Stupidest reasons for skiving

[PolkaDotMankini]

Today I've had to pull someone up for refusing to come to work because it's raining 🙄 It's a nice cosy office job, they live 10 minutes away and AFAIK they are not the wicked witch of the West.

The best one I've had previously is someone calling me from the motorway saying they had to turn around and go home because they'd forgotten their trousers.

Any other good ones?

Kid today was very late. He’d seen some of his mates going to Greggs so went to tell them off and not be late. Sadly his public spirit was slightly let down by the sausage roll in his pocket.
Years ago a teacher called in exhausted as “he hadn’t slept a wink”. No young kids, but his wife let slip he’d been out in the pop with his brother over from Ireland.

"He couldn't sort the filing cabinet out because he'd been sorting papers at home that week and it was bad for his mental health to sort too many papers at once."
Told to his line manager as an excuse why he was working less than half his contracted hours and no, sorting papers was only a small part of his job.

Tbf to the snow ones you can get areas that are worse. Our estate can be unpassable in a vehicle and the rest of the town is fairly clear on the roads. Public transport is poor to our estate at the best of times, and in snowy/icy weather they tend to avoid it even more.
Also growing up we woke once to an ice sheet over our village. I remember the school being very sceptical why we were very late and a lot of the rest didn't make it in. Three school buses either gave up or crashed trying to get to the village. We walked out of the village and our grandparents (from 2 miles up the road where it was clear) picked us up to take us to school. I remember dsis was furious! 🤣 But it was just about a 4 mile circle of ice.
If dm hadn't been assured by our grandparents that it was clear for them, she'd have assumed it was everywhere and we wouldn't have tried to get anywhere.

Student intern was sent to do a morning’s work at a satellite office near some strip clubs. Was perfectly safe street, broad daylight and nobody had had any trouble going there. Student did not return and we phoned the satellite office to ask where she was to be told she’d left hours ago. She didn’t answer her phone. At nearly 5pm she called to say a pimp had harassed her and told her to go home so she had. Not back to the other office or anything. Strip clubs aren’t brothels and weren’t open anyway as it was daytime…

One of my colleagues called in to say he couldn't make it because the sun was shining too brightly to drive safely.

Admittedly it was a particularly brutal winter sun shining off every possible surface...but he lived next to a train station that would bring him right to work and on a bus route that was less than a 5 minute walk from the house.

For weeks afterward he would find pairs of black sunglasses everywhere he was designated to work. Didn't pull that one again!

Yes less than 2yrs so nothing I could do. The boss thought I was lying! And he said if it was true then I shouldn’t have let the optician do it when I knew I had to go to work. Well firstly I didn’t know he was going to do it, and secondly I’m not refusing medical care for a shift at a wallpaper shop!

Fucking hell

A colleague said she couldn’t come to a planned event once because he boyfriend had toothache. Both in their 40s
Ot was during work hours and a work thing rather than social but it was too far away so she couldn’t get back if he needed her apparently

Turned up to work in pink fluffy slippers, genuinely didn't realise I even had them on! I also worked as a car saleswomen. Bearing in mind it is a very male dominated business - I was ridiculed and sent home to change lol!

I work with 3 ‘sick notes’

a married lady,her husband and her lesbian lover-they come in for a few weeks,all go on the sick together and once those run out,there’s endless moaning if they do have to go in or endless excuses as to why they can’t do that shift

the latest one is the wife bought her girlfriend a kitten-but from a backyard breeder-so it’s only a surprise to them that the poor kitten was ill and has sadly died-cue,two weeks of moaning,tears or sick days (they hoard animals-not one gets walked or taken to a vet)
all pictures of the dead kitten have been put on fb and the fb work page for our pleasure

Another excuse was that they’d all broken down on the way to work-3 of them in two cars-that both broke down on the same bit of road-together
work believed them until about 3 hours into their shift-they walked in,sat down and ordered for themselves and the kids
they all got defensive when it was pointed out that they could have worked from that point but where choosing not to

All 3 once went off with ‘period pains’
hubby included

they once rang in saying that their kid had been hit by a car-and was in hospital,all 3 parents just had to go with her
the truth was they where not keeping an eye on her,(on a busy road)she ran out in front of my dps car-he missed her,but did hoot to get her to move-she ran back to her parents who picked her up and put her in the car
next thing I know,they’d rang in to take the day off-thankfully it was all on cctv so they where proved to be liars but for some reason they’ve kept their jobs

One co-worker couldn’t come in as it was raining and her brolly broke.
Another had no bread to make lunch (we had a Tesco Express 3 mins away).
The best was…..it was the anniversary of Diana’s death and despite only being 3 years old in 1997 she wanted to stay at home and light a candle (this colleague still works for us).

I genuinely don't understand how people have the balls to call in with such shit excuses.

I have a minor panic attack when I need to call in for genuine reasons!

A former colleague once tried to take the day off by explaining he gets dressed in the dark bedroom wearing a head torch, so as to not wake his wife. He'd gotten halfway to work and realised everything (including his underwear apparently) was on back to front and he was too ashamed to walk into the office where he could get changed.

I later made the hugely radical suggestion that he put his clothes out in another room and get dressed in a place he could put the light on. The idea had genuinely never occurred to him.

He honestly couldn't understand why we found it all so funny. 😂

I worked with someone who phoned in because they couldn't find their belt

The chef asked me where the college trainee was, she was supposed to be prepping veg. I went to find her, sat outside on her phone.
I said you need to go back in
I can't she said and started crying
I asked what the matter was.......
I don't like knives

Same here. Bloody brass neck, is that the right phrase?!

I shall now call in sick and use this excuse. Love it!

I'm NHS (yes, sickie-taking-central 😂) but an Australian colleague told me that in her last place of work (Oz) that you didn't get paid for a single, one-off day off sick. You had to take two, or more, to get fully paid.

This idea has merit. Only the hard-core sickie-takers brazen two days in a row off.

Best one I ever heard was that someone couldn’t come in as her chakras were out of line.

I am a nurse and I did go to work for my 2pm shift with my prescription sunglasses on ! I had forgotten my normal glasses and had to leave work to get home before it was dark 🤦‍♀️

I once had to ring in and say I couldn’t get to work because, having arrived at the train station for my morning commute, a technical problem further up the line meant we had no trains and I couldn’t get to work - I lived in the Home Counties and worked in central London.

There was 1 bus an hour and it would have taken more than 1/2 hour to walk to the bus stop the other side of town from the out of town train station. That bus (when it finally arrived) would have taken over 1 1/2 hours to get me to another town with a train station on a different line that wasn’t affected to then get a train into London and on to another bus to where I worked (I didn’t have a travel card due to cost so couldn’t use the tube and it was pre Oyster card days so I had a train pass and a bus pass).

It would have been lunchtime before I arrived and, when I explained this, my manager told me it wouldn’t be worth going in as they’d have to cover me for the 1/2 day so booked another member of staff to do a full day overtime (worked for NHS so minimum numbers needed to run the service) and I got to walk home again!

I'll find out a CF excuse later. Just had a new starter, who is on his second week and has proudly told me yesterday, that he won't be at our offsite meeting as he's going to have the "family cold".

Yes mate, I'm sure you are, but don't forget, probationary periods can be cut short!

I once couldn’t go in because I had a huge (and I do mean huge) cyst on my inner thigh.
it was very painful; physically couldn’t wear trousers. I did WFH but that isn’t the norm in my role. I sent my boss a picture because I was worried they wouldn’t believe me

I'm literally having one right now. I've been throwing up all night and know I wouldn't be safe at work today. I've had a really bad year with absence as my son was really unwell and in hospital for a month earlier on this year. I know it's legitimate but I feel rubbish for letting my team down.

I had to tell work I was going to be 15 minutes late as I'd over shot my work tube station by two stops. I got back on the tube in the opposite direction meaning to get off at the work tube stop only to automatically and absent mindedly go back to my home tube station. So I had to tell them I'd actually be an hour late.

In my defence I was working on.a very stressful report and was thinking too hard about it, effectively writing it in my head so I was just in a world of my own.

I also was late for work once as I'd decided to do a home leg wax that morning and tarred and feathered myself because the pre-made strips left effectively a layer of ludicrously sticky glue on my legs that wouldn't come off. I read that baby oil on a towel and dabbed on would shift it but the towel just disintegrated and stuck to the sticky residue. I didn't know what to to do so I just went to work, very late with legs tarred and feathered.

This has pros and cons - people where I live go to the doctor (not UK but not Australia; you can still reliably see your GP on the day here) to get signed off for something they might only be off a day or two for, and invariably get signed off for the full week... Even good, hard working colleagues rarely choose to come back before their sick note runs out.

We don't need a doctor's note until day 3 but if someone tells you that they're going to the doctor about their cold after work you know that you won't see them for a week at least even though a single day of resting would probably be enough to be fit enough to work again.