If you are sick, should you go to work anyways?  This is a great debate among many.  Staying home to watch tv and lounge on the cough is an easy suggestion, right?  To some it may be, but to others a day staying home from work is just creating more work to go back to, or some feel they are indespensible and can’t miss a day, while others just don’t have the time to take work off.  Whatever the reason is, is it really a good idea to go in to work when you are under the weather? 

An article from Business Week that I ran into goes into great detail of the downfalls of having a sick co-worker show up on the job.  “Illnesses like the cold and flu can be spread by physical contact. When we're sick, the people with whom we come into physical contact have a significantly increased risk of coming down with the illness, according to virologists, epidemiologists, and other experts. There is a causal relationship between being sick with a cold or the flu and making others sick by touching them directly or handling an object that they soon touch themselves.”

Some other points brought up in the article for staying away from the office were, if we can actually perfrom to the best of our abilities while not feeling well, getting other co-workers sick, getting co-worker’s families sick, and the last one here that caught my attention, “going to work sick is unfair to your employer. According to a report published in The New York Times in 2006, researchers at Cornell University found that ill workers on the job could account for up to 60% of corporate health costs. The recently coined phrase "presenteeism" speaks to the financial downside of overly motivated workers who bring their upper respiratory illnesses to work with them.

All in all, is it fair to yourself to work when you are not feeling well?  I guess that is up to you.