Almost one-third of all employees called out of work sick in the last year when they were healthy, a recent study reported.

"Out of the Office," a study on employee absence by CareerBuilder.com, also reported that 10 percent of employees said they had done this three times or more.

The Web site, which is the nation's largest online job site, completed the annual study in September.
The company surveyed 1,650 workers and 1,150 hiring managers nationwide.

The surveyed workers cited the need to relax, lack of sleep, personal errands, doctor's appointments, plans with family and friends and housework as their primary reasons for missing work.

Comparing genders, 37 percent of women admitted to calling in sick with phony excuses compared to 26 percent of men, the survey reported.

Laura Morsch, career adviser for CBCampus.com, Career Builder's college division, said while there may be a variety of reasons for this discrepancy in gender, she imagines that childcare, housework and errands have a lot to do with it.

"Women still have a disproportionate amount of domestic responsibility," she said. "I'm sure many of them use sick days to catch up on housework or errands or just take a mental health day when they have been stretching themselves too thin."

Morsch also noted that there is a positive correlation between the number of workers calling in sick and the approaching holiday season.

"It's a very busy time of year, and it makes sense for workers to use those last days off before they lose them to do some last minute holiday shopping or catch up on errands," she said. "Also, it's cold and flu season, and so it's easier to get away with it."

However, workers without a good excuse should be wary. According to the study, 27 percent of hiring managers said they have terminated a worker for calling in sick without a legitimate excuse.

"Know your relationship with your employer and act accordingly," Morsch said. "People do get caught calling in sick when they're not. Honesty is always the best policy."

Forty-one percent of managers said they have heard unusual sick day excuses, and 62 percent of those that have did not believe them, according to the study.

When asked for examples of these unusual excuses, hiring managers said they had been told an employee was poisoned by his mother-in-law, had a bad case of the hiccups, blew his nose so hard that his back went out or was currently locked inside a restroom stall with no one around to let him out.

Animals also seemed to play a big part in spurious excuses. Hiring managers have been told an employee's dog swallowed her bus pass, horses got loose and were running down the highway and uniforms were sprayed by an intruding skunk.

Grace Mehalick, a manager of McLanahan's Student Store, 414 E. College Ave., said the holidays have no bearing on her employees calling in sick to work, and that her store has a strict sick-day policy.

"Most of the employees are college students," she said. "So, we have a policy here that you must have a doctor's excuse if you call in sick. Otherwise, people wouldn't show up because they're hungover or tired."

Mike Cipriani, director of Lion Line, 112 S. Burrowes St., also said he hasn't noticed more of his employees calling in sick during the holiday season. He noted that because he mainly employs college students, work schedules revolve more around the academic calendar than the holidays.

Cipriani also said while he hasn't gotten any wild stories from Penn State students yet, he heard a strange excuse when he worked for Phonepower in Altoona a few years ago.

"A lady called in once and said she couldn't come to work because her cat stole her glasses," he said. "We think she was drunk."