Gen Z fake sick days have become the go-to excuse this summer, but new research shows bosses are just as guilty, with half of senior managers admitting they use the same bogus reasons to clock off early.
Software company PDFFly surveyed 2,000 managers and senior managers and found that while 85% of managers suspect their staff of inventing excuses to grab extra time off in summer, one in two are doing exactly the same thing themselves.
The excuses are almost identical across the hierarchy. Managers believe employees are pretending their Wi-Fi has gone down, inventing dental or doctor’s appointments, or pulling fake sick days. When asked about their own tactics, managers confessed to the same: bogus sick days, exaggerated family obligations, fake appointments, and invented tech faults.
Nearly 10% of managers do not bother with excuses at all, admitting they simply log on and do no work.
Gen Z fake sick days and the cost to business
The consequences for output are real. Six in 10 managers say productivity drops in summer, with 18% describing the fall as significant and 42% saying it is slight. A further 37% report a dip of more than 10%. A third say things have deteriorated to the point where the company has lost a client or missed a deal.
The problem is not confined to the shop floor. Workhuman found that 38% of C-Suite executives admit to faking activity at work, suggesting the habit of performing productivity rather than delivering it runs from entry level to the boardroom.
Quiet vacationing and medical leave
Managers are not the only group finding creative routes to time off. Nearly four in 10 millennials admit to “quiet vacationing”, taking holiday without telling their employer, staying reachable on a work phone to avoid detection.
A separate study from Resume Builder found that 43% of quiet vacationers disappear for up to three days at a time, while a quarter take a full week off. Others have gone further, using medical leave to secure up to 12 weeks away from their desks, with job protection and, in some cases, paid leave.
Online, some workers have boasted about using medical leave for extra paid time off. Others describe it differently. One TikToker said taking leave to address her mental health, without risking dismissal, was “life-saving.”
Researchers behind the quiet vacationing study argue the trend reflects anxiety rather than idleness. Two in five workers said they fear that requesting time off openly will damage their standing at work.
Whether the excuse is a fake Wi-Fi outage or an inflated family obligation, the pattern is consistent: workers at every level are not asking for rest honestly because they do not feel safe doing so. PDFFly’s findings suggest that dynamic holds right up to the manager doing the policing.
