The annual sick season is upon us.

The first signs of fall each year inaugurate the cold and flu season — along with higher absence rates at work and school.

But studies and surveys make it clear that illness gets two-thirds of the blame for “sick” days. One-third of the reasons are all over the map.

Take the employee who couldn’t come to work because of a toe stuck in a faucet. Or the employee who was upset after watching “The Hunger Games” movie. Or the one whose hair turned orange in a home dye job.

All three were real-life examples shared in a recent CareerBuilder survey in which human resource managers were asked for unusual absence excuses they’d heard.

The excuses may be funny, but business managers and productivity experts aren’t laughing.

American workers take about 2.8 million work days of unplanned absences a year, not counting planned vacation days, holidays or personal days. And that costs billions of dollars in lost productivity.

A 2010 Mercer/Marsh report on the financial effect of employee absences said the cost of unplanned time off amounted to 5.8 percent of total payroll costs.

The new CareerBuilder survey found that next to being sick, the most common reason workers call in sick is because they “don’t feel like going to work.” One-third of the respondents admitted that reason.

Nearly one-third said they called in sick simply because they “felt like they needed to relax.” Other excuses included catching up on sleep or running errands.

All of those reasons are likely to be used more frequently as the year winds down. December ranks as the most popular month to call in sick.