To ask for hilariously crap excuses you’ve been given?

[MatildaTheCat]

I will start with one I recently received.

I have an old school friend who I have very sporadic contact with via email. When I contacted her for a catch up recently I made some reference to ‘we must get together some time,’ as you do.

She emailed me back a few days later with her news but added that she couldn’t commit to getting together this year because last year a pipe in her (adult) daughter’s bedroom had leaked and she needed to decorate her room. She doesn’t have a job or any dependent children just to be clear.

If she’d ignored that comment although or said she was up to her eyes in it OR even said ‘not really into meeting up’ I wouldn’t have cared at all.

It made me laugh anyway. So what totally silly excuses have you been offered?

Not me but my best friend. A woman we vaguely knew years ago and never liked much (a two-faced, eleven-erife type) emailed her out of the blue to invite her to her hen party. My friend replied saying thank you but I’m afraid I’ve already got plans that night.

Then received an angry email back saying “I hadn’t actually given you the date!”

Oops

I worked for the NHS, then a private hospital and finally as a teacher.

NHS patient wouldn't come in because, "Any fool could tell the appointment was the day before his birthday"

At the private hospital I had someone refuse to come in because there wasn't any parking.

Another would not share a room with a German and there were no single rooms.

There was a short time when the local NHS hospitals wa having their cath lab refitted and an arrangement was made for NHS patients to be treated at our hospital.

Someone refused to come in because he didn't believe in private medicine. I had a little cheer inside for him.

I mostly teach 16+ and adults. So although most colleges ban phones in classrooms I'm not a complete idiot, if you are a single parent you need your phone on.

I ask people who genuinely need to have their phone to switch to silent, sit near to the door and if they have to take a call then just leave the room.

Adult students have no problem with this, but teenagers are different.

Apparently an emergency includes local radio competitions, mum calling when the dog has puppies, messages from boy friends. The list goes on.

I did have a student who couldn't do her homework (set on the VLE so she needed the internet and this was before smart phones) because her street was evacuated due to a bomb and she had spent the night at her gran's.

It was true, a WWII bomb had been found, it was in the local paper.

went out for a meal and there was an eyelash in my food. I mentioned it to the waitress who told me "its from the mushrooms, they have to shave the hair off before they are cooked" I was so shocked I couldnt speak!

@user

WHAT?
How did you not crack up?

A friend of mine who I arranged to meet up a couple of times on a Saturday afternoon she lives a hour away so we meet in the city centre. Times arranged weeks in advance and both times she's messaged me the day before with a long text that she can't make it as has a hospital appointment. More recently arranged night out for my birthday weeks in advance said yes was coming etc , a couple of days before my birthday card arrives in post . I messaged to say thanks for the card are you still coming on Saturday she said I hope too . Anyway 1 hour before meeting she messages to say I can't come because I've been to hospital for a camera down my throat and I'm not up to going out . The thing is I wanted to believe her but she never mentioned that she had a hospital appointment and it's funny these appointments are always when I arrange to meet up .

My ex in laws used to use the weather as an excuse all the time.
We invited them out for lunch on fils birthday day, they declined the reason given was that it would probably be too hot.
They didn't bother to turn up for my birthday as it might snow, it didnt.
They didn't come to see dd1 on her first birthday because there was a nip in the air apparently.
They refused to come to see ds when convenient for us as it had forecast rain for the day. The list of excuses was endless. Yet if we didn't turn up for their birthday or mothers day and fathers day it would cause world war 2.
They lived a mere 15 minutes away and had a car!

Love this thread 😊

Friends arranged to come over to my place for lunch, the first time they'd ever been. They cancelled an hour before because they had to mow the lawn.

20 years ago not 2!

Just remembered a time when I called into work saying I was going to be late as my hamster had got out and I needed to find him to get him back in his cage. I have 2 cats and didn’t want to risk them getting him. Thing is, it was totally true but I don’t think I believed and thinking about it now, it does sound rather silly!

I was growing a small tub of those teeny tiny tomatoes, it really was a small tub , I kept it on my table on the patio outside the kitchen door so you could just pick and eat. I went away for a few days and asked late teen daughter who was house/cat/tomato sitting to remember to water it.

Came home, house fine, cat fine, tomatoes dead as a dodo.

"I couldn't water them, there was a hosepipe ban"

An ex used to make up elaborate stories. He once told me he didn't drive because he'd been pulled over while a learner - driving without anyone teaching/someone who held a full license. He only did it because his friend was severely hurt and he had to get him straight to the A&E. So he lost the ability to get his full license for a noble cause. (Didn't think to call an ambulance of course.)
Complete bullshit, he just kept failing his test.

I keep expecting to see a story about me calling in sick from my teens here. I miss the days when I could leave a job and find another the next week.

One of my husband's cousins accepted the invitation to our wedding, but then a fortnight before the day said he couldn't make it. Reason? He had to cut his grass.

I love the one about choosing Christmas ribbons! That’s the best excuse I’ve ever heard :)

A lazy colleague once had to go home halfway through a crazy busy afternoon because her 15 year old daughter was having a painful period.
The same woman couldnt get in to work one morning because there was a furniture delivery going on to a neighbour's house and she couldn't get past the truck. A colleague asked her why she couldnt ask the driver to let her out and she replied 'oh no, we we live in a cul-de-sac dont you know'
A colleague and I still say that phrase years later.
She also rang one morning to say she was snowed in, when she lived 10 mins from work and there had been about 6 flakes. When this was said she sent a photo of a pile of dirty snow that had been swept up at the side of the road days before.

there was a furniture delivery going on to a neighbour's house and she couldn't get past the truck
To be fair, my street is a single lane cul-de-sac and if a truck is delivering you’re blocked in or out. They can’t exactly move the truck if they’ve lowered the hydraulic platform and the stabilising legs and are halfway out the back with a sofa.

Reminds me of a friend in college who broke up with her boyfriend because he just couldn't admit he forgot to message her back one day.
Someone had "stolen his phone" apparently. But he'd been calling from that number a few days later.
Oh they took the SIM card out and just took the handset.
Then the handset was mysteriously found.
She said if he'd been honest and just apologised she'd not have dumped him.

I had a friend sack off my son's 2nd birthday party, having previously agreed to come as "they hadn't had a family day out in ages".
We had a great time and a tonne of chocolate was consumed. They did indeed go out and it poured with rain. I wasn't sympathetic.

My husband's grandmother, aunt and her 4 teenage children couldn't come to our wedding as they had a dental appointment. He wasn't too fussed as that summed up his relationship to them in general sadly.

When I was 14 I'd been having a pen pal romance with someone I'd met on holiday in late summer. I'd met him and his mate at the same time. I'd actually fancied his mate Anyway, we started writing to each other and fell in love over weekly letters and phone box phone calls. Just before Christmas I got a Christmas card with a note inside from his friend explaining that my boyfriend had taken a job in another country and could no longer continue the "relationship." The joke was on him as I started seeing the friend and went out with him for a couple of years. Years later the original guy admitted to me that he got his mate to lie to his as his family didn't approve of the age difference. The feckless wanker years later managed to charm his way into my knickers and we were together for a couple of years and we now have a child he has only seen once in his life. Live and learn. My child is amazing and I have no regrets but want to slap my 14 year old self. I also query the wisdom of my parents who let me have a relationship with someone 4 years older than me

Some one I managed came up with some extraordinary excuses for being late to work, one of the best was that she had been having a chiropody treatment, when the chiropodist had a stroke, and jabbed a file into her toe, it took her ages to stop the bleeding! (She came into work carrying M&S carrier bags)
Another excuse was that she was travelling to work when a small dog jumped out of the window of the car in front, the driver carried on as he hadn't noticed, so she had to follow him, to tell him what had happened, and then go back to show him which direction the dog had taken. Again she was loaded with shopping, which she proceeded to unload into the staffroom fridge

Cleaner cancelled at last minute due to back pain. Amusingly I had just seen on our local mums' Facebook page that a hair salon were offering free model sessions that morning. Said cleaner was first to sign up.

DS aged 5 came home from school on the first day back in September with all the leather scraped off the top of one shoe (toe cap area). When I asked him what had happened he said ‘well I was stood in the lunch queue and someone spat on my shoe, and their spit was actually acid’

To be honest I was secretly impressed with the creativity.

A fairly entitled friend went to a job interview for a full time receptionist job. She asked if it could be part time, they said they’d consider just mornings or afternoons. Fairly flexible, she then says no it’d need to be 10-2. They offered 9-3 for school hours & she said no hours were too long.

I once dated a slightly weird chap who went AWOL and ghosted me. A few weeks later he got in touch and said he’d been sectioned. Told me all sorts of nonsense about a big van taking him away in the middle of the night and not being allowed to contact anyone at all. What a load of rubbish.

A friend of 14 years, was supposed to come to my daughters 3rd birthday party with her son, I got a text an hour before saying they couldn't make it because her son is suffering with vomiting & diarrhoea all morning. Only to see pictures on Facebook of her and her son at the park with other friends looking perfectly well.

The same friend has a Halloween party every year and me and the dc always go, I messaged to find out the times etc, & she said they weren't having one this year because everyone's working. Later that evening there were pictures all over Facebook of her Halloween party with her other friends and kids. Needless to say I've barely spoken to her since.

In college one day a guy didn't have an assignment done. He stood up in front of everyone and said it was because his Dad was sick and he had to help his mother look after the shop. His mother was the lecturer who set the assignment.