10 dumb excuses for being late
June 26, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Americans with Disabilities Act, FMLA, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Uncategorized
State and federal laws give employees the right to miss work for a lot of reasons. None of these excuses fall into that category.
A recent CareerBuilder.com survey asked employees about their own tardiness habits. The result: 15% of them are late at least once a week.
The most common excuses were traffic, bad weather and having to get kids ready for school. But a full quarter of the employees surveyed said they regularly lie about why they were late. Here were the 10 most ridiculous reasons they gave:
- I dreamed that I was fired, so I didn’t want to get out of bed.
- I couldn’t find the right tie, so I had to wait for the stores to open so I could buy one.
- I was up all night arguing with God.
- A raccoon stole my work shoe off my porch.
- I wasn’t thinking and accidentally went to my old job.
- While rowing across the river to work, I got lost in the fog.
- My son tried to flush our ferret down the toilet and I needed to tend to the ferret.
- I didn’t have money for gas because all of the pawn shops were closed.
- My dog dialed 911, and the police wanted to question me about what “really” happened.
- I just wasn’t “feelin’ it” this morning.
Have you or your managers ever heard any excuses that can top those? Let us know in the comments section.
Tags: CareerBuilder, excuses, lateness
June 26th, 2008 at 6:44 am
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 10:30 am
How about, “I was bitten by a chicken.”? It was a new one on us.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I was driving to work and a tree jumped out in front of my car…..
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 am
How about “It’s a Holy Day of Obligation and I have to take my son to Mass.” (Note that other people of the same faith also work in the office and attend Mass in the evening.)
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:02 am
I had an employee call in sick and said it was his “eyes”. When ask the next day about his eyes, he said he just couldn’t see coming to work.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 am
My favorite was a guy who said he lost his passport in Mexico and had to pay a guy to get him across the border. The thing is he was a US Citizen, and this was before 9/11 when border crossing for citizens was very easy.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 am
My cat fell out the window and I was afraid it would be hit by traffic!
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 am
How about “I forgot my teeth so I had to turn around & go back home”. (The nut job wore dentures.)
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:15 am
My favorite was having an employee tell me that she couldn’t drive to work because it was raining.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
How about “I have a hangover and am not coming in today” The audacity of the younger generation just amazes me.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
How about someone trying to leave early. ” I have to go home and feed my diabetic fish” This was told to one of our supervisors!
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
This subject matter was so comical at our company that I started to keep a list of all the wildest excuses employees gave me, names excluded of course. One of the best was a new hire who called me and said he would be about 20 minutes late because when he woke up his bed was on fire. Then there’s the guy who said “They found a dead body near my house and the cops want to talk to me.” (never verified) ….and the last one I’ll share is “The State Police, helicopters, swat team… surrounded my house and the whole area last night looking for a murderer… We were detained all night… Got no sleep…I’ll be questioned today.” (also never verified) I just chaulk it up to another day in HR and laugh as I add them to the list.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
My pregnant wife is due any day now and I went in to sympathetic contractions. You can call her if you want.
My mother-in-law is visiting us and she is on my case so much I was afraid to get any sleep.
I’m such a sound sleeper that I don’t hear the alarm.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
A secretary called in absent due to a suicide in her family. We inquired who and where. Between her huge sobs and wailing here is the story. “My fish committed suicide. I had just gotten it a few days before and put it in the bowl. It was a brim that our pump had pulled into the reservoir from our pond. i thought it was pretty and put it in a small fish bowl in the house. It was so depressed that it swam around and around real fast and jumped out of the bowl. I was appalled that I had left the room and did not find it on the floor until some hours later and it was too late to revive it. ”
(we never verified her story). It was hard just holding on the phone.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
Even though I know what time I’m supposed to be at work, I’m too short to see the timeclock, so it’s the timeclock’s fault if I’m late!!
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:31 am
There was a herd of cows blocking the road and I couldn’t get them to move.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
These are great! While the one about the hangover is frustrating, at least s/he was honest! My secretary (who misses work on a regular basis for some of the lamest reasons) came to me one day and said she had to leave work to be with her 20+ year-old daughter because she (her daughter) had just broken up with her boyfriend. The excuse is particularly ridiculous considering her daughter’s LONG list of ex-boyfriends - I guess that one was pretty darned special!) I couldn’t even respond - just looked at her and said, “Uh, OK.” Left me speechless!
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I work with all guys so it does amaze me as to what they come up with. The most recent was; “My knee hurts and is bothering me I am going to take a day of rest.” Now mind you the day before he spoke with both me and the General Manager that the next day could he take a half day cause his daughter was graduating from 7th grade. We both said we didn’t see a problem with it. Then he calls the owner the next morning and says his knee is hurt. We didn’t question it because it was unpaid time off but wondered why he used two different excuses. The other one I loved was “I just don’t hear the alarm clock and I have no ambition I don’t know what is wrong with me!” I really like the one’s that don’t show up or call and come in the next day like nothing happened and no excuses. People are strange.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
After a series of lame excuses, the employee started calling in late stating the death of some either a near or a distant relative. She said that she was on long “console phone calls” with the near and dear ones since she couldn’t be with them physically. Left me speechless with the same excuse everytime.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I had an employee who needed to go home early to care for her sick child. Okay fine. Her coworker came in to me later to complain that the manager had given the employee the afternoon off. Come to find out the sick daughter is 17 and the sickness was a pimple.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Heard this from a friend who is a supervisor at a nuclear power plant. They’re bending over backwards to bring in younger people, train them; all kinds of great pay, bennies, etc. A young lady called in during her first week of work and said she would be in late that day because her cell phone had broken and she had to wait until the store opened at 10 AM so she could get a new one before coming to work. And she will be running the plant some day? Be afraid, be very afraid.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
This one left me dumbfounded… I had an employee that was a trainer and wasn’t in the office 30 minutes into the start of their class. I placed a call at their home to wake them up and this is the excuse I was given. I was in a state of unconsciousness and your phone call to me woke me out of it.
This person stated they were on medication, but the thing that made me doubt the realism of the story was their spouse answered the phone and knew what time they were to be at work and didn’t wake them up out of their unconsciousness.
This person had a long history of unbelievable stories and was on a PIP from previous tardiness and absense violations and was ultimately let go after this infraction.
July 8th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
As I was about to get on the bus I saw a sign that said, “Passengers Must Carry Dogs on Bus.” It took me 30 minutes to find a dog.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:46 am
The strangest ever was an employee (in the HR Dept mind you) who called in “mad”. Seems there had been a disagreement with a fellow co-worker the prior day that I wasn’t even aware of. I said fine, take a personal day (we had personal hours as part of our paid time off) and the next day we discussed appropriate reasons for calling in and “mad” wasn’t one of those.
July 15th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
We had an employee who called in (on a Monday) because both she and her son had pink eye. She came in the next day and both eyes were clear. She said that she rinsed it out with Mineral Water and was healed within 24 hours. It’s amazing that doctor’s never prescribe this miracle cure.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
My Favorite one is we had an employee call-in late. His excuse left me wondering about him.
“I am going to be late today because I hit a deer on my way in to work.”
The same employee’s wife called in about an hour later and said the her husband wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day and if she couldn’t raise bail money 4 o’clock this afternoon he would be late tomorrow as well.
When he showed up for work two days later he brought a copy of the incident report with him.
Apparently he hit the deer with a 30.06 and was field dressing it on the side of the road and a forest ranger caught him.
He was fired when he was caught doing the samething about a month later while on the clock on the way back to the office from one of our clients. He was fired for having a personal weapon in a company owned vehicle.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
My all time favorite excuse from an employee: My wife’s boyfriend forgot to wak me up.