Feeling Guilty if I Don’t Call In Sick Often Enough

In another article I talked about how Germany is an Inheritocracy and that working isn't worth it. I elaborated on the math of hopelessness. That in Germany, wealth is rarely built through hard work anymore and that it is mostly inherited. If a colleague inherits a €500,000 apartment tax-free, they just saved what a normal earner cannot accumulate in an entire working lifetime.

I talked about how the Two-Class workforce creates a massive psychological divide at work. You are working to survive and pay rent while your inheriting colleagues are working for "pocket money" or purely for fun. They can take risks, speak up to the boss, or quit on a whim because they have a massive safety net.

I suggested that people should take their time back and call in sick or slack during work in order to maximise for time and not just money. Since you won't get a massive wealth injection from family, your most valuable asset is your time.

Currently, I actually feel bad if I do even the slightest amount of work for my employer. Literally, even if I spend just 30 minutes a day to answer an email and then slack the rest of my day, I feel bad. Not because I faked work or pretended to work while cashing in a salary. But because I gave them 30 minutes more of my precious time than they deserved. I regret the fact that I caved in and wasted thirty valuable minutes of my life for "work" when I could have used that time to read a book, doom scroll, do pushups or do anything other than work. I feel bad wasting time. And I think we can all agree on that. I think everybody would agree on the fact that wasting time is usually bad. So there you have it. Why waste it on work to enrich someone else then?

Let’s stop pretending that your alarm clock setting matters. In Germany, the grand equation of "hard work equals prosperity" died decades ago. Today, the most lucrative career move you can make is choosing parents who bought real estate in the 1980s. Or, like in German tradition, inherit wealth stolen from murder victims during the Holocaust.

Consider your colleague, Justus. Justus just inherited a €500,000 apartment in Munich or Berlin. Thanks to Germany’s incredibly generous tax allowances for familial wealth, he pays exactly zero euros in inheritance tax. To match that single genetic stroke of luck, you, the industrious wage slave, would need to save roughly €1,000 a month, every single month, for the next 42 years. That is an entire working lifetime of skipping going out with friends, catching the bus to work, and clipping coupons just to reach the financial baseline Justus achieved by simply exiting the correct womb. Your salary isn't a wealth-building tool. It’s just the subscription fee you pay to exist until next month.

You show up because the alternative is homelessness. You tolerate the toxic middle manager, swallow the passive-aggressive feedback and smile because your landlord doesn't accept "corporate loyalty" as currency. You are chained to your desk by a leash made of rent and grocery bills.

On the other hand, the tourists (your inheriting colleagues) view the 9-to-5 as a quirky, interactive hobby. Essentially a country club with spreadsheets. They aren't working for survival. They are working for luxury vacation money or simply to cure their weekday boredom. You are grinding to buy a life, they are just killing time.

So I tell to myself, why push for a 3% raise or spend time finishing my task from last month when a peer inherits wealth that dwarfs my lifetime career earnings? Thats why I will be calling in sick tomorrow and then head straight to the gym.

Unless... someone also hands me out a minimum of €500,000, like the rest of my colleagues are getting from inheritance, and then we can talk if I will do some work.

Long story short. Reframe sick leave as part of your total salary. If you do not take days off (apart from the contractual PTO days which your employer already subtracted from your yearly salary), you are essentially giving your employer a discount on your labor. Taking them isn't stealing. It's the least you can do when others are given a big inheritance rendering them set for life without ever having to lift a finger just because they were lucky enough to get spit out of the right womb while the rest of us trade our youth for survival.