I'm sitting in a coffee shop. My cappuccino is still steaming, the croissant untouched on my plate. I'm writing. Or rather, I'm trying to write, because a debate has erupted at the next table that I can't shake. Two men, in their mid-fifties, one in a jacket, the other in a fleece, are arguing about a number: 14.5.
14.5 sick days on average, per employee, per year. The Chancellor said it at a campaign event in Bad Rappenau, and ever since, the country has been up in arms. "Almost three weeks!" the man in the jacket exclaims indignantly, slamming his hand on the table so hard the cups rattle. "Is that really necessary?" he asks, quoting Merz, perhaps unwittingly—or perhaps he knows perfectly well. The man in the fleece jacket shakes his head: "Try talking like that when you've had three spinal surgeries and you're still on the construction site every morning."
I listen. I can't help myself. Today, the coffeehouse is my plenary hall, and these two are my representatives. What a topic. The Chancellor asks if we're too sick, but what he really means is: Are you too lazy? The general practitioners agree with him. The SPD disagrees. The Left Party is fuming. And in the coffeehouse, where the real Germany sits—between the milk foam and the crumbs—things get personal.
The man in the jacket—I'll call him the "performance ethicist"—is clearly a businessman. He talks about lost revenue, about the inability to find replacements, about sick leave certificates issued over the phone, which he considers a "free pass for shirkers." He's worked up about the "Monday sniffle," a term coined by the head of the statutory health insurance physicians' association and now making the rounds in every newspaper. "Monday sniffle"—a word that says everything and proves nothing; a word like a slap in the face to anyone who's genuinely sick on Mondays; a word that makes assumptions before it asks.
The man in the fleece jacket—a tradesman, I can tell by his hands, which tell stories no office knows—counters quietly but firmly: "Do you know what makes you sick? Not sick leave certificates issued over the phone." But what if you've been tinkering and carrying things for thirty years, and your back tells you it can't go on anymore, but retirement doesn't come until you're sixty-seven?" He takes a sip of coffee. Pause. Then: "And the Chancellor, he was never on a construction site. He was at BlackRock."
Silence at the next table. Brief. Then they both laugh. It's that German laugh, somewhere between gallows humor and resignation; a laugh that says: We both know it's complicated; a laugh that reconciles before the next argument starts.
I'm thinking. 14.5 days. A number that conceals as much as it reveals. Behind it are the nurse who works night shifts until her soul gives out; the warehouse worker whose knees give out after twenty years; the young mother torn between working from home and sick days for her children. But behind it are perhaps also those who go to the doctor on Friday afternoon to get Monday off work. Who can judge that? Who can draw the line between those who truly suffer and those who suffer because work makes them ill—not the body, but the meaning that's missing?
Why does work make some people sick and others vibrant? Is it the work itself or the people? Is it a system that measures a person's worth in terms of productivity? Is illness perhaps the last refuge of freedom in a society that no longer knows any breaks?
The work ethicist and the tradesman order another coffee. Together. They haven't reached an agreement, but they're talking to each other—which is more than can be said for the Bundestag these days. I turn back to my notebook. My cappuccino is cold, my croissant has gone soft. 14.5 days; perhaps that's the most honest number this country currently has to offer; more honest than any government statement; because illness, I always thought, is one of the last places where you don't have to lie—but perhaps I'm wrong about that too.
At the next table, the performance ethicist coughs. Loudly. Dryly. Persistently. The tradesman looks at him and grins: "You'd better go see a doctor." The performance ethicist waves it off: "Oh, it's nothing." Of course. What else would you expect?
S.
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