home,” she says. “That way you don’t get other people sick, and you can really take care of yourself.”
In order to build a more sustainable work culture, “a mindset shift has to happen,” Tibbs says.
“You’re still successful, you’re still amazing, you’re still worthy. You can still be productive and take a day off,” she says.
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