I hate getting sick at work – there’s this guilt at leaving the crew a ‘man down’ if you go home, but you’re no good to anyone if you stay and continue to be sick, so the crew’s a man down anyway so why not puke (or whatever else it is that you’re having to do) in the comfort of one’s home and not in a semi public restroom (or worse, the portable ‘shitters’ that we use on location)?
Guess what happened to me today?
We broke late for lunch, so they had to hold the commissary open for us (past their normal closing time of 3 pm), so I guess the food just sat there in the steam trays festering and growing… something.
It was so tempting, too. They were serving corned beef and cabbage. I love corned beef and cabbage, and it’s actually a good choice to hold for a while because you really have to work to dry out something with that much fat (an occupational hazard of ours is production telling the caterer that we’re going to break at a certain time, and then getting delayed and breaking an hour after the food’s mummified from sitting and waiting for us to break).
Right after they called us back from lunch (and as soon as we started lighting, of course) I started not feeling so great and had to go to the ladies room. Right when we really started lighting (and right when I really needed to be back on the set to help my co-workers), my lunch decided to come back up. Yuck.
The one good thing is that it was over quickly, and once lunch came up I felt well enough that after a quick visit to the on-lot nurse (at the insistence of our lot best boy who’s a great guy and just has my best interests at heart) I was able to stay at work. The last couple of times I’ve eaten something bad and been sick at work it’s been much, much worse (here and here).
I still haven’t wanted to eat anything (it’s now almost midnight and this happened at around 5 pm), but at least I’m not defiling the plastic plants in my neighborhood food store.
Oh, shit. It’s almost midnight.
I have to be back at work (but on a different show this time so it’s damned lucky we wrapped when we did because all the rules about turnaround* don’t apply when one’s on a different show the next day) at 8 am.
*Turnaround is the time between when wrap is called on one day and the call time the next day. 12 hours is ideal, 10 hours is common and 9 hours, while allowed, is generally considered to be poor sportsmanship on the part of production.
Filed under: mishaps, Work, delays, food, gross, lunch, sick
Totally Unauthorized 
Although this isn’t so much an issue with bad-food illness, staying at work also tends to infect your co-workers. We’ve had half of our electrics department out sick lately.
Hey! Get some sleep! :-)
You can always catch up in France (although you won’t want to because you’ll be too busy taking awesome pictures of French couches).
You can always catch up in France (although you won’t want to because you’ll be too busy taking awesome pictures of French couches).
I’ll bet the French are less wasteful than us Americans, and don’t throw out couches that are only slightly worn like we do.
tea and toast for a bit. Then couch hunt.
Toast is like the only thing you can eat for awhile. I second that, Proto. Drink lots of water. Hubby just got over a small bout of food poisoning, but he uh, ate some bad sandwich meat, right after he told me to, “smell this, this doesn’t smell so good,” so uh, why, oh, why did he eat it?
What I hate more that the hurl is the dry heaves. Feel better, girl.
Poor Peggy,
Your life IS a soap opera….a medical soap opera. And we keep coming back for more.