Silly questions of usage and dialect.

[mrissa]

[Poll #1239616]

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

hey, what do you do to the laundry when you move it from washer to dryer to baskets/hanging?

i know people who advance the laundry; at my house, i up the laundry.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My family flips the laundry.

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

We just move the laundry. And I have extra time to do laundry when I call in sick.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I transfer the laundry. Or, more often, I handle the laundry. Or I refer to the specific sub-part of the task, because this is a three-person household with very complicated laundry patterns (three-person laundry for towels, one group of two and one group of one for clothing), so, "Can you x while I y?" is a fairly frequent laundry-related question.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For some reason, this question makes me think, "I one the laundry, I two the laundry, I three the laundry...YOU ATE THE LAUNDRY???"

Abelian grapes. Sense of humor of a highly educated 7-year-old, I'm telling you.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I switch the laundry.

[brooksmoses]

I "put it in the dryer". Then I "take it out of the dryer and fold it".

Oddly enough, I rarely "take it out of the washer" or "hang it". The latter is probably because not that much of my laundry gets hung, so folding is the default.

[redbird]

I understand "called out sick" but would definitely say "calling in sick." And I have neither a superhero's immune system nor the willingness to expose umpteen coworkers and two or three subway cars full of strangers to my illnesses, which is why I am at home right now.

[brooksmoses]

For what it's worth, I would probably refer to it as "calling in sick" even though (a) it would be an email, (b) I work from home so there's no office to go to anyway, and (c) I'd likely still find myself logged on on the work IRC channel, which is as close as there is to being in the office.

Also, I have found that calling in sick, rather than trying to do thought-requiring work when I'm too brainfuzzed from an illness to do it, is a good thing for my stress levels. Although, last time I did it, it was really more of a retroactively calling in sick -- "Wait, the fact that I probably had a fever for most of the afternoon is most likely related to the fact that I stared at the screen all day and got nothing done. I should probably call that 'sick time' on my timesheet rather than feeling guilty about it...."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I learned this after I started freelancing, too: that sick time is not just about not getting dressed and going somewhere, but about not being well enough to make yourself function.

[arkuat]

I've never heard of "calling out sick", although of course people who do so are "out sick", not "in sick". But I group the preposition with the verb: you're calling IN to work to report that you'll be OUT sick, and this gets contracted to "calling in sick".

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

At first inspection, I would be tempted to suppose that "calling out sick" would be either loudly crying "sick" or challenging a puddle of vomit to a duel.

Ulrika, who watched Ernie and Bert do the original sandbox routine on Sesame Street and who, moreover, has the sense of humor of a not-especially educated 10-year-old.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

Call off sick.

We flip the laundry.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me, calling something or someone off is for when a large dog is jumping on you and growling: "Aaaack, call him off! Call him off!"

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I say "call in sick," but say that I "called out."

If I did.

Which I didn't, today.

[guppiecat]

Oh, and I don't "call in sick", I send an email saying that I'm "working from home". :)

[carbonel]

I picked "calling in sick," but in fact I pretty much have the superhero's immune system. Other than two weeks out for surgery, I think I've had maybe three sick days in the past ten years. Of course, the fact that I work at home, so I don't have the "not expose my co-workers" excuse contributes somewhat.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

"I'm taking some sick leave, I hope to be back tomorrow."

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I call in sick I think usually, but am out sick when I'm not in, so I went with both there, just because.

Me, I change the laundry. However, I don't do the laundry until there's enough clothes that need washed to fill a whole load.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I saw this advice in the paper in California when energy prices started going up: "don't do the laundry until you have a full load!" And I was boggled: there are people who go around regularly doing partial loads of laundry? Really? The full load idea remains my default laundry-related assumption.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I call in sick. Except when I call in dead.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I call out - I call to tell them I'll be out. I provide more information by calling out sick. This is so common an occurrence (across the board, not just with me) that it does not require little connecting words. When the car I was driving broke down on the way to the office, I called out, but in that case, I called out with or because of car problems. It was still calling out.

Not sure where I picked up this usage. I wonder if it may be a hospital dialect, or a relief staff dialect. Now I'll pay more attention.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, that's part of why I asked: to see if there was geographic or professional commonality among people who call out rather than in.

[elsue.livejournal.com]

We turn the laundry over.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

It's probably a Pittsburgh thing, but we "Call off: sick" or "Call off work."

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

English, just to mess up the system: Phone in sick. (Generally, "to be sick" means specifically to vomit, and we say "ill" or "poorly" to mean the-state-of-being-unwell; nevertheless, the phonecall is still phoning- or ringing, or indeed calling- in sick. Oh, language.)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Yes, I call in sick, to tell my boss that I'm off sick, which means that I've just phoned him up to say I'm in bed feeling poorly.

I don't think I've ever said 'phoned in sick' - 'to call in sick' is a stock phrase, for me, not to be generalised or modified.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

Bumping patients from my schedule.

Or calling in to let them know that my child is sick.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I voted for "I call in sick." But occasionally "I call off sick."

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

I am emailing them with a subject line of "out sick today".