Your guess is right.

They are usually a similar type of person that obtains a sickness benefit. They always suffer from stress or a bad back ( a lot are on ACC) and their jobs have to be covered sometimes for up to a year or in one case four years before we could medically retire them. This is not fair to their colleagues who sometimes have to put up with a stream of temps and always end up shouldering additional work.

With enough experience you can tell some who is genuinely having health problems and you got out of your way to help them but the others…. it is frustrating.

In a large organisation (5000 plus staff)it can be 2.5% (125) of the work force (I researched the issue) that is one hell of a lot of unplanned leave to cover.

Unfortunately, if a patient tells you they are still sick, you are obliged to believe them. Every doctor has too much experience of patients, who you are convinced are malingerers, but turn out to have rare and distressingly severe diseases.

Reminds me of the story about the cardiologist calling into the garage to pick up his car after repairs.

The mechanic says “Hey Doc, I’ve taken off the head, replaced the valves, cleaned the fuel lines and tuned her up.. how come I get paid forty grand a year for that and you get four hundred?”

The Doc smiled and said “Try doing that whilst the motor’s running”.

JC

I suspect it would be considerably more complex, as an operation simulator has to interact with the simulation (a flight simulator just displays “scenery”)