I can imagine that if you are a student, at whatever level, or at work you have no doubt pulled a sicky or just skived at some point in life. You may have had your reasons but generally it will have been that you couldn’t be bothered, or perhaps you had something better to do, such as a party, a shopping trip, a game release or you were quite simply too wrecked from the night before (you should have used my hangover helper in my alcohol post).
These phrases are all associated with different things. Truancy is generally associated with school, college etc, where if you leave the grounds when you are meant to be on them during a lesson you are marked as a truant. Playing truant can land you in a whole heap of detentions and ‘extra time’ with your teachers, oh and your mummy dearest will probably be called. Generally however playing truant doesn’t go much further than that, unless you do so repeatedly and then your parents can face a quite hefty fine as apparently you being a twit who doesn’t appreciate the FREE education you are given is somehow your parents fault, hell forbid you might have done so on your own free will because you’re a ragamuffin.
AWOL however is associated with the military, used when the target decides to go off mission and either return home or do some other task that isn’t sanctioned by a superior officer. This is far more serious than playing truant as there is generally a large consequence, not to mention the fact that someone could get hurt from you slacking off. Consequences can vary from dismissal to a fine, to a trial, so if you join the military DON’T go AWOL, trust me.
Skiving is just as bad as it sounds. You take the day off work or school because you can’t be arsed, there is no good reason behind a skive. If you skive you are a lay about and a twit, end of. This is the most common method of taking time off work or not going to school.
Then you have the less interesting sick days, where you ring up and fake that you were ill or some such, generally whilst putting a very ill voice on and fake coughing or sneezing a lot whilst down the phone. Then again some people get inventive and will say things that make the other person so uncomfortable that they don’t question them further and just say get well soon, my favourite are ‘I had massive diarrhoea in my sleep’, ‘I had my left testicle removed’ (men only) and my favourite ‘ my sanitary towel leaked’ (women only).
Which brings me to one of my many quibbles about the world. If a woman is late, bored, annoyed or otherwise they have the get out of trouble scot free card which is ‘lady problems’. Yes I appreciate it makes things very awkward but why can’t we have a sympathetic similar card, like ‘husband to receiver of lady problems’, I so reckon that should catch on.
I of course refer to the taboo to talk about menstrual cycle (to a chorus of ‘no shit Sherlock’) and not to the fantastic mathematical reasoning shown below.
For general sickness stats from 2005 (men and women) look below
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1577
No comments:
Post a Comment