“Presentee-ism”
Al Roker is talking about the biggest health hazard in the work place. You know, people who come to work when they aren’t well. (Who was it who said that most of the world's work is done by people who aren't feeling well? I know it was someone significant.)

I wasn’t like that in school. Buy the end of kindergarten I knew that I had lost the lifetime attendance award, so I always packed it in at the least symptom. Indeed, the older I got, the more willing I was to stay home when I was asymptomatic.

There’s something about being an hourly wage earner who really needs the income that makes a girl suck it up and go to work as long as she is not on life support. But what’s a person to do? The germ pundit on the Today show said that the average cold/flu bout lasts about 5 to 7 days. A full time employee could blow a year’s worth of sick days in one bout of a virus. And an hourly person would wind up destitute.

I detect a bit of hysteria in all their swabbing. They are finding staph aureus and e coli everywhere. They are everywhere. If I remember correctly, everyone carries staph in their nasal passages. So let’s be careful out there.

And remember... There can be “more bacteria on the average desk-top than a toilet seat.” (My desk, has a lovely of germ-protective layer of back-logged paperwork!)