SAN DIEGO — Junior designer Lewis Cooper allegedly accidentally contaminated his entire office with the deadly coronavirus yesterday, thanks to his fear of calling in sick and losing his job with the Bifocal Lemonade advertising agency.
“I just got this job, so I really wanted to make a good impression,” said Cooper as he struggled to catch his breath. “My first day came right after I did some international travel where I developed a bit of a cough, some sniffling, projectile vomiting, and a 105 degree fever… but nothing a little bit of store-brand DayQuil couldn’t help. I mean, I couldn’t just call in and miss shaking my boss’s hand on the first day. And I think the team and I really hit it off.”
Cooper’s warm welcome quickly turned sour.
“Yeah… as soon as he walked in, we could tell he was in bad shape,” said Executive Creative Director Erin Booth from her quarantined hospital bed. “Before you knew it, the entire company was out of commission. It was chaos — people stampeded into the bathrooms; every stall was occupied with bowls filled to the brim with puke and shit. We couldn’t flush fast enough. When the CDC showed up in their full Hazmat suits and welded our doors shut, we knew we had a problem.”
Dr. Ann Carey noted Cooper’s reticence to call in sick is a common occurrence for Millennials, with recently onboarded workers desperate to make a positive mark.
“Millennials in new work environments want to show they can be valuable assets to any team. Unfortunately, most Millennials have never had health insurance or jobs with paid sick leave, so they don’t know it’s best to stay home instead of starting a pandemic,” said Dr. Carey. “The stress of succeeding at a new job, factored in with the uncertainty of securing housing or retirement, make it seemingly impossible to take a single day off, even under the most dire circumstances.”
Despite their sickness, the Bifocal Lemonade staff’s output is reportedly up 35%, prompting upper management to consider infecting the Boston and Toronto branches with coronavirus to beat Q2 projections.