Long-standing bug with Absence Notes.

For a fair bit of time, as far as I know, since the sign in system was implemented, there has been a very annoying bug with the absence notes. I've seen many people complain about it in other areas of the forums, but I did not find it here. If I missed it, then I apologize. This is a bug that is usually rather minor in the greater scope of things. This bug prevents you from using your absence note to do a fill check. Exact cause is unknown. Known workarounds entail waiting until daily reset and then trying again. This generally works. It has been postulated that you can only use absence notes for fill checks BEFORE signing in for the day. The validity of this is variable. Sometimes absence notes work perfectly fine after signing in, and other times they will not work at all.
The general symptoms for this bug entail having an absence note in your inventory (does creating it yourself have any effect?), most people have already signed in for the day and then "fill check" is clicked, with a burnt bear selected, or not selected, or much of anything. The "fill check" button will visually depress, as if it has been clicked. However, when you pull your mouse away, NOTHING has changed. While irritating, this bug seems to be able to be worked around if you wait for the next server day.
Where people (such as myself) get upset, is when, for whatever reason, towards the end of the month we need to use an absence note for our character. Few things are more frustrating than sitting there, as I did last month, watching time tick down to the new month, when my character has made sign in for each of the previous ten months, and ONE stupid sign in separates you from 4 absences (screwed) and 3 (just fine). When you sit there and continue to click on a fill button that SHOULD be working, but instead, ten months of work go into the **** because of this stupid bug... well, you can see how a minor annoyance can really start pissing people off..
I KNOW I'm not the only one who has dealt with this. Please chime in with any information you can add.

P.S. I have time-stamped screen shots of me pressing the hell out of the "fill check" button, with the absence note in my inventory. If you can't pull them from tech support, I can furnish them.