More and More Companies are Using Private Detectives to Track Down Employees Who Fake Sick Days

If you still have a lot of sick days left over, and you're thinking about using them for an extra week of Christmas vacation . . . YOUR BOSS KNOWS you're not really sick.  Or, at the very least, he's suspicious.

--According to the latest numbers, 57% of salaried employees in the U.S. take sick days when they're not really sick.  That's up almost 20% from 2006.

--So now, more and more companies are hiring PRIVATE DETECTIVES to SPY on their own employees . . . to make sure they're taking legitimate sick days. And yes, it's legal.

--In 2008, a company hired an off-duty cop to track an employee they thought might be abusing her sick days.  She was.  She sued the company, but the courts dismissed the suit, and said a company has a right to track its workers.

--There aren't any hard numbers on how many companies are tracking their employees like this . . . obviously, most of them want to keep it on the down low . . . but from all reports, it's becoming a, quote, "thriving industry."

--Now . . . unless your company's EXTREMELY paranoid, if you take one or two fake sick days a year, odds are you won't get tracked down.  Most companies only spend the money to track employees who are constantly taking sick days.

--Fake sick days have gone up since the economy tanked because people are less likely to leave jobs they hate . . . they don't think another job is out there.  But staying in a job you hate leads to low satisfaction, which leads to fake sick days.