# Managers Are Quietly Taking the Same Sick Days They Accuse Gen Z and Millennials Of Faking > A new survey of two thousand managers finds that most suspect their employees of inventing excuses to sneak off during summer, and half admit to doing exactly the same thing themselves, a gap between stated workplace culture and lived behavior that says more about employer trust than about any single generation. - Source: Media Broker Daily - Canonical URL: https://news.mediabroker.org/article/managers-are-quietly-taking-the-same-sick-days-they-accuse-gen-z-and-millennials-of-faking - Author: Media Broker Daily Editorial - Section: Branding - Published: 2026-08-26T09:38:58.937Z - Updated: 2026-08-26T09:38:58.937Z - Tags: employer branding, workplace culture, Gen Z, millennials, quiet vacationing, management --- Managers have spent years grumbling about Gen Z and millennial staff supposedly gaming the system for extra time off, but a new survey suggests the accusation cuts both ways. PDFFly polled two thousand managers and senior managers and found that eighty five percent suspect their own employees of using fake excuses to grab unofficial time off in summer. Half of those same managers admitted they do it too, disappearing from their desks under the same kind of cover story they assume their teams are using on them. ## The excuses barely change from one rank to the next What stands out in the survey is not just the behavior but how identical it looks across the org chart. Managers and employees alike lean on the same short list of pretexts, a Wi-Fi outage that never happened, a medical appointment invented on the spot, a sick day claimed while feeling perfectly fine, or a family obligation stretched well past its actual size. When the people setting expectations for honesty around time off are running the same playbook as the people they manage, the line between rule and ritual starts to blur. ## Quiet vacationing has already become routine among younger workers The pattern lines up with separate research from Resume Builder, which found that nearly forty percent of millennials now practice what has been dubbed quiet vacationing, taking time off without formally requesting it or telling their employer. Of those workers, forty three percent limit themselves to a few days here and there, while a quarter stretch it into a full week off the books. Underneath that behavior sits a specific fear rather than simple mischief, roughly forty percent of workers say they worry that openly asking for time off will hurt how they are seen professionally. ## The cost shows up in missed deals, not just missed hours None of this comes free for employers. Sixty percent of managers in the PDFFly survey said productivity visibly drops during summer, with eighteen percent calling the dip significant and forty two percent describing it as a slight but real slowdown. A third of managers went further, reporting that their company had actually lost a client or missed a deal because of summer absences. Even among people who technically stay logged in, commitment can quietly evaporate, close to ten percent of managers admitted to being online without doing any real work. ## Anxiety, not laziness, is doing the driving The people studying this behavior keep landing on the same read, this is not about employees or managers trying to get away with something for its own sake. It is about a workforce that does not feel safe asking for rest through the front door. Some workers are leaning on medical leave protections specifically because that route feels safer from judgment than simply saying they need a break, turning a benefit meant for illness into the only socially acceptable way to step back. On social platforms like TikTok, workers have started describing quiet vacationing less as a scheme and more as a coping mechanism, crediting it with real mental health benefits precisely because it lets them rest without the friction of asking permission. ## What it says about the culture companies advertise For a publication that watches how brands build trust, the real story here is not about generational habits at all. It is about the distance between the flexible, supportive culture many companies market to recruits and the version employees actually experience once they are inside. A workplace that talks up unlimited paid time off or a results only culture but still leaves both junior staff and their own managers feeling they have to lie to take a break has a credibility problem no careers page can paper over. Employer brand claims tend to hold up only as far as the honesty gap between them and daily practice, and right now, by employers' own admission, that gap runs from the newest hire all the way up to the people managing them. --- Originally published by Media Broker Daily. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://news.mediabroker.org/article/managers-are-quietly-taking-the-same-sick-days-they-accuse-gen-z-and-millennials-of-faking.