UNLESS you have the moral fibre of a Franciscan Monk there is every likelihood you have taken a day off work when you didn’t really need to. Come on admit it – even if it was a dubious sickie when you were feeling just a tad under the weather and a day at home looked very inviting, you’ve done it.

I’m not talking about your being serial absentee, just that there were days when you could have gone to work but gave into temptation. At school it is called truancy, but when we become grown up we call it sophisticated things like skiving.

Indeed it was schooldays that saw me throw my first sickie. It was Pete Goddard’s idea. Three of us bailed out of the bus at one of the stops on our way to school in North Wales and spent the day roaming woods and fields. The trouble is in our 11-year-old naivety we didn’t think it all through properly, were easily rumbled and suitably punished in such a way that the adventure wasn’t repeated – ever.

Of course serial absenteeism is a serious problem for businesses costing the country millions of pounds in lost work. Indeed it became such a big issue that companies and organisations have cracked down to weed it out by implementing tough sickness reviews to weed out those who swing the lead more than most.

Take four days off sick now over a given period and you’re likely to be hauled up before the boss to be asked if ‘everything is all right?’ It’s supposed to be a friendly encounter, but you are made aware that you’ve stepped onto a path and are now under close scrutiny.

The casual sickies can work round this policy with careful planning. However deciding to have a day off is one thing, what you use for an excuse is an entirely different matter. The flu – i.e. snuffly nose is probably the most common followed by the ‘I’ve got a virus’ which covers a multitude of options that need no explanation.

No one wants you in the office when you’ve ‘got a virus’. That could put ideas and/or germs into the heads of the rest of the workforce.

Personally I prefer the more inventive excuses used by staff.

‘We have a crisis at home and I have to wait in for the gas/electric/washing machine engineer to come and they never give you a time.’ Others can revolve round deaths in the family, transport problems and escaped pets.

Clearly though, Aaron Siebers was struggling to come up with a plausible reason for bunking off work for the day. So he stabbed himself. Truly.

The 29-year-old told his boss at Blockbuster in Edgewater, Colorado that he had been attacked. Certainly that would win the sympathy vote, but it transpired that he was so desperate to have a day off work that he stabbed himself in the leg.

Personally I find that a little extreme and fraught with difficulties.

First of all it is going to hurt. Causing deliberate pain to yourself seems a little excessive just for a day off work.

Secondly, even if you do go down that route there are innumerable problems. You might actually stab something vital.

Now I don’t know how good old Aaron was at biology at school, but I was rubbish. What I do know is that there are bits inside me that it’s not wise to stab and I’d put the leg pretty high on the list because I know there is some sort of vein thingy that is a major blood route.

Once having decided to stab himself rather than go down the ‘I’ve got a virus’ path for a day off I wonder about the conversation Aaron had with himself over where to plunge the knife.

Having decided against the leg I would then have to go through a process of elimination which would rule out all the middle bits of my body as I’m not exactly sure where bits like the heart, kidney, liver and pancreas are.

The head is clear a no-no and being left-handed I could only stab myself in the right arm which, again, is the source of a major arterial route – the M25 of the body if you like.

So my stabbing excuse could end up being pretty feeble.

“HI there, I’m not going to be in work today. I’ve been viciously assaulted outside the house and been stabbed in my little toe.”