Of employers who checked on sick day claim, 17% drove past employee's home.

[Liberal_in_LA]

:wtf:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/01/26/cb.playing.hooky/index.html

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.

[Haole Girl]

1. Let 'em

I'll run out to their car and cough in their face.

:-(

[tekisui]

2. Being sick of work is a good enough reason, IMO.

Those sound like some asshole bosses.

[Bucky]

3. Mental health break. It's the trade off for not having 4 weeks of vacation like they do in Germany

[Canuckistanian]

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.

[asthmaticeog]

4. So to make sure you're not missing work unnecessarily...

...they'll leave the office to drive by your house. OK. That makes a whole lotta sense.

[ZombieHorde]

5. How do they know if the person is at the store buying medicine?

Just because they are not home does not mean they are playing hooky.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. And if the car is in the garage or ee has no car, do they look in the window?

[hamsterjill]

8. That's my question

I always park my car in the garage. That way, it's not as easy to immediately tell whether I'm home or whether I'm not.

[slackmaster]

7. I ditched a very serious girlfriend for stalking me

I'd do the same to an employer in a heartbeat.

[Ikonoklast]

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]

10. bwwwwwwwah ha ha. Karma.

[Ikonoklast]

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.

[SocialRealist]

11. I wonder how much productivity is lost...

...when bosses take time off work to drive by their employee's homes? :)

Seriously though, shouldn't an employer EXPECT that their employees will use their entire sick leave entitlement every year? Shouldn't they plan for that? Seems to me that if they are so concerned about whether their employees are missing work when they're not really sick, then they haven't staffed their business properly to cover their workload.

[spin]

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]

25. the trots is a good excuse

not too many questions for that one :7

[SoCalNative]

13. I guess they haven't heard of HIPAA

Calling and employee at home or having someone else do it "to make sure they're sick" is in direct violation of that act.

[GA_ArmyVet]

36. Really, I thought that HIPPA only applied to

realeasing your med records, to prevent your med records from being realeased by Med Personnel.

[ejpoeta]

15. some places call them personal days... that way it's your business why you take them.

now some folks might not have vacation time, either. so their sick days are all they have. i will admit that I have called in sick when i wasn't. but i usually ended up paying for it in the end. like when my tire went on my car. or something. it was always something. LOL!!

[sohndrsmith]

16. I wonder if there are any studies done on how much more productivity

is lost when sick employees come to work for fear of losing their jobs or who've used up their sick days - and end up making several other people sick, resulting in 3 times more sick days (perhaps).

I guess I'm behind the times... I never realized that doctor notes were required so often... wow. This rule seems absurd, because many people can be far too ill (or contagious) to go to work without having to see a doctor in order to tell them they have a 102 fever and throwing up.... they can pretty much figure that out for themselves. Not trusting adults on this level seems like a recipe for negativity which I can't imagine is good for profit/productivity...

[pipi_k]

17. It's idiotic policies like that

which cause a lot of lost productivity when employees are afraid of being stalked or losing pay or whatever and they end up going to work sick and then spread their illness around to others.

I had a boss who used to do that.

He would come in sick and then use my phone (it was a very small office) and my computer, etc. Then he would get all pissy when I sprayed everything with Lysol disinfectant. WTF???? I didn't want to get sick too!!!!

:mad:

[distantearlywarning]

18. Requiring doctor's notes? Ridiculous!

One of my huge pet peeves is when people show up sick at work because they feel guilty for not coming in when they "only have a cold" (or whatever). Because then they get me sick, and everyone else gets sick and then we all feel crappy and are unproductive for a month. Which could have been avoided by one person just fucking staying home for a day or two in the first place. Seriously, I'll happily volunteer to do your damn work on top of my own for 2 days if it means I won't get sick after you inappropriately drag yourself into the office!

Requiring doctor's notes for illness will only increase the incidence of this kind of behavior, because ALL the people with colds or a mild stomach flu or whatever will now feel compelled to come into work when they are sick! Grrrr.... Why are so many employers so fucking stupid???? :mad:

[NYC Liberal]

23. Amen! I work in retail which means I'm already picking up

who knows how many germs from all the people that come in and out of the store, touching everything. I don't need someone being a hero and coming into work coughing and sneezing all over the place, clearly sick.

[nc4bo]

26. $20 used by buy you an excellent Drs. note from your family physician

and you didn't even have to be sick.

Now you pay about $125 and you better be knocking on death's door just to get a note for taking a half a day off.

It's a conspiracy I tell ya.

[cherish44]

37. I agree!

Sick pay? I don't get sick pay for either of my part time jobs. Or health insurance either for that matter. At both jobs everyone is "part time". So people come to work sick because if they don't come into work, they don't get paid. Luckily I have developed SUPER IMMUNITY! So I have that going for me

[MountainLaurel]

38. Wonder how that's gonna work

It's been years since I was able to get in to see my doctor on the same day I called. Last time I needed to make an appointment, it was a three-week wait. I guess that's what urgent care centers will become.

[Urban Prairie]

19. FMLA

Is what I used to take time off work, my employer was notorious for harassing employees who used sick time before this act passed. When I was hired in, I did not miss a day of work due to illness for almost a year until I got a mild case of the flu (24 hrs)and when I returned the next night (graveyard shift) my boss treated me like I had raided the company coffers. When FMLA was signed into law under President Clinton, I had been long seeing my physician for low back problems from an inherited spinal defect (ankylosing spondylitis) and had him fill out a company-supplied form stating that I needed time off on occasion when the pain became severe, and listed the prescriptions I took for it.

Doing so ended my concern over being unduly harassed over any time I missed at work.

[Edweird]

20. 1) They don't know where I live. The address they have

is my permanent mailing address and it's 30 miles from my actual residence.
2) I'm going take days off if I need them. Whether it's because I'm sick, have something that can't be done outside of business hours or I just need a day off.
My life comes first. Their shit comes second.

[Berry Cool]

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.

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. I can understand her calling the police on your behalf. This wasn't so much snooping but

thinking something bad had happened to an employee.

[NYC Liberal]

22. I can't stand when people come into work obviously sick,

sneezing and coughing all over the place, as though they're being "tough" by working even though they're ill. All that means is that everyone else is liable to catch it too. If you're sick... stay home!

I'll take a sick day right at the beginning of a cold or whatever it is, when it first starts. That way I'm out one day and nip it in the bud before I go out and make it worse... but it's better than being out for 3 or 4 days at the peak of it.

[varkam]

24. AFAIK, you're most contagious *before* you manifest symptoms.

Meaning if you're going to catch whatever they've got, you've already got it.

[RB TexLa]

27. Why would people know their co-workers phone numbers and home addresses?

[Marrah_G]

29. I guess it depends on the business

I know mine.

I've been to their homes for parties or even to help them fix a computer issue here and there.

I assume the bosses talked about in this thread have access to their employee files.

[Marrah_G]

28. I am so glad I don't have a boss like that

Mine calls me sometimes if I am home sick, but not out of malice...generally it's because he is going out of his mind looking for something (usually that something is right under his nose...hehe). My admin asst also sometimes calls me at home (she works later then I) if she needs help with something or has a question.

We function more like a family, very casual, very laid back.

I will never go back to corp america again. I definitely prefer a SMALL business environment.

[book_worm]

30. All work and no play makes Book_Worm a rather dull boy.

[treestar]

33. What do they care, if you have the sick days, you're unwise to

use them on nonsick days in case you get sick, but what's that to the employer.

As to calling them at home, driving by, and requiring a Dr. note, maybe the employee wasn't home because they were at the doctor?

Some people are just friggin' authoritarians. Wouldn't that boss have had something that needed to be done at work?

[PVnRT]

34. If you are given paid days off to use,

why does an employer have any right to demand a reason to use them? Do we have to start justifying getting our paychecks, too?

[HughBeaumont]

35. Gee, why would anyone want to call in SICK?

After all, isn't UhMerica the supposed "greatest place on Earth to work at"?

[ellie]

39. I work from home now,

but when I worked in an office, I didn't want to be around sick people. If you are sick, stay home! I don't want to get sick, too!