Excuses for missing work.

[ukaserex]

I've had a very interesting year at work. I work for a small subsidiary owned by a larger business. Within this subsidiary is my boss, me, and who I like to call, my minion. Three of us.

My boss tells me the plan for the week, then I don't see much of him until the next week.

The "minion" position so far has been held by three different people.

The first guy was what I'd call a former drunk. Jerry is his name. He never missed work. He did however lose his job because he came into work stoned out of his mind.

The second fellow, Matt, is someone I call the twerp, or tweedle dum. Not the brightest bulb in the Christmas tree. If he misses a day of work, he'd have to be retrained. But, he is honest, and for the most part, a decent worker. A sickly kid, though. 5'9", maybe 150 pounds, if that. At 25, he's always hungry. And, once he eats, his stomach hurts. I think in the past year he's worked for me, he might have felt good maybe 4 days.

Matt had given his notice three months ago. In his place, Mitch was hired. The minion position is a mon-fri, 9-5 position. During the 6 weeks that Mitch worked, he missed at least one day each week. The excuses that are given have always made me literally shake my head.

For your amusement, I thought I'd share some of these excuses. Some of you may need them for when CoH goes live (yeah, I'm optimistic)

1. Dude, I forgot to roll my windows up last night. There's like a foot of standing water in my car. I gotta find a shop-vac. Will be in by noon.
 (noon came and went, no Mitch)
2. Dude, my car got repo'd! (no show for the day)
3. I gotta take my car to the shop, my tire's are messed up. (It was Monday. Isn't it a shame that tires can never be fixed on the weekend?) No show.
4. My work clothes aren't dry yet. Will try to be there by noon. (no show)

He'd probably still be pulling stunts like this, but big boss caught him pencil-whipping him with his time card. (writing in a later time on departure, writing in an earlier time upon arrival)

Well, yesterday, my daughter tells me she's just been told the craziest, lamest excuse ever. (She's a shift supervisor where she works)
"I can't find my pants."

So - I'm curious - what are the craziest excuses to get out of work that you've heard or used before?

[Lupur]

Heh, these sort of threads always make me giggle.

A few months ago, we had a forklift driver who'd call in sick every Friday, yet it took his supervisor about 8 weeks to fire him..

At one point, 3 weeks in a row his kid was attacked by dogs on his way home from school, so he had to wait in intensive care....

The best one, which was also the last one was sent via SMS :

Sorry, can't come in today. My socks are wet.

[Aggelakis]

Someone other than my employee called in, pretending to be my employee, saying he was sick and couldn't come in. I called him out on it and told him my employee, whose voice I can easily recognize, has to call himself in. He didn't. No show.

The next day, a girl called and said my employee was still sick, like strung-out sick. So sick he wasn't even waking up for only a couple minutes at a time. I told her my employee had to call in during one of those "awake for a couple minutes" times. He didn't. No show.

Turns out he was in jail on a warrant for a bogus domestic abuse charge from out of state (ex girlfriend from Texas is vindictive). We gave him a "first and final" (meaning his next writeup would be termination) and he never tried to pull any more stupid stunts like that. After nearly two years, his last day was today, so I made him cupcakes.

[eabrace]

I don't miss work very often.  (It helps that I apparently have one hell of an immune system, but I digress...)

Of course, I do occasionally miss work for some of those really mundane little issues we all have from time to time - flat tires, dead battery, etc.  "It's snowing like hell out here, there are accidents everywhere, traffic is a mess, I've been on the road for almost an hour, and I'm still not even half way to work yet."  (I ended taking 2.5 hours to get in that morning and ate part of my lunch in the car at one point when traffic was stopped for a while.)

Sometimes it's just a comedy of errors.  "My car won't start and the MFD is telling me it needs to be serviced, so I have to have it towed in to the dealership, wait for a ride from the dealership's courtesy driver, get a loaner from the dealership so I can drive in to work, come back home to pick the dog up, and drop the dog at doggy daycare before I drive the 40 miles to work."  (Turned out to just be a dead battery, but that's in the wheel well on that car, so I still wouldn't have been able to do much about it myself.)

And there are always the unexpected catastrophic failures.  "The spring on my garage door pulley exploded when I put the door down last night.  It even threw a couple of rollers off the track.  I can't open the door to get the car out, so I'm waiting on a repair guy.  I should be in as soon as he's done."

But every once in a while there's a really amusing story involved.

"I need to leave and go home because I just split a four inch hole in my jeans that starts in the crotch and runs straight down the inseam.  Although it wouldn't bother me to walk around the office that way for the rest of the day, I suspect other people might be a little disturbed by that.  Would you like me to come by to show you before I leave just so that you know I'm not making this up?"  (He did not require proof.)

"After an inch or two of snow last night, the freezing rain we got on top of that formed a solid crust.  There's a sheet of solid ice up against my door and I can't budge it to get out of the house.  I'm going to have to find a different way out and it might take me a while to get in."  (I ended up using my heat gun to melt the ice on the storm door on my back porch so that I could get a pair of vice grips on the thumb screws holding the window in the door.  I continued melting the ice and removing the screws until I got the window pane out so that I could climb out through the door's window.  Then I had to break the ice in front of the rear entry door on the garage to get it open wide enough to squeeze through.  After that, it was just a matter of getting the shovel out and clearing the ice and snow off the sidewalk in front of the porch and garage.  All in all, I think it took me about three hours to get into work - and I only had a five mile commute at that time.)

[Fridgy Daiere]

"The dog vomited on himself, my son, and all over the back seat and floorboard on the way home from the vet; it's gonna take a bit of time to shampoo all of them."

I was delivering pizzas at the time, so shampooing the car before work was non-optional.  I passed off the living creatures to Happ.   

[eabrace]

[microc]

use the trashcat image and say my cat stuck in a basket and i got to take him to the vets.

[ryuplaneswalker]

"A new Patch in City of Heroes came out"

I have said that taking a vacation day off work once.

[ukaserex]

"A new Patch in City of Heroes came out"

I have said that taking a vacation day off work once.

That's not quite the same thing, taking a vacation day, or announcing your intent ahead of time. I was speaking more about those times when a co-worker calls in (or texts)at the last minute that they won't be coming in when expected because of something like, "I lost my keys" or, "This person I met at the bar last night refuses to leave, so I have to call the police"...

[Twisted Toon]

That's not quite the same thing, taking a vacation day, or announcing your intent ahead of time. I was speaking more about those times when a co-worker calls in (or texts)at the last minute that they won't be coming in when expected because of something like, "I lost my keys" or, "This person I met at the bar last night refuses to leave, so I have to call the police"...

I have used, "The radiator in my car exploded on my way into work. Sorry, but I can't make it the rest of the way in because I need to get my car towed and fixed."

What was interesting was that I was 3/4 of the way to work when the radiator exploded. Well, exploded is a bit much, really. The radiator broke where the hose attaches onto it. But, exploded sounds more dramatic. I also used the excuse that my transmission died as well.

Both are true stories too.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Not really an excuse, in fact its about the opposite and was just pure honesty.  But I worked as a cook at ski resort for a little bit living the snow bum dream.  However I worked during the days, all day.  So this limited my ability to snowboard every day.  So on several occasions if I woke up and it was dumping out side.  I would call in and tell them I wanted to go snowboarding and I wasn't able to make it.  They made up a term for this after I did for a few times, and told me I had to limit the amount of "Powder days" I took a month.  We were always overstaffed and a lot of the people I worked with didn't ski or snowboard for some reason.  So they virtually let me go every time, only saying "No" when they had to keep my in my place as an employee and not a guy who shows up to work when he feels like it.

[Teikiatsu]

My driveway is covered in ice and I can't get on the road.

True story.  My driveway is on a slope upwards to our streets and if my wife and I don't park strategically the night before then we can get stuck after an icestorm.

[ukaserex]

I can almost believe this about my co-worker, if in fact, our city were large enough to have buildings that had revolving doors.

"I can't come in. I'm stuck in a revolving door."

[ryuplaneswalker]

That's not quite the same thing, taking a vacation day, or announcing your intent ahead of time. I was speaking more about those times when a co-worker calls in (or texts)at the last minute that they won't be coming in when expected because of something like, "I lost my keys" or, "This person I met at the bar last night refuses to leave, so I have to call the police"...

It was a job where you can call off an hour beforehand and use a vacation day for it, I have no idea why the place thought that was a remotely good idea..but it was a thing they did.

[Excidia]

I got food poisoning once.  (you are hereby warned)

I worked at Dominos as a manager in training for about a month.  15 hour marathon shifts on days the manager didn't like to work.  You were expected to eat on the run; no breaks.  I'd cook myself a plate of chicken wings and eat one or two as I waited for pizzas or calls or whatever needed done.  Apparently I didn't cook them long enough, or they were old and going bad, but around 12 hours into my open to close on a friday I started feeling really bad.  Sweats, clammy skin, several trips to the toilet.  I finished my shift without soiling myself but spent the next 16 hours in the bathroom at least once an hour.  I'd gotten very little sleep, was dehydrated and generally felt like crap...and still occasionally running to the toilet with little advanced warning.  I called in and told my boss, she agreed to work my shift for me.  Went in the next day (still with occasional runs to the toilet but not like clockwork anymore) and she fired me for lying about being sick and skipping work.

Worked out for the best, 2 weeks later I found a more pay/less work position and I've been there for 18 years.

At this job I'm part of HR and I've heard a few amusing ones.  We used to have a guy named Ben who was the shop monkey in the machine shop.  Ben had issues with showing up to work, for years.  His shift started at 8am, he'd arrive sometime between 9 and 10 most days.  He called in several times around 3pm because that's when he woke up.  Another time was a no call/no show because he was in jail for hitting 2 houses, over a mile apart, with his car (swears he wasn't drunk) and the only reason the cops knew it was him was he left his bumper at the second house.  Once his girlfriend called the cops on him so he was in a neighboring state for a couple days.  He finally got fired for staying home to clean out his garage (and the no call/no show for that day).  Poor kid, the world was against him (sarcasm).  Funny thing is, he was a hard worker when he showed up.

Another guy skips every friday.  Doesn't even call in anymore.  He's hourly, and his supervisor doesn't care, so nothing is done as long as he's honest on his time sheet.

e-

[healix]

My favorite I ever heard was, "I can't come in because of my eyes......................I just can't see coming to work today"

[ukaserex]

My favorite I ever heard was, "I can't come in because of my eyes......................I just can't see coming to work today"

Love this one!

[Atlantea]

I swear on my grandparents graves this is absolutely true and happened to me -


*RING RING*   My Boss picks up the phone - "_________ Towers, Security Chief Lasley, what can I do for you?"

ME:  "Uhm... Boss... I don't think I'm gonna be able to make it in for this evenings shift..."

Mr. Lasley: "So what's the story?"

ME: "Well, I'm standing on the median watching my car go up in flames."

Mr. Lasley: "Uh... Say again?"

ME: "My car caught fire as I was driving in to work. Don't know how. Started in the transmission well. Smoke, flames. I had to pull over fast and bail out. I'm on my Dad's mobile phone he'd let me borrow... managed to get out with that at least before the fire took over the whole passenger compartment. I'm uh... just standing here watching the whole thing burn up. *Cracking noise audible over the phone* Oh. There goes the windows... Excuse me just a sec. I think I'm still too close, I need to back away..."

Mr. Lasley: "William, do NOT worry about this. I'll have your shift covered. Do what you have to do, man."

ME: "Thanks, boss. I really appreciate it..."


To this day I'm not sure what happened. But I wasn't joking or kidding at all. Had the photos and the insurance report to prove it. A Volvo sedan I had barely had for two weeks. POOF. Up in flames with no warning. I literally was scrambling to grab my gear and get out of the car ahead of the flames. The phone I called in on was one of those ancient "Brick" types from the early 90s (which is when this happened). Ultimately the insurance paid for it. The car was of course completely totaled. Burned down practically to the frame. The only thing we managed to salvage were the wheels.

My Boss - even the guy who had to pull a double shift - were cool with it once they saw everything.

My boss at that job occasionally liked to kid me "Now I really HAVE heard every possible 'late to work' excuse!" 

[SerialBeggar]

[Joshex]

back when I had steady work I was more like Dante from clerks "Name can you come in and do a double today?", "but I just got off working till close last night, oh fine.."

There was only one time I actually called in for leave with an excuse, faked being sick, it usually doesn't work but I'm a good actor, it wasn't what I said but how I said it.