In last year's Sundance movie The Lie, a man who plays hooky from work tells his boss that his kid is sick. Later, under duress, he blurts out, shockingly, that the baby has died—and the remainder of the film deals with the consequences. As it turns out, that premise is more realistic than you might have imagined: 26% of American employees have used bereavement time as off-the-record vacation days.
Although we've already learned that there's been an increasing level of, um, creative expression in people's sick-day excuse bullshit (e.g. "too upset after watching The Hunger Games"), a quarterly survey conducted by Adecco Group North America and recorded in Reuters newly eyeballed the habits of workers along gendered and geographic lines.
Unsurprisingly, 47% of all full-time employees have called in sick to take a day off, and 72% of their co-workers know they're faking it. Two-thirds of the survey responders said that their work loads increased when co-workers took off. When it came to resentment after a colleague leaves work early, 11% of men compared with 25% of women admit "jealousy." And male workers are twice as likely than women to use bereavement time to take extra vacation days, plus four times as likely to use the jury duty excuse.
'Many workers lie, call in sick, to play hooky-survey' [Reuters]
Image via Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock