Should I ring in sick or go to work wearing a paper bag over my head

[Stressedout65]

I'm old enough to know better but I went to a festival yesterday & completely forgot to out suncream on my face. It was sunny, windy & no that warm that I just forgot.
Now I've a red nose & cheeks & an oversized pair of sunglasses white shape on my face! Make up, of which I don't have a lot, is not going to disguise this. I should ring in sick as I'm so embarrassed 🙈

I'd go in to work wearing sunglasses and keep them on.
Say you've got sore eyes from hay fever (as well as sunburn) and the sunglasses help.
If you deal with customers your manager might prefer you to be somewhere out of the way and give you other work to do.

Go to work and remind everyone why sunscreen is so important. It'll brighten up a dull Monday morning.

Sudocrem all over immediately for 10 minutes!

Wear a face mask all day. Tell them you're going to visit your granny on the chemo ward at the weekend.

teenage me has regrets over the time when I was sat in the pub with friends whilst I had a green face, I swear it looked ok in the mirror before I went out. Friend rocks up and goes "hi shrek, what's with the green face?" - Mortified doesn't cover it.

Why don’t you wear a mask and say you’ve got a bit of a cold (negative for Covid) but want to be careful?

If you cool it down to calm it, make up should cover it op if you later it on thickly.

*layer

So many people advocate pulling a sickie for a bit of embarrassment over sunburn 🙄

just wear glasses, if not sunglasses.

No! No! No!

Probably more reasonable than my suggestion

I need a photo before I can give my answer

Unless you can ring in sick for several days you need to brazen it out today, I'm afraid. It will take a few days for the redness to go down and if you go in tomorrow with obvious sunglasses marks it will just look like you overdid it at the weekend and called in sick with a hangover.

PS take an ibuprofen.

Style it out, it’ll give everyone a laugh

Afraid you have to go in! Did you go in? The idea of wearing a face mask is a good one.

Any other symptoms OP?
the runs, a headache, dehydrated?
if yes stay home. Drink well, add electrolytes, eat well and rest.

if not sudocrem can calm it down. Moisturise and brave the looks. Take your sunglasses, a face mask and a flannel so you can cool your skin during the day.

As long as you aren’t feeling unwell I’d go in. Just tell everyone what happened and you’ll probably find the rest of the day is full of everyone else telling you about the time they did the same thing. Hope you feel more comfortable soon. Sunburn is so painful.

I did phone in sick when I was hit in the face by a medicine ball at the gym. I had a swollen nose and two black eyes so stayed off until some of the swelling had gone down. Even then my manager (who is also a close friend) cried when she saw me!

I don’t think it’s reasonable to take a day off for a red face. If it was blistered and you were unwell then fair enough.
It isn’t going to disappear after one day, so unless you take the week off then people are still going to see it.

I look the same OP....in fact I probs look worse as I've been wearing sunglasses for 5 days at Glastonbury....its not a good look at all.....I intend to wfh for the rest of week then will see how I am next week

As our son's sunburn on his arm lasted almost a week, I think you'll have to go in. Anyway, it'll probably peel after that so it could be a couple of weeks before you're back to normal.

Loads of people will get caught out in the next few weeks. It happens to all of us at some point.

One of my brother's friends got sacked from his Saturday job years ago because he pulled a sickie and his boss saw him on the BBC coverage, dancing around to Kraftwerk at Bestival...

Oh dear OP 😅 I would just go in

This reminds me of the time when I was in my early teens and wasn't that experienced with tanning lotion. Well I'd slathered it all over my face, was one of those gradual ones and the next day I had fake tan stripes (really obvious ones as I'm pale skinned) all over. I was supposed to be going to London on a day trip with family. I still went, though my parents found it hilarious. Took days to get the bast**d stuff off. Lessoned learned