Stupidest reasons for calling out, or being late

[MaggieTheCat]

I've heard almost every one of these before, or a variation of them, when I worked at the call center (I took the call-ins for the call center and the warehouse portions of the company, over 400 employees.) Nothing really surprises me anymore.

One that I remember distinctly was a woman calling in due to a "cat scratch." Not a big cat, like a cougar...just a house cat. She apparently had to go to the hospital for it. I don't know if she had a bad reaction or what, but it actually happened twice; once right after I started working in the department that took call-ins, and once almost exactly a year later. I always thought that was a weird excuse.

Probably the stupidest/most infuriating thing I had to be late for was when my garage door froze shut. I was so pissed at my apartment's managers. We had had a really bad ice storm the day before, and overnight, the ice had frozen. And apparently the garage door didn't make a solid seal with the ground when it was closed, so a bunch of the rain water had seeped into my garage and frozen the door shut. I was about an hour late as I had to call maintenance and they took their sweet time coming over to help me. When we did get it open, my ENTIRE garage floor was GLARE ice. It took several days of me leaving the garage door open when the sun was shining, throwing salt on the garage floor, and chipping away at the ice and shoveling it out before I could safely walk in there without breaking my neck.

[Green_Fairy]

first day of my first job. i was 17. my shift was 10 til 2. so i showed up at 10 til 2. as in 1:50. oops. it was all good. my manager thought it was the funniest thing ever. she said that she was going to call me, but they had sent my paperwork off the central and didn't have my phone number anywhere else. that job was awesome.

[dbuzman]

i he was in the shower and the toilets had overflowed trapping him inside

I can believe this. The ship I was on had a document destroyer that used water to pulp papers. In port it would be routed to discharge into the ship sewage system which got pumped ashore. It liked to clog when ever it was discharging into the ship system instead of over the side and the lower most berthing compartment would get sewage backing up. Was it an AEGIS class cruiser?

[It shouldn't]

I had to call in late one day, because my car was frozen to the driveway.

It was winter, the temps that night went down to -20F and the water main up the hill had decided to bust. My driveway was the lowest point. I had about 10" of frozen solid ice in my driveway, encasing the tires of my car.

Even after I got the car freed (massive amounts of salt, torpedo heater and heat gun) It still took a while before the village sent a salt truck for the road and the salt to work, before I was able to get up the hill.

[CaroPhoenix]

1st week of my job @ Roy Rogers (the first time I worked for the restaurant), I got into a car accident. I was a passenger in the front of the car. The driver missed a stop sign, and the car got hit - passenger side of course. I was wearing my seat belt, but my knee still decided to get acquainted with the dash board (almost 20 years later, I still have knee problems).

Ended up going to work in a huge knee brace to let the manager know I couldn't come in to work for a few days. They were all understanding.

[telecom_goddess]

I never call in sick unless I'm really dying.....but the most asinine reason I couldn't go to work was due to snow and ice. The bus running between my house and the transit center where I had to catch a train wasn't running. At all. For 3 days. I was stuck at home whether I liked it or not....I had no other way to get there.

[bsaana]

The call center I worked at a while ago had an interesting policy.

If calling in to the sick line - they had a FIRM no details request. Apparantly they had gotten a few nastily descriptive ones. My trainer there had once called into that line and said he felt too good to come in that day - and never got questioned about it.

[elsporko]

I don't have any good stories about calling in sick, but I did work a shift with a coworker who could barely move because he fell off a garage on the first day of hunting season and knew the boss wouldn't believe his story.

[mandaliz8704]

I remember I had to call in the day after a small hurricane (so small the dealership was open the following day) because the entrance/exit to my neighborhood was flooded. Being 19 and stupid at the time, I ended up getting stuck at my boyfriend's house for the storm and couldn't get to my house to get work clothes or anything. I drove a Mustang at the time, and I tried to get in but couldn't.

They didn't believe me, so I drove my poor waterlogged car to work (the water had gotten IN the car) in jeans and a tank top. They sent me home. I still couldnt get in. Idiots.

[LillFilly]

I was late once because there were horses loose in the road on my way to work, and the owners did not seem to be home to take care of them (out in the middle of the woods).

I called into work during one of my old jobs because, even though I started at 4:30PM, I had gone to a walk-in-clinic at 7:00AM because I was sick, and by that afternoon I was in the ER hooked-up to various dripping bags. My job did not seem to believe me and even wrote me up for missing my shift. They also did not want to take the doctor's note saying that I COULD NOT work for a week.

[Meganjo23]

I once had a co-worker call and say she was going to be late because she couldn't find one of her shoes... I don't think she was calling from her own house. Would it suprise you to know she has kind of a rep for coming in hungover?

I once thought I'd have to call in for getting stuck in a puddle. It had been raining really hard and there were huge puddles all across the roads. I felt my car sort of... drift for a second or two going through the biggest. I was praying I didn't have to call in, I know my managers would have found it hilarious.

I also called in sick once when I wasn't sick so much as overworked. I was working two part times jobs, and had to work both on the weekends. The first one was very physical and exhausting, and I hadn't been eating right all weekend (you know, coming home and sleeping instead of eating something, and then skipping breakfast before work... like you can really eat breakfast at 3am anyways) so I called out from the second on Sunday just becauuse I felt all faint and weak. It was only my second week there, so I was worried they'd think/know I was lying and fire me, and I'm sure they were afraid that I just didn't want to work there anymore and was too lazy to quit or something. That... doesn't really count as a stupid reason for calling out, I just find it odd that I still feel guilty about calling out for that while some of my co-workers call in hungover and get away with it.

Oh, I forgot, I also called out once because I ran out of gas in my car... because I didn't realize that 'Check Gauges' is car speek for 'hey stupid, I need more gas'. Obviously, it was my first car. Heh.

[Retail Associate]

In the 90's I worked in a doctor's office and one May we had a helluva wind storm. Blew the power out in the entire county.

Myself and most of my co-workers still made it to the office on time. But there was one woman who didn't come in because, get this, she had no power at her house, the garage door opener won't work without power, so she couldn't get her car out of her garage.

Ummm, that's why there's a trip cord...it's that rope thingy with the little plastic handle at the bottom. Pull it! And if you don't have a trip cord, pull out the cotter pin from the bracket that's attached to the garage door and unhook the damn thing.

The saddest thing is, the office manager accepted her excuse. Also, the woman was married and her husband used the same excuse to not go into work that day.

[TruthHurts]

My best friend told me a co-worker of hers called in sick to work because she was having a "lazy day." She had the nerve to get angry when they fired her.


A co-worker at the resort I worked didn't show up on a very busy weekend. Her excuse was that her boyfriend had the weekend off and she never had enough time to hang out with him. Naturally she got fired and got to spend a lot more time with her boyfriend.

[Eric the Grey]

I rarely call in sick to work. Usually I have to be on a deathbed, or running a fever to do so.

The best story I have for calling in was the time I called in hung over. I had gone out for my birthday with friends the night before, right after work, and everybody knew I was going to do that. I got too drunk and wound up with the first of only two hangovers. So I called in and told them the truth.

They didn't seem to mind, and even got a chuckle out of it.


Eric the Grey

[Victoria J]

I rarely call in sick to work. Usually I have to be on a deathbed, or running a fever to do so.

The best story I have for calling in was the time I called in hung over. I had gone out for my birthday with friends the night before, right after work, and everybody knew I was going to do that. I got too drunk and wound up with the first of only two hangovers. So I called in and told them the truth.

They didn't seem to mind, and even got a chuckle out of it.

I recently gave employment advice to someone who had the weekend of his birthday booked off work, threw a party on the Saturday and got formally disciplined on his return to work because another staff member got drunk at his party. She phoned in sick on the Sunday, they claim she was hungover not ill (on no actual evidence). He was the shift manager and these loons were trying to argue he was still the manager off shift and that he should have told this grown woman she couldn't have any more to drink !



(The guy and I both agreed said grown woman would just have told him to F*** off).

Yes he's challenging it, and they don't have a leg to stand on. Unusually in the hospitality business he had been working there for a nice long time and, this being the UK, gets full employment rights.

Better to be reasonable about it - you still have some respect for your manager and are more likely to do things you might not have to if they need it I bet. These people lost the respect and loyalty of all their staff in one go pretty much.

Meganjo23 - I'd say you were ill. You may have been ill due to overwork but you were still genuinely ill and that effected your ability to work. Perfectly reasonable to call out (though of course if the problem repeatedly happened you'd have had a responsibility to make changes I think). Anyway - stop feeling guilty ! You did the right thing.

Victoria J