Yesterday saw this years 'National Sickie Day', where the number of workers pulling a sickie was expected to peak...not the best day for me to fall ill. Apparently the first Monday in February is the worst day for people calling in sick; and with up to 350,000 employess doing so it could cost the industry more than £30 million.

According to a study by the Employment Law Advisory Services bosses are becoming too soft and accepting text messages and emails over the traditional phonecall, thanks for believeing me Rick! Peter Mooney from ELAS says, "The traditional phone call was always a way for bosses to decipher whether staff members were bluffing or genuinely ill. But now, as our research shows, many employers are dispensing with it, which leads me to think that the system will be open to more abuse than ever."

Mooney also said the scivers were coming up with unlikely excuses, such as one worker who said he couldn’t get into work because the road outside his house was too busy to cross, another said his mother-in-law was supposed to die at the weekend but didn’t, and a third reported he had a cold and was sneezing so much it made his teeth hurt. Now if I were to pull a sickie, which unfortunately could never happen because I am so bad at bluffing, I'd try to come up with a better excuse than those!