What Taking a Sick Day Revealed About Today's Work Culture

Ashley Elliott
Jun 29
3 min read

What Happened After I Took a Sick Day

Being sick wasn’t the uncomfortable part. The email I received after was.

Not too long ago, it was flu season. In November, I caught a cold. I had a stuffy nose and felt lethargic. I definitely needed at least two days to recover, so I took a sick day from work.

This significantly made a difference for me. I felt a lot more energetic and focused the next day when I showed up to work.

One thing that I wasn’t expecting was to receive an email the next day from the project manager asking if I wanted to make up the hours another day. I was a bit shocked by that, as I wasn’t used to seeing managers asking me if I wanted to make up the hours after taking a sick day.

I felt a mix of emotions when I saw that email:

I felt frustration from the kind of treatment I received after I was sick
Shame for saying no to working additional hours

This experience and the mix of emotions speaks to the current culture we live in, in Western culture.

The Pressure to Work Even When Sick

In short, it’s a microcosm of a culture that values productivity over well-being.

It reflects a culture that:

Normalizes overwork
Can make us often feel guilty for resting, even when we are legitimately unwell.

In this culture that prioritizes productivity first, the underlying assumption is that time not spent at work must be “made up,” implying that missing hours, even due to illness, is a problem to be corrected. It reinforces the idea that work output is more important than health or well-being.

Masculine vs. Feminine Cultural Archetypes

This microcosm of our culture also shows us the deeper cultural dynamics at play as well. When we talk about a productivity-first mindset as reflecting masculine qualities, it’s less about gender and more about cultural archetypes that Western work culture often prioritizes.

Masculine archetype qualities:

Action
Output
Control

Feminine archetype qualities:

Receptivity
Cycles
Intuition

Asking “do you want to make up the hours?” essentially teaches us that the masculine qualities of action and output are prioritized and valued more than the honouring of the feminine qualities, such as the cyclical nature of our energy.

How Work Culture Prioritizes Output Over Energy

Oftentimes, in the workplace, we can feel like we are in a machine when the cyclical nature of our bodies and energy is deprioritized over action and output.

This reprioritization creates binaries:

Productivity vs. rest
Output vs. intuition
Action vs. receptivity

These either/or categories negate the nuanced spectrum of possibilities that humans can inhabit in between. When there are two explicit categories, we are often taught through culture that one category is superior to the other, thus creating a hierarchy in our society.

One of these hierarchies that is prevalent in Western society today is the patriarchy, where the masculine qualities are valued over feminine qualities. Thus, it can create shame or guilt in us when they honour the cyclical nature of their energy and take a sick day.

Feminine Embodiment and Workplace Boundaries

What really helped me create boundaries in the workplace so I only worked extra hours when I wanted to was learning about feminine embodiment.

Learning about feminine embodiment gave me practices that I could integrate into my weekly routine that helped me increase:

Intuition
Confidence
Ease
Internal motivation

By dialing up my own intuition to how I felt and what I needed, I was able to create real, tangible shifts of health and balance for my energy, so I could take a sick day from work with greater ease.

A Simple Embodiment Practice to Increase Intuition

There are many different embodiment practices out there that you can do. The core embodiment practice that I do, which helps me increase intuition is simple: