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Calling in sick to work? Don’t use one of these excuses


The Instant Excuse Ball
The Instant Excuse Ball

Web Watch has worked for two types of companies:

  • Those that split up holidays, vacation, and sick time into three separate trackable categories
  • Those that give employees a giant bucket of PTO (paid time off) for the employee to do with as they please

The philosophy behind the former is that an employee would have a bank of sick days that are available even if they use up all their vacation. 

The philosophy of the latter is that employees should be treated like adults, and if they want to use all their “sick” days as actual vacation then it’s up to them do choose to do so.

There really are pros and cons of both.  There’s nothing wrong with taking a “mental health day”, but having official vacation days that can be scheduled helps the organization ensure that there is proper coverage for whatever they happen to need staff for.

Which brings us to CAREERBUILDER’s LIST OF MOST OUTRAGEOUS “I’m not coming to work” EXCUSESCareerBuilder surveyed 3,100 workers and more than 2,400 employers to come up with the following:

  1. Employee said a chicken attacked his mom.
  2. Employee’s finger was stuck in a bowling ball.
  3. Employee had a hair transplant gone bad.
  4. Employee fell asleep as his desk while working and hit his head, causing a neck injury.
  5. Employee said a cow broke into her house and she had to wait for the insurance man.
  6. Employee’s girlfriend threw a Sit n Spin through his living room window.
  7. Employee’s foot was caught in the garbage disposal.
  8. Employee called in sick from a bar at 5:00 p.m. the night before.
  9. Employee said he wasn’t feeling too clever that day.
  10. Employee had to mow the lawn to avoid a lawsuit from the home owner’s association
  11. Employee called in the day after Thanksgiving because she burned her mouth on a pumpkin pie.
  12. Employee was in a boat on Lake Erie and ran out of gas and the coast guard towed him to the Canadian side

The most popular reason given for calling in sick with a made-up excuse was that they “just didn’t feel like going to work”.  Other reasons for phoning it in were “just needing to relax” and “catching up on sleep”, along with doctor appointments, unexpected family plans, or having to run errands.