Nearly third of workers use fake excuse to skip work

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Excuses. Everybody has one to dodge exercise or chores, but a new survey shows nearly a third of U.S. employees use a fake one to miss work -- and over a third of bosses don't believe them.

Thirty-two percent of workers questioned in a Harris poll

admitted calling in sick when they were well at least once last year -- and some employees had excuses for missing work that left their bosses baffled.

One woman claimed she got whiplash from brushing her hair. Another said her psychic told her to stay at home or something awful would happen, and a man said he had nothing to wear because his roommate had locked all his clothes in a shed.

Although the majority of employers said they typically believed the excuses given by workers, 35 percent admitted they had checked up on someone who had called in sick, and 16 percent fired workers who did not have a legitimate reason for missing work.

"Your best bet is to be honest. If you're a strong employee and you're truthful about the time you need off, your employer is likely to give it to you," said Rosemary Haefner of CareerBuilder.com, an online job site that commissioned the survey.

"Lying about it, on the other hand, can have a lasting, negative impact on your credibility and job tenure," she added in a statement.

Not surprisingly Monday was the most popular day for absenteeism with 52 percent of workers selecting that day to miss work, followed by Friday at 24 percent.

The poll of 5,989 full-time employees and 2,929 hiring managers and human resource professionals also revealed that 23 percent of people took a day off because they simply didn't feel like going into work.

Nearly 60 percent to bosses who didn't believe the excuses they had been given phoned the employee at home, 16 percent asked another worker to make the call and 14 percent drove by their home.