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Excuses, Excuses: Web Searches For Reasons to Skip Work Soar in 2022
As calls to return to the office grow louder, workers look for ways to play hooky
Photographer: Prasert Prapanoppasin/Moment RF/Getty Images
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US employees are scouring the internet for excuses to miss work — just as bosses call them back to their desks.
The total number of Google searches for plausible reasons to play hooky shot up over the last two years, topping 2 million in 2022, according to an analysis by Frank Recruitment Group, a global employment firm. In 2018, that figure was a little over 300,000. The firm analyzed traffic across 10 of the most popular search terms, including multiple variations of “realistic excuses for missing work.”