A colleague at my last job (nhs nurse at a community hospital) was very guilty of faking taking sick leave. She had it worked out exactly how much she could take, and when to take it, to avoid going down to half pay.
I was working in the office one day, when my line manager and her manager were saying how the colleague had went to a leaving night out, but she had to use a wheelchair, as she said she struggled to walk more than a few meters. I burst out laughing when I eavesdropped and heard this and my manager asked what was so funny about it. I told them that I had been at the same night out (only other staff member there) and the colleague had not used a wheelchair, but had walked in wearing high heels and had danced all night. I didn’t care if anyone thought I was a tell tale, as I was totally pissed off that she was cheating the system and I as well as lots of other staff had been unable to get time off, because we didn’t have any staff to cover.
Another time when she had been off ‘sick’ for 5 and a half months, her GP had signed her off for another month. I said to the manager, when she was doing the rotas, that colleague wouldn’t be off the whole month. When she asked me why, I said that she was due to go onto half pay halfway through that month, so I would bet my house that she would be back before that happened. She phoned in as fit to work 1 day before she would have went onto half pay.
As you will have gathered, I was really annoyed that she was cheating the system and those of us who (some might say foolishly) really cared about our patients and colleagues were struggling in to work, because we didn’t want to leave the hospital dangerously short of staff.