The Corner Office Is Playing Hooky Too
The numbers come first, and they are not flattering for anyone in management.
Software company PDFFly surveyed 2,000 managers and senior managers and found that 85% of managers suspect their employees are making fake excuses to grab extra time off during the summer months. The twist: half of those same managers are doing exactly that themselves.
The excuses are nearly identical up and down the hierarchy. Managers believe their employees are pretending Wi-Fi is down, inventing dental or doctor's appointments, or calling in sick. When asked what they themselves do to close the laptop on a sunny afternoon, managers admitted to fake sick days, exaggerated family obligations, fake appointments, and fabricated tech issues. Nearly 10% do not bother with an excuse at all—they simply log on and do no work.
Output Is Taking a Real Hit
The productivity cost is not abstract. Six in 10 managers say output drops in summer: 18% describe the decline as 'significant,' 42% say 'slight,' and 37% report a dip of more than 10%. Most damaging of all, a third say the problem has grown serious enough that the company lost a client or missed a deal.
That last figure is the one that should land on every CFO's desk. Lost clients and missed deals are not a morale issue—they are a revenue issue, a margin issue, and ultimately a shareholder issue.
Quiet Vacationing Goes Mainstream
Beyond the one-day disappearing act, a broader pattern has taken hold. Nearly 4 in 10 millennials admit to 'quiet vacationing'—secretly taking time off and going on holiday without informing their employer. They bring a work phone to the beach and check in occasionally to avoid detection.
A separate study from Resume Builder found that 43% of quiet vacationers sneak off for up to three days at a time, while a quarter take an entire week. Others have gone further still, using medical leave to secure up to 12 weeks off, job-protected and, in some cases, paid.
Researchers behind the quiet-vacationing study argue the trend is driven less by laziness than by anxiety: two in five workers say they are afraid that asking for time off will hurt their standing at work.
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CEO Times take: The data describes a workplace culture corroded by mutual distrust—managers who will not grant honest rest and employees who will not ask for it honestly. That is a management failure before it is an employee failure. Free enterprise runs on accountability, and accountability cannot function when the people setting the standard are violating it at a 50% clip. Companies that tolerate this dynamic are not protecting productivity; they are subsidizing deception while watching deals walk out the door. The fix is not surveillance software or stricter attendance policies—it is leadership that sets clear expectations, rewards output over presence, and makes it safe to ask for a break without career penalty. Anything less is just expensive theater.
