One young chap has just learned this lesson. Seduced by his friends and their talk of a long weekend break, he decided to call in sick on a Friday. Given the Covid-19 situation, no one questioned his caution in taking an “itchy throat and cough” seriously.
The lad was no dummy either. Besides covering his tracks with a cough-heavy voicemail left for his boss, he made sure that his friends promised to stay off social media for the day. He was too wise to be tripped up by a public photo of him lounging with a beer while he was supposed to be in bed.
But even the best laid plans can go awry.
The ambitious escapee had his day in the sun, but he also drank enough that his early caution gave way to reckless abandon. Sometime during the day, a friend produced some temporary tattoos, and the lad cheerfully placed one — a sparkly letter 'T' like his first initial — in the middle of his forehead. Don’t ask me; I assume it’s a generational thing.
Perhaps this would not have been such a terrible idea had he not been too intoxicated to remember his sun cream. By the time he woke up on Saturday, he knew he had a problem. His sunburn was a brilliant, tomato-like red. And when he scrubbed off his tattoo, what remained was a perfectly pale tell-tale sign of his misadventure.
He applied some of his girlfriend’s make up in an attempt to cover up the mark but he’s not convinced it did a good enough job.
Have you noticed a sheepish young banker walking around the trading floor, a letter branded on his forehead like some sort of super-villain? Now, dear reader, you know why.