In CareerBuilder.com's latest annual survey on absenteeism at the office, 32 percent of workers said they have called in sick when they were well at least once in the last year.

The findings of the online job site's 2007 survey, of 5,989 workers and 2,929 hiring managers and human resource professionals, included these telling nuggets:

• Twenty-seven percent of workers said they consider their sick days to be equivalent to vacation days;

• One in 10 admitted to playing hooky three times or more even though they were feeling well;

• One in five workers said they took the day off simply because they just didn't feel like going to work that day; and

• Fifteen percent missed work because they needed to relax, 11 percent had a doctor's appointment, 9 percent wanted to catch up on sleep and another 9 percent had plans with family and friends.

With a myriad of different motivations for workers to call in sick, there are just as many creative excuses to back them. Of the 12 most unusual excuses employees gave for missing work, here are some of the more colorful ones employers provided:

• Employee got whiplash from brushing her hair;

• A groundhog bit the employee's car tire, causing it to go flat;

• Employee said her chickens' feet were frozen to the driveway;

• Employee tasted some dog food because the dog was not feeling well and now the employee is sick;

• Employee had been up all night because his or her favorite American Idol contestant was voted off; and

• At her sister's wedding, the employee chipped her tooth on a Mint Julep, bent over to spit it out, hit her head on a keg and was knocked unconscious with a mild concussion.

• I was spit on by a venomous snake;

• I hurt myself bowling;

• I eloped; and

• A hitman was looking for me.

Fortunately for many workers calling in with these types of excuses, 75 percent of employers who responded in the 2007 survey believe their employees are sick when they say they are.

But some bosses aren't falling for it. Thirty-five percent of employers checked up on their supposedly sick employees. The majority (67 percent) of those suspicious bosses demanded a note from the doctor, and a determined 14 percent actually drove by the employee's home.

Arguably none of these outrageous circumstances hold a heated thermometer to an embarrassing scenario that occurred between a "sick" bank intern and his manager late last year, betrayed by Facebook and involving a tutu, a magic wand and a set of fairy wings.

As first reported by Silicon Valley-centric blog Valleywag.com, the intern sent an e-mail to his boss saying he could not make it into work because of a family emergency. "Something came up at home and I had to go to New York this morning," the intern wrote on the afternoon of October 31.

Turns out he took off to go to a Halloween party. However, his Web-savvy boss caught the lie the following day when he looked at the intern's Facebook page and saw a photo of the worker — dressed as a fairy and holding a beer — taken at the party. When the boss replied to the e-mail, he copied the entire office: "Thanks for letting us know — hope everything is OK in New York," he wrote. "Cool wand."

The fallout from that little fib turned the young worker into something of an overnight Internet celebrity.

(Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this prime "busted" example is the lively discussion that ensues below the Valleywag blog post. A wide range of readers weighed in on what transpired, with the most enlightened response being that employers now research job candidates online by simply typing candidate names into Google to see if unsavory activity or incriminating photos can be found on the candidate's online social-networking profile, be it Facebook and/or Myspace. Your personal online image counts for something, folks.)

Calling in sick is an art form to some. To others it is a struggle. Given all of this, however, it should go without saying that sick-day excuses should be used smartly and sparingly.

Resources

Nearly One-Third of Workers Called In Sick with Fake Excuses in the Last Year...
CareerBuilder.com, Nov. 7, 2007

Top 15 Most Bizarre Reasons for Calling in Sick
Museum of Hoaxes, Oct 20, 2004

Your Privacy is an Illusion: Bank Intern Busted by Facebook
by Owen Thomas
Valleywag.com, Nov. 12, 2007