Work notes: "Can’t anyone suck it up anymore?"

Work notes are totally bogus.
Most people sick enough that they should reasonably miss work (and perhaps avoid infecting co-workers too) are far too well for emergency care, even too well to justify an office visit.
It’s just one way that employers can make their employees lives miserable, by taking someone who should legitimately be in bed and draging them to the ER and forking over a co-pay. Is this really cost saving for the employer who has to pay their part of the ER visit?

Naturally there are places where absenteeism tends to go up on mondays and fridays, and especially during deer season.
For real data most human resource departments are probably hesitant to talk, but here is a peer reviewed article suggesting the monday/friday phenomenon is real http://oem.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/12/818