Back to work

So I dragged myself back into work today and discovered that the plague had struck there too. On Monday alone, there were 30 people out sick (out of 150 or so). Several people were out multiple days. You could divide my coworkers into two groups: the obviously sick and those cowering from the first group.
If I were in charge I'd have passed out hand sanitizer and biohazard suits. And maybe some orange juice. But I think those in charge were kind of grumpy with the whole situation. I can see their point because it's hard to staff adaquetly when huge portions of your employees are missing. (Not that widespread sympathy won't win them more loyalty. This is a point that is often lost at my work.)
It's been kind of a tough few months for the corporate travel business. We've had a good half dozen winter storms severe enough to screw up travel all across the country. (The worst was the one that stranded thousands in Denver right around Christmas.)
Everytime this happens we get slammed as travelers look to us to help them when their flights are cancelled. We then try to figure out what flights are really going and at what time and how much space is really left on them. That involves calling the airlines (also slammed) and hoping that their reservation centers have good enough information from the airports. Multiply that by hundreds of callers and you see how bad it gets.
Sometimes we have an irate traveler who asks us why we'd book anyone through Denver or Chicago in the winter. Any look at the schedule will tell you why we do it. It's almost impossible to find a storm proof airport. The only major one's that have been spared this winter are the ones on the west coast and Minneapolis (due to get smacked this weekend). Texas has gotten closed down twice in the last two months! If you can't trust Houston in the winter, you can't trust anywhere.
Back to the plague, avoid it if you can. This is seriously bad stuff.