http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4915961
Oh my.
Liberal_in_LA (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 05:19 PM
Original message
Of employers who checked on sick day claim, 17% drove past employee's home.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/01/26/cb.playin...
One-third of workers play hooky
Just not wanting to go to work that day was enough to keep 34 percent of workers from showing up this year. Although most truant workers lacked the motivation to go to work, some were avoiding the headaches awaiting them at the office. Nine percent of workers who played hooky wanted to skip a meeting, spend time working on an overdue project or avoid the wrath of a boss or colleague.
Another common reason employees skipped work was because they had other things to do. Thirty percent of workers needed to relax and recharge, and 22 percent caught up on their sleep. Medical appointments, personal errands and quality time with friends and family were also good enough reasons to feign illness.
If you do decide to call in sick when you're not, be prepared to sell your story with sniffles and a throaty cough; 18 percent of employers have fired workers who missed work without a legitimate reason. Thirty-one percent of employers checked up on an employee who called in sick. Of those employers who did check, 71 percent required a doctor's note. Fifty-six percent called the employee at home, while 18 percent asked another worker to call the employee at home and 17 percent drove by the employee's home.
As tempted as you may be to weave an elaborate yarn explaining your absence, the truth is your smartest route. If you're honest with your boss, you don't have to worry about a slip of the tongue or an unexpected run-in with the boss foiling your alibi.
Plus, employers have grown flexible in terms of what constitutes a sick day, as 65 percent of them consider the need to take a mental health day a valid reason to take time off. Therefore, the need to take a personal day no longer has the stigma it once did.
tekisui (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 05:21 PM
Response to Original message
2. Being sick of work is a good enough reason, IMO.
Those sound like some asshole bosses.
Bucky (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 05:22 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Mental health break. It's the trade off for not having 4 weeks of vacation like they do in Germany
Canuckistanian (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 10:31 PM
Response to Reply #3
31. That's a big part of it, I suspect
Americans have the LEAST amount of vacation days of all the industrialized countries.
It's no wonder that absenteeism is problem.
Ikonoklast (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 05:38 PM
Response to Original message
9. There was an employer in my town that sent a manager out to see if an employee that called in sick was at home. As she was trying to look through the kitchen window, the police arrested her and booked her under suspicion of burglary.
She called the boss to come bail her out, and he refused using the excuse that he never expected her to do no more than drive by the house.
Liberal_in_LA (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 05:40 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. bwwwwwwwah ha ha. Karma.
Ikonoklast (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 06:04 PM
Response to Reply #10
14. She was an idiot.
The employee was upstairs in the bathroom and heard someone prowling around the house, and called the cops.
The manager sued the employer over this, saying that she was arrested in the performance of her job directed by her employer.
The judge ruled that they were both idiots.
spin (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 05:48 PM
Response to Original message
12. When I worked we had five paid sick days without question...but the supervisor would hassle you if you took any when she gave you your yearly appraisal.
I was an old guy that they were trying to convince to leave (so they could hire a younger cheaper employee). If I didn't take the sick days, they just found something else to hassle me about.
So I always took the five sick days. I'd just call in and say I had diarrhea.
Skittles (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 10:12 PM
Response to Reply #12
25. the trots is a good excuse
not too many questions for that one
BerryBush (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-26-09 09:50 PM
Response to Original message
21. Here's a great story for you--not about a sick day, but a day off.
I had a job once where we had the option of taking Presidents' Day off or coming in to work. One year, I thought my boss understood that I was not going to come in. Apparently, she didn't. I went out to run some errands that day and was shocked to come back to my apartment and find the glass on the back door had been broken and there was a note on the door saying "CALL POLICE." I called, and a cop actually came over and verified my identity and called her and said that he had personally seen me at home. Why? Because my boss called the cops when I didn't show up that morning for work and didn't call in sick. She was worried about me. I had to prove to the police that I was her "missing employee" and that I was safe before they would leave. They told me they had come to knock on my door to see if I was home, and when they got no answer, they broke in to see whether something had happened and I was unable to respond.
Oh, and I asked them: You broke the window on my back door, aren't you going to fix that? No, they said. That was my problem. Or, more properly, my landlady's problem. She had to pay to get it replaced. Luckily, she didn't charge me.
From then on, if I was going to take an optional holiday, I made damn sure my boss KNEW.
DU AdBot (1000+ posts) Tue Jan 27th 2009, 07:18 AM
Response to Original message
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