When I worked for Major Bank, the absence policy was quite liberal. We got so many hours a year of paid time off to use however we wished. So, if we woke up and it was a gorgeous day and we decided to go golfing, we just had to call in and say "I'm not going to be there today". They really didn't care why. There was a points based attendance system, so if you took an unplanned absence, it did count against you, but the way it was structured it would have been really difficult to get into any trouble by taking occasional golf/ski days. The only real problem was for chronic illness, but that only became a problem if you couldn't document the illness. They were pretty liberal in granting intermittent FMLA leave, so if you had something ongoing with yourself or a dependent, it didn't count against you anyway.