Playing Hooky

I’ve taken a couple of days off from writing – playing hooky. I had not planned my hooky days, instead, I just kept procrastinating. Plus, in the middle of writing about playing hooky, I got bored with my topic. So I played hooky. Let’s hope that you don’t get bored too.

Have you ever played hooky from work? When you were a kid, did you ever tell your mom you were sick so you wouldn’t have to go to school? If you’re like me, yes and yes.

Why is it that we feel we have to lie in order to take a day off? Probably because we learn early on that if we told the truth – I don’t want to take the test I’m having today because I didn’t study; or I don’t want to deal with the class bully again today – our moms would disregard our protests and force us to go to school anyway. Why waste our time with the truth? Our lying to our parents lasted through high school.

College was an entirely different world. When we were in college, we were treated as the adults we pretended to be. If we were too hung over after a night of partying to attend our 8:00 am class or just too tired, we made the obvious decision to skip it. In fact, we probably planned on skipping the class when we decided the night before to go out partying or stay up late.

The thing about college was, no one cared if you skipped class. When you returned to class, no one questioned you about your whereabouts the day before. The only time you had to think of an excuse was when you had missed an exam and you wanted your professor to grant you a makeup one.

After graduation, we all got jobs – real jobs – full-time career jobs. Maybe we had worked at part-time jobs during high school and college (jobs we could easily play hooky from), but these jobs were the real deal. It was too much! We wanted the kind of adulthood we had in college! You know, eating what we wanted, sleeping when we wanted, partying like we wanted and, yes, skipping classes as we wanted.

This was different. You are expected to be at work for an entire day! It’s not like you can skip your 10:00 am meeting because you don’t feel like going. You can’t take a lunch longer than the amount of time allotted. You have to show up on time and you can’t leave early. In fact, your superiors would probably prefer you to stay later than your scheduled time. You have to dress a certain way and be well-groomed. It’s not like college where you could just roll out of bed and go to class wearing sweats and sporting bed-head.

It’s a big change – and one we’re not entirely prepared for. We discover early-on in our full-time jobs and careers, the need for an occasional day off. A lazy day. A morale-boosting day. A time to rejuvenate.

In an ideal world, we would all love our jobs so much that we never dreaded having to get up in the morning to clock in. It wouldn’t occur to us to skip work because we loved it that much. Well, News Break: We Don’t Live in an Ideal World.

In 2017, a Gallop Poll found that 85% of workers worldwide admitted to hating their jobs and especially their bosses. The United States had better results: only 70% of people hated their jobs.

In a different survey, circa 2018,The Conference Board surveyed 1,500 employed people and reported that a slight majority (51%) were satisfied with their jobs. What respondents disliked most about their jobs? The workload.

Both surveys have significantly different results but neither is brag-worthy with respect to job satisfaction.

Let’s be honest. There are those of us who respect the need for an occasional day off, but there are others among us who abuse the hooky day. We have all worked or gone to school with that one unreliable, always late, inconsiderate person who doesn’t live by the same hooky code of ethics and hooky schedule that all the rest of us adhere to.

Here are some of my guidelines for playing hooky the right way.

The hooky schedule is the frequency with which we dare to play hooky. It’s common sense, I would think, that you should not play hooky frequently, regularly, or obviously.

Frequency is self-explanatory. Don’t play hooky once a week, or once a month, even. Try to limit your hooky days to either every six months or once a year. And do not have consecutive hooky days – that’s just not right.

You don’t want to play hooky regularly either – people you work with will figure out your pattern. Don’t take every third Friday off. Don’t take the day off every time an all-staff meeting is scheduled. Don’t go home “sick” every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon because your son needs picked up from school. People catch on.

It’s pretty obvious that you don’t want to be obvious in choosing your hooky day. When it’s obvious, you become suspect. For example, don’t brag to your work buddies that you’re going away for the weekend and then call in sick the Friday before that weekend. Everyone knows you’ve already started your holiday. Don’t tell your co-workers that you have a big job interview the upcoming Monday morning and then call in sick that same Monday. People talk at the office and when you’re not there, they could very well be talking about you. And when they talk, you have no idea who could be listening – it could be your boss.

I think Friday is probably the best day of the week to play hooky because you have the weekend to supposedly “recover” and look your usual self by Monday. Fridays are also good because by Monday, your co-workers have forgotten that you weren’t there on Friday. If they’ve forgotten, they won’t ask you why you missed. Less scrutiny means less lying.

I, myself, have always been pretty cowardly about playing hooky. In school – elementary, high school and college – I’d never claim illness on a test day. I absolutely didn’t want to be absent on test days because you ran the risk of the make-up exam being harder than the original test.

Another reason for my not playing hooky as a kid – besides the fact that I am and was a rule-follower – we didn’t have cable television. A day at home, feeling perfectly fine, unable to go outside, no siblings to play with, and only soap operas to watch on TV! It was so boring! (Of course, I must have tried it at least once or how else would I know this?)

When I got my first real full-time job after college, I dabbled in playing hooky a few times but I just wasn’t good at it.

In one instance – before I knew the code about Fridays being the best days to play hooky – I struggled with what I should say was wrong with me when I called in sick. (I did this thinking anyone cared, as though someone would be out investigating whether or not I was really ill.) I had been planning on returning to work the following day and knew I would be looking perfectly healthy, no runny nose or anything. At the time, I still lived at home with my parents and had a myriad of reference materials at my disposal (sans Internet). One of the reference books my parents had – one that I am sure is obsolete – was a family medical encyclopedia. I was inspired! “Migraine headache” sounded perfect…until I read in the book that it may be related to a mental illness. What?! What if my boss and co-workers knew that?! Instead of migraine, I opted for “a really bad headache,” which I personally thought was a pretty lame reason to miss work.

I believe that playing hooky should be a fun-filled free day – doing stuff you like to do. I couldn’t. I was a prisoner in my home, fearful that if I left the house I would most assuredly, run into a co-worker who could potentially expose me as the healthy little liar I was.

At any rate, it’s my contention that all businesses should institute personal days. Why not? Most school systems have them for teachers. Maybe if personal days were used in other industries, workers would not only stop taking hooky days, they might actually be more productive. As long as there’s no downside to offering personal days, maybe more and more employers will offer them.

For those of you who currently have personal days as an employee benefit, please don’t use them just to schedule doctors’ appointments, haircuts, and to care for your sick (not fake-sick) kids, use them to actually restore your mental health. Use them to have fun. ✿

It is thought that the term “hooky” was first used in the early 19th Century as a shortened version of the phrase “hooky-crooky.” “Hooky-crooky,” which meant “dishonest,” was derived from the phrase, “by hook or by crook” which meant “by any means – fair or foul.”

It wasn’t until the late 19th Century that the term “hooky” became popular in America which is when laws were first established making attendance in public school mandatory.