This is a public service announcement from the Center for Disease Control.

To the cranky looking representative at the DMV:

You know, yesterday, when I felt like crap: I didn’t drag my bronchitis- riddled self to your establishment just so you could lose my paperwork somewhere between counter seven and the camera. I’m hoping that the woman with the walker sitting next to me had her flu shot, because I hacked up enough sputum in your establishment to have the CDC descending on the place with boiling bleach and haz-mat suits.

To the teller who insisted on putting a three-day hold on my check:

You probably don’t want to know how many snotty Kleenexes I was handling with the same paws that handed you the check and my driver’s license. It was a lot.

Unfortunately, the world does not stand still when you’re sick. The good thing about working from home is that I no longer have co-workers walking by my desk and macing me with Lysol as they pass. At home, I can chug down enough codeine so that I don’t remember whether it’s standard time or daylight savings time (help me out here, folks) and nobody will be the wiser.

I have about a two day limit of patience for listening to people whine when they’re sick, myself included, so I try to space it out. Yesterday, I indulged in a full day funk. I was pouty, impatient, and petulant: the trifecta of annoying. If they had put the damn whipped cream and a cherry on top of my chocolate milkshake, I probably would have spontaneously combusted right there in McDonald’s.

So my apologies to Ms. Cranky-pants at the DMV. I wasn’t in the best of moods myself while I was snorting phlegm at your counter. Today I don’t have to drive, so I can stay at home, chug my codeine, and avoid exposing others to contagion and misery. Although, Ms. Bank Teller, you put a hold on my check: you kinda had it comin’.