Matt Walsh, known for controversial comments that many deem divisive, has united the people by making a statement so disagreeable that seemingly everyone, including conservatives, are coming together to slam his sickening commentary.
Walsh makes a living via his extremely popular YouTube channel and podcast, and is also a part of The Daily Wire. He has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube, and the total number of views on his channel recently exceeded one billion.
On said channel, he posted a video titled, “Get Z is FAILING at Work, But is it Their Fault?” My first annoyance with this title is that “But” is capitalized after a comma, But I digress!
A few minutes into the 11-minute video, Walsh reads a quote from a study claiming that the employees most likely to use their sick days are Gen Z. Speaking to his viewers, Walsh says, “You shouldn’t be using sick days.”
He then claims that he was sick for only two days over the last seven years, and that on both of those days, he had lost his voice (perhaps in addition to whatever it was that ailed him). However, he still worked. Impressive.
I understand what he’s attempting to convey, but his next remark highlighted the biggest difference between Matt Walsh’s job and most people’s jobs.
Matt Walsh — not to be confused with the actor of the same name who was on Dancing With the Stars — said, “It’s impossible to do a podcast when you can’t speak and even then,” he proudly continued, “I still came into the office and recorded a video with subtitles.”
Wow, that sounds strenuous. When your job is to make YouTube videos, maybe a whole sick day brag just exposes how out of touch you are with everyone else. I know this is shocking to the controversial Matt Walsh, but most workers don’t upload YouTube videos or record podcasts for a living. And even those who do wouldn’t record a video with subtitles if they lost their voice. They would either wait until their voice returned, or better yet, develop a workflow of recording videos ahead of time, so their channel doesn’t skip a beat if they get sick.
Walsh didn’t stop there, though. He happily stated, “Sick days are for children.”
He explains that sick days are for when a child cannot go to school because they’re sick. Of course, such sick days are unpaid, so I fear there is a difference here.
But he quickly pivoted his focus back to adults, saying, “With rare exception, taking a sick day as an adult should be pretty embarrassing for you. Calling your boss and saying, ‘Sorry, I can’t come in today. My tummy hurts,’ is humiliating.”
Actually, I agree with Walsh here because if an adult tells their boss that their “tummy hurts,” then they definitely should be embarrassed. However, and I know Walsh might have difficulty understanding this, adults don’t talk like that. Furthermore, try telling that to a food service worker suffering from salmonella poisoning. Should they just suck it up, clock in, and infect the masses?
Walsh said that he tells his kids that he doesn’t have time to be sick. I’m sure his boss, Ben Shapiro, appreciates that, but even he obligated by law to provide paid sick days. What happens if Walsh has a medical emergency? Obviously, he would be forced to take a day off, and then he most definitely would have time to focus on his own health.
Perhaps the absolute wildest part of this entire video is that Walsh stops midway to promote a product that allegedly promotes weight loss and men’s sexual health. It’s not the best placed ad, and it’s certainly bizarre considering that the product he’s selling contradicts the message he’s selling, which is to not take care of yourself when you’re sick. At least he didn’t have to use subtitles.
Walsh’s intent is admirable, as he later states that the value of someone’s job is first based on whether or not that someone can perform that job. He promotes the ability to do things you don’t want to do, though his way to push this is to compare an adult employee to his 4-year old, whom he explains doesn’t want to clean her room, but still has to. However, if his preschooler wa sick, an example he omits, he almost certainly would not force her to clean her room.
One can argue that his main point, however foolishly he expresses it, is not necessarily controversial, or even wrong. He just doesn’t realize that most employees work when they may not want to — it’s an every-single-day scenario for a lot of people — and can exceed expectations at work even when they’re not feeling their best. But here’s the kicker: taking a sick day when needed doesn’t make any of that less true.