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NEW YORK (Reuters) - 'Tis the season for calling in sick, especially if you're not sick at all. One in three workers has called in sick when they're not in the past year, and the end-of-year holiday season brings a rash of phony absences, experts and studies say. Harried workers are juggling shopping, holiday preparations and family obligations this time of year, on top of perhaps having run out of the year's legitimate vacation days, they say. And the mornings after holiday parties don't help. "We do know just anecdotally in dealing with employers that there certainly is a higher rate ... associated with holidays, catching up on shopping, or spending time with family and friends," said Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for CareerBuilder.com, which conducts an annual survey of employee absenteeism. "You do see a higher incidence." The firm's survey, released this week, showed 32 percent of workers said they called in sick when they felt fine at least once in the last year, and one in 10 said they did so three times or more. Women were more likely to take a sick day when they are not sick than men, by 37 to 26 percent, the survey said. But be careful. The same survey showed 27 percent of hiring managers have fired a worker for calling in sick without a legitimate reason. "The worst part is, if you lie and they see you out at a sporting event or shopping or you run into somebody you know, then it brings your trustworthiness into question," said Sullivan. The trick is doing it right, writes Ellie Bishop, author of "The Sick Day Handbook" that is chock-full of tips for taking a not-really-sick day. She suggests if you're claiming a migraine headache, know there are two kinds, cluster and classic. Claiming Lyme disease is handy, because one symptom is irritability. Conjunctivitis and irritable bowel syndrome are good excuses because no one wants to hear about the symptoms. HOLD YOUR NOSE Call in with your excuse to a co-worker early, before the boss arrives, clear your throat for five minutes beforehand and hold your nose as you speak, she suggests. Never make up anything that might need to be proven, like a doctor's appointment or a trip to a hospital emergency room, she writes. Only try it two or three times a year and, above all, remember your lie, she adds. "I think we can get away with a lot more than we think we can," she said. If you do get caught, Sullivan added, employers tend to be a little bit more understanding than they once were. "If people just need a mental health day or they just need to get away from the office, I think employers are much more understanding of that than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago," she said. "That's a trend that has strengthened certainly over the last few years, where people are just more aware of the work-life balance," Sullivan added, "because you tend to have more productive workers and you have happier workers if they're able to maintain that balance between their commitments at the office and their commitments at home." The CareerBuilder survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive in September among 1,650 workers and 1,150 hiring managers nationwide. CareerBuilder.com is owned by Gannett Co. Inc., Tribune Co. and The McClatchy Co.>. |
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How about trying to do this?
(If you are right handed use right arm and leg, if left handed use left arm and leg. )
While sitting down, raise your foot and start doing circles in the air clockwise, once you have done this for a little while, try and draw a circle in the air with your hand counter clockwise.
Can you do it?
The foot you were moving clock wise will now start moving counter clockwise.
Weird how your body parts try to do what your mind is focusing on.
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(If you are right handed use right arm and leg, if left handed use left arm and leg. )
While sitting down, raise your foot and start doing circles in the air clockwise, once you have done this for a little while, try and draw a circle in the air with your hand counter clockwise.
Can you do it?
The foot you were moving clock wise will now start moving counter clockwise.
Weird how your body parts try to do what your mind is focusing on.
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There is
No Valcano in India
No Theatres in Bhutan
No Coconut trees in UP
No Rain at daytime in Nepal
No Rivers in Arabia
No Trees in Antartica
No snakes in Hawai Island
No Censor on film scenes in France
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
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Bill Gates' house was designed using a Macintosh computer
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The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and the parrot.
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A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
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'Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.
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In 1883 the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa put so much dust into the earth's atmosphere that sunsets appeared green and the moon appeared blue around the world for almost two years.
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"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
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Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Say no evil ).
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The first kind of PENCIL was a bunch of GRAPHITE sticks held together by string. Then someone decided it
would be better to push the graphite into the inside of a hollow wooden stick.
JOSEPH RECHENDORFER was the first person to think of putting a piece of rubber onto the top of a pencil
which makes it real easy to rub out mistakes. (click here to know more about this process)
Did you know that the average lead pencil can draw a line that is almost 35 miles long or you can write
almost 50,000 words in English with just one pencil? Amazing fact! Now imagine an eraser that could match
it !!!
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Every drop of seawater contains approximately 1 billion gold atoms.
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Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "e."
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A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
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Just twenty seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
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Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
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The cockroach has a high resistance to radiation and is the creature most likely to survive a nuclear war.
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Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
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In some places the Monumental Axis is considered "the largest avenue of the world". Yet, when you take a
good look at it you realize it is not that large at all. The Monumental Axis could, in fact, be
considered as two separate avenues of 6 lanes each.
Many web sites even say "The world's widest road is the Monumental Axis in Brazil, where 160 cars can
drive side by side." This is totally crazy!!!
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The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terrabytes(NOTE:There are some dispute that, The human brain doesn't store memories and information in a binary
fashion. What researchers mean is that the human brain has the ability to store textual information equivalent to 2 Terabytes (technically 4 Terabytes if you mean Unicode)Interestingly there are some psycologists who believe that the storage capacity of the brain could be nearly infinite... I say nearly, because I don't understand how it could be infiniteWhen people who arn't physists or mathematicians talk about "infinity", they usually mean a number too large to comprehend or measure.There was an interesting case of this Russian fellow who couldn't forget a thing.... ever. For example, in his 20's some psycologist gave him a verbal test that involved some random number ordering for about 5 minutes, 50 years later he paid that psycologist a visit, and repeated the numbers back to him, the psycologist nearly had a heart-attack aparently.
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For 2 years, the country was run by a president and a vice president who were not elected.Who were they and how did they get into these roles?Answer:President: Gerald FordVice President: Nelson RockefellerHow: When Spiro Agnew resigned his Vice Presidency after pleading "No Contest" to charges of Tax Evasion.
Then president Richard Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as Vice President.After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency after the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford was then sworn in as
president and appointed Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President.They finished out the remainder of the Nixon/Agnew term, but lost their reelection bid to Jimmy
Carter/Walter Mondale.So there you have it, during this 2 year period, we had a president and vice president running the
country who were never elected.
I went to "Wonder La", a theme park near bangalore, yesterday. Its was great fun there. Actually, we were about 17 as a group. In that 17, 5 were non-TI, Chandrasek
ar n Abirami from Novell, Sandhya n Thenmozhi from Honeywell and Me. This trip was planned by my TI friends and i joined with them. All the credits for this trip goes to the TI guys, who took care of everything from Transport to the Lunch... we went in a swaraj mazda...It was b'day for one of my friend in TI, we call him "DON" (actually, made us to call him like that). So we stopped somewhere on the way to the park for his b'day cake-cutting, followed by the b'day beats...
All through the way to the park, we played "Anthakshari". Its was the battle between tamil and hindi songs, as 7 were from tamilnadu and the rest from other places in India. I have never played or seen such a kind of anthakshari... As they dont know the tamil songs (actually, they dont even know tamil words), we used to decide the song which we are going to sing next, before they finish their song. Then we put the alphabet, with which they end their song, at the starting and sing the song which we decided before. And i think they did far worse than us, as they used to sing the same song again-n-again... But we'll enjoyed a lot...
The battle came to an end as we reached the park. Our Finance Manager, none other than Kumar, got the tickets for all and we entered the fun land at around 12pm.
I dont remember the name of the first ride, but the ride is all about going up, followed by a free fall... As it was a holiday in Karnataka, there was a huge crowd at the park. so we waited for more than half an hour to get in that ride. Then we went for the ride called "hurricane". We chose that as that was the only ride with little crowd waiting. We waited in the queue for a little time only. But that was compensated by the problem in equipment. So we waited in the seat of that ride for a long time. We all got fried under the hot sun. Finally they said it's not working, and we came back disappointed without riding. But we were satishfied by the next
ride called "maverick", which kept us upside down for some time. The next ride, i dont remember the name, was good as we could see all our faces. It was like a wave, going up and down... it started in circling forward first, then backwards... Then to a ride named "Insanity",
my most fav ride in the park... it tumbled us like anything... We dont get any chance to think which side we will be moving... It was so good that i went to that ride twice.After all these dry rides and standing in the long queues for each ride, its not strange to get hungry... we were hungry to the core. But by the time we went to the restaurant, there was no meals. so we all had fried rice and/or jeera rice with some soft drinks.
We then got ourself prepared for the water rides and the enjoyed each and every ride there. We even had some races in some of the rides as to reach the farthest in the rides.we then moved to the "wonder splash" as the cart like rail wagon splashes the water as we descended from the cave like structure.
Then we all went for the "RAIN DISCO" at 6 pm. there everyone was dancing non-stop for about 20
mins in an disco environment and water pouring from above. dont get scared or control you laugh, as i say that "everyone" includes me too.we then spent some time in the wave pool. As it was getting late, we all then prepared to move. As we changed the wet clothes, we had some snacks and then we decided to go for the "Giant Wheel". But to all our disappointment, the honey-bees ruined our ride. The great thing about that gaint wheel is that it was mounted on top of a ten stories bu
ilding. So after some photo session, we all dashed ourselves in the "Dashing Car". Then we all prepared to leave the wonderful land. we took some snaps at the entrance and the bus, and boarded te bus.But it was not the end of our fun. The fun continued as we started playing a game called "Mafia". This was introduced and explained by abirami n chandrasekar. It was very good game. Its all about logic and find from others reactions. We all got involved so much that we didnt realize that we reached our place. all the BTM people got down there. Sandhya n thenmozhi went home and me, chandrasekar, sowmiya,abirami n naveen went to "Friends corner", a small restaurant near our place, had some good chat and good dinner too. So finally, the fun day ended at 11 pm, as we went to sleep.
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