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Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation.
In schools, frequent unexcused absences are considered to be truancy, and may have substantial legal penalties for both the student and the parents. Frequent absence from school is associated with failing grades, poor performance, disciplinary problems and long term social difficulties.
Frequent absence from the workplace may be indicative of poor morale or of sick building syndrome. However, many employers have implemented draconian absence policies which make no distinction between absences for genuine illness and absence for inappropriate reasons. As a result, many employees feel obligated to come to work while ill, and transmit communicable diseases to their co-workers. This leads to even greater absenteeism and reduced productivity among other workers who try to work while ill.
Many Clerics in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially higher ecclesiastics, held several benefices (or church offices) simultaneously but they seldom visited their benifices, let alone performed the spiritual responsibilities those offices entailed. Instead, they collected revenues from all of them and hired a poor priest, paying him just a fraction of the income to fulfill the spiritual duties of a particualar church.
Absentee landlords, who own property but rent its use out to others, are often considered a major social problem in areas with a wide disparity between rich and poor. A large proportion of absentee landlords is often considered an indicator of urban blight.
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