Every year Careerbuilder apparently polls managers and supervisors around the country, and compiles a Top 10 List of the most unbelievable excuses employees have offered them for missing work. You can read the 2014 list here. Or I’ll just make it easy on you, and copy and paste the important parts:
- Employee just put a casserole in the oven.
- Employee’s plastic surgery for enhancement purposes needed some “tweaking” to get it just right.
- Employee was sitting in the bathroom and her feet and legs fell asleep. When she stood, up she fell and broke her ankle.
- Employee had been at the casino all weekend and still had money left to play with on Monday morning.
- Employee woke up in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it.
- Employee had a “lucky night” and didn’t know where he was.
- Employee got stuck in the blood pressure machine at the grocery store and couldn’t get out.
- Employee had a gall stone they wanted to heal holistically.
- Employee caught their uniform on fire by putting it in the microwave to dry.
- Employee accidentally got on a plane.
Numbers 3, 5, 7, and 10 are pretty great. The rest? Not so much. In my opinion, anyway. I think we can do better. I’ll start the ball rolling, and turn it over to you guys. Mine date all the way back to 1986, across various jobs in different states. You know, just for the record… and in case Big Brother is watching.
In fact, I just thought of something…. Just a few days ago my brother sent me a text message that said something about one of his coworkers calling in because he “hurt himself” while beating off. I didn’t follow up on it, and that probably makes it better. My mind is racing with scenarios. But I would like to know: is that what he told them? Or is it just a workplace rumor? In any case, let’s get to my list…
A portly gentleman called me, and said he’d fallen through the floor of his mobile home, and been stuck for a while. After I stopped laughing, which was a long time, I thanked him for letting me know.
A woman attempted to call in “stressed out” at one of my former jobs, and the director told her: “You’re REALLY going to be stressed out when you’re waiting in line at the unemployment office.” If that happened today the CNN vans would probably roll on the place, and Gloria Allred would be involved.
A man left a message at one of my jobs saying he’d been in a car wreck, both his feet were swollen, and he couldn’t get his shoes on.
A guy called off at one of my jobs, because a bill collector had contacted him earlier in the day, and upset him so much he wasn’t emotionally able to work.
And then there are a million various wimpy-ass call-offs based in emotion and drama. Like “my roommate is having a bad day,” or “my sister had a terrible argument with her boyfriend” and that sort of thing. It’s amazing to me.
I’m sure I could come up with more, but those are the ones that immediately popped into my head. What do you guys have on this subject? Please share in the comments.
And thanks for reading! I’ll see you again soon.
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FIRST!
While working for a notorious armored car company (it rhymes with Dunbar armored) a serial alcoholholic once called and used the excuse that ‘he’s still fishing” and he couldn’t leave because there was “still beer in the keg”. Truly a first world problem that couldn’t be dampened by the the prospect of earning a living
Come on, #4 is pretty good. Anytime anyone calls in with a gambling-related excuse is good. It’s like admitting the problem right there and good reason why that person should be fired but they are so clueless they think it’s OK. Like an alcoholic calling in drunk (actually happened at a place I worked). “Dude, I can’t come in today, I’m still drunk.” Their assumption that it is a perfectly acceptable excuse so much that they don’t even try to make up a cover story is part of the cluelessness that makes it a problem. So yeah, “Dude, I haven’t lost every penny gambling yet, so I have to stay here longer.” is right up that alley.
We had a guy not show up or check in so we called him. He let us know that he was in a local bar so we took his paperwork over to him in the bar and fired him while we had a beer.
My favorite was a woman who called in because she got one of those round hairbrushes stuck in her hair and couldn’t get it out.
Dude, I’ve had that happen. It happens quickly and is a bitch to get out.
Can’t wait until my company switches over to PTO next year. Although I only have called in sick maybe twice in the last two years, now I don’t even have to put on a sick voice. Come to think of it, I just texted my boss those days with a simple “not feeling well” explanation.
Diarrhea….the bad kind
and the good kind would be?
Slightly less diarrhea.
I’ve called in sick with food poisoning so many time you think I licked raw chickens for sport. Yes I was actually just drunk or hungover and yes I was a horrible employee.
When I was on management staff at a movie theater an employee called in and said, “I can’t make it in on time today. I’m runnin’ from the law.” I said, “Okay. See you when you can get here.”
The story was he and a friend had driven a car through the neighbor’s yard after it had rained and gotten it stuck. They proceeded to unstick it and in the process “trenched” the yard. The neighbor came out, wasn’t happy, conflict ensued, Johnny Law got involved, and he couldn’t go home to get his uniform for work until the heat died down.
Where I work, employees let me know when they’re sick. They can send a text, email, or voice mail. I’ve told them they don’t need to get into any details. Just say (or type), “I’m sick, and won’t be in today.” You should hear the voice mails they leave, fake coughing and sounding like they’re in agony.
Hahaha.
From the queen of bullshit stories all of this happened in one day: Her semi Alzheimered mother tied a rubber band onto the dog’s tail. The tail started to swell so the bs artist employee cut the rubber band off. She nicked the tail in the process and it started to bleed. She called the mobile vet who came to her house but got a flat right in front of the driveway. And then she lost her car keys for 2 hours so just put me down for a personal day.
My business partner called me and said he wasn’t going to make it in because he crashed MY airplane and the NTSB and FAA wouldn’t let him go. Actually, he texted that to me along with a picture of the wreckage. I called him.
Guess you don’t need a note for that one
Years ago, I had an inside sales rep (female) that went to the hospital for a week or so every other month.
First, she had an appendectomy. Then, she had her gallbladder removed. Next was a full hysterectomy. At some point, she had kidney stones. And there was a “stomach cancer” scare. It turned out to be Celiacs disease.
She kept getting bigger, too. She went to a surgeon about having gastric bypass. The doctor told her that she weighed 312 pounds, and needed to gain 8 more pounds to be considered morbidly obese to satisfy the insurance. She returned to the doctor the following week and made the cut at 322 pounds. Insurance paid for the surgery and she now weighs about 85 pounds.
I believe she now lives on iced coffee, Marlboros, and Bloody Marys exclusively, and claims she need both knees replaced.
Is her name Jean? Also, does she have nothing left in her abdominal cavity but packing peanuts?
A guy I rode to work with made us late constantly because his “internal alarm” did not wake him up on time. He refused to use a real alarm clock. I started giving him one minute to get out to the car or I’d leave. His internal alarm worked much better after that!
My ridiculous excuse was that I had heart failure/pneumonia. It wasn’t ridiculous because it was a lie. It was ridiculous because it was true! Why I bothered to call in to work (instead of first trying to, you know, GO TO THE HOSPITAL BEFORE I HAD A HEART ATTACK) will always make me wonder how sane I was…I guess pneumonia can make you delusional!