There are many reasons for playing hooky from work. Super Bowl Monday. Your birthday. The first 80 degree day of the Spring. Also, a legitimate illness. But what if you didn’t want to go into work strictly because of your appearance? What would keep you from showing your mug in the office?

I ask this because of something that I did to my face.  I tend to pick at scabs.  I know, it’s a disgusting habit, and I should know better.  Anyway, the area under my eye became infected, and swelled up to a massive, ugly boil. Massive, is in, it should have had its own zip code.  Ugly, as in, small children would probably run screaming at the sight of it.  I was an evil, heinous-looking thing.  Luckily, the worst of it occurred over the weekend, and only my poor loved ones had to witness it.  One of my buddies, who’s seen me at my worst many times in the past, remarked, “Well, it is a ghastly-looking carbuncle.  But you’ve looked more repulsive when you’re drunk.”  That gave my wife little comfort.  She suggested this solution:

So, having spared my coworkers from gazing upon Quasimodo, I thought back to my past, and the freakish sights that I’ve seen at work.  A director that I reported to early in my career once got too close to a poison ivy patch, and it broke out all over him, including his face.  His swollen visage resembled some kind of African death mask, and the mere sight of him made my eyes water.  My buddy Ed put it best when he said, “Jesus Christ!  He shouldn’t come to work looking like that!  Doesn’t he have any sick days coming?” I wondered the same thing.

Photo by jonrawlinson

Others have come in with everything ranging from bad perms to black eyes.  At least one black-eye case was due to a nose job; I can’t imagine what caused the others.  We had a guy who tore his Achilles tendon that used to take his shoe off in meetings and massage his foot (I shit you not).  Another lady stayed too long under the tanning lamp, and got a nice sunburn that blistered, oozed, and peeled.  She was quite the sight for a couple of weeks.

Photo by Bekathwia

My “shiner”, as one of my buddies at work refers to it, has healed considerably.  It’s still kind of puckered-looking, like an asshole, though no one dares call me “ass-face”.  At least not to my face.  And if we weren’t in the middle of layoff season, I’d have probably taken a couple days off, and escaped the scrutiny altogether.  But like I’ve said before, someone always is worse off than you are…

Photo by AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker

This morning as I was heading to a meeting, I passed an engineer that I know.  His face was a mass of scrapes covered with Band Aids.  He claimed that he  fell off of his bike last weekend.  He looked like he had been dragged face down behind a truck, and then beaten with a tire iron! At least now when I look in the mirror in the men’s room, I won’t be the ugliest of them all anymore.  There is finally someone more heinous-looking than me.

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