Rationalizing Staying Home Versus Braving the Snow and Going to Work

Slowly, you crack open your eyes and cringe at the torrential blizzard transpiring outside. Twisting further into your nest of sheets and comforters, you begin to weigh your options. The desire to skip everything and stay in bed all day is strong, but you can feel the potential guilt building inside you; frankly, you’re going to need to do some shrewd rationalization to convince yourself that the apathetic decision and the right decision are the same thing.

It’s Going to be Seriously Wet: Much like fire, drunk parents, or Mel Gibson, getting wet can be amazing in the right context, like if you’re doing sex to a consenting lady hole or you’re a PCP addict getting your fix. However, everyone knows the inevitably cold, clingy dampness trudging through a foot of snow brings is not one of said delightful variations of wet. You’ve been there before and know all too well that, even if you’re only walking a short way, your socks will try to soak up melted snow until they’re nothing but two freezing, ill-fitting foot satchels of sad. Plus, once any clothing article is thoroughly moistened, you’re going to be stuck out there dealing with its icy clamminess until you’re able to get back home and change at the end of your miserably cold day.

You’re Not Needed: On un-fun mornings like these, it’s important we minimize our importance as much as possible. Likely, there are no human lives or unfathomable sums of money resting on your presence today, despite how important you made your position seem on your LinkedIn profile. Sure, you might miss a meeting for a group project or a conference call, but you probably weren’t going to pay attention during those anyways. Big picture, you’re just as well off staying home; free love, baseball, and America will still exist tomorrow even if you take today off.

Work From Home: You validate your inactivity by telling yourself that you’re going to get just as much work done while you’re at home. In reality, “working from home” is just you, maybe, responding to a few emails before unsurprisingly watching SportsCenter three times, masturbating, and taking a nap. Have your cake and eat it too; feel good about not being completely unproductive today while, actually, being all too happy to have spent the majority of the day trying to find the secret skate park in GTA V and eating a pound of bacon. Appreciate the guilt-free loophole you’ve found or be realistic, call a spade a spade, and enjoy a work-from-home day as an excuse to sleep until eleven and not put on pants.

It’s Too Easy: Taking a day off when you’re an adult is simple. Kids have to hit that magic number of symptoms convincing enough to warrant staying home and watching Maury and The Price is Right while not being serious enough to deserve a hospital trip. Fortunately, for most adults, though, all it takes is a convincing text, phone call, or email that explains your fictitious, yet plausible situation. So decide on your lie, execute it quickly, and sit back and relish in how ridiculously easy it is to get out of being a productive member of society for a day or two.

Justin Gawel is an adult baby from Michigan whose articles appear on BroBible most Thursdays. Look for his updates at www.justingawel.com or follow him @justingawel on Twitter.