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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

275 replies

MatildaTheCat · 03/05/2019 18:54

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. Hmm

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?

OP posts:
NotACompleterFinis · 04/05/2019 22:02

My Dad once wrote me a note for school (having taken me out for family wedding, so unauthorized absence). It read : "sorry notacompleter wasn't in yesterday but she's here today".

Robin2323 · 04/05/2019 22:03

Best one I heard:

He had to see a man about a dog.

GabsAlot · 04/05/2019 22:04

thats brilliant NOTA

kudos to your dad

ManorMouse · 04/05/2019 22:06

Many years ago, during a bout of unemployment, I was queueing in the job centre to sign on when I spotted an old school mate in the queue next to me. Oh no, he assured me, I'm not signing on at all, I'm just looking for someone while standing in this queue so as not to get in anyone's way. Oh, and I'm gainfully employed as a manager in a bar/restaurant. He politely kept out of everyone's way by staying in the queue until he reached the counter, produced his dole card, signed his name and was off.

Mind you, he was a renowned bullshitter at school too.

supersop60 · 04/05/2019 22:18

DP is a tidy-upper. By which I mean he shoves everything out of sight. I was once looking for an important document which I had already placed on the table so I could deal with it. DP had shoved it into a pile of other stuff on a shelf. When I asked him why, he said he'd put it there so that I would be able to see it when I sat at the table. Yes, if I spin my head round like something out of the Exorcist

BobLemon · 04/05/2019 22:20

“Family emergency”

“I was rushed to hospital”

9/10 times these words are uttered, it’s bullshit

BobLemon · 04/05/2019 22:27

I’ve just remembered one particular “rushed to hospital” one. The guy just wouldn’t stop talking. Elaborating. Undoing. He eventually confessed that what he actually meant was he had “really bad IBS”. This was in explanation of how he’d accrued a £100k debt.

nel123baby · 04/05/2019 22:42

My moms friend cancels plans majority of the time they have plans and switches between the excuses of having a headache, tired or washing her hair.. she'll literally message the day before like I won't be able to make it cause I'm washing my hair tomorrow night and won't have any other time to do it so we'll have to reschedule.

StealthPolarBear · 04/05/2019 23:09

"We spent every weekend in the same pubs with the same friends, neither of us speaking or mentioning that he was meant to be in bloody Belize."
Where's YemenRoadYemen when you need her :o

Serin · 04/05/2019 23:11

As a small child DH had to tell his teacher he was sorry for being late but an elephant had been trashing their front garden and they were too scared to leave the house until it was captured.
It was a trust story as well, from when circuses routinely used animals in their shows.

ShowMeTheKittens · 04/05/2019 23:49

On a dating site a chap seemed to like me although he seemed to think that I would be impressed by an interest in Star Wars. Anyway he said he'd hit me up on WhatsApp. I thought well that sounds fine, but I will phone myself. Obviously this was at a very awkward time and he soon hung up. He actually deleted his profile too. Guess his wife was in. ha ha fol de rol. Twat.
This happened several times on dating sites. It's fine for them to send smutty texts but if you phone them they poop themselves.
One called Tim is a serial poster. He writes and enjoys long romantic walks and really feels a connection with you. However if you show an interest he deletes his profile. They are all ghosts invented so you pay the site for extras. Of course.

JorahsMistress · 05/05/2019 03:56

Dd (8 at the time) shouldn't have to tidy her room because "it's not my fault, it made itself messy!"

Me, blue-lighted to hospital with severe chest & stomach pains, really scared, informed my dad of where i was, received a text to say he couldn't come see me in hospital because my younger sis (bout 13 at that time) had guides that day Hmm

SamStephens · 05/05/2019 04:19

A manager I once worked with didn’t come in for two days because the remote to her garage door stopped working and she was “locked in” - Lol I would’ve believed her stupidity at being stood in her garage for two days completely perplexed but she threw in a line about her “landlord” needing to come fix it. Odd since she owned her house outright and took great delight in telling us all how much it was worth as she cleaned up in her divorce to a wealthy man. Idiot.

ExH family didn’t come to our wedding because his stepdad couldn’t drive over bridges.. unsure what their aversions to train were but I’m sure there was an equally stupid excuse. No loss on my part obviously.

ladyshapes82 · 05/05/2019 07:04

A man I work with, very senior and well paid but utterly useless and comically lazy emailed recently to say that he wouldn’t be able to make a meeting (that had taken forever to rearrange) because there was a dead fox in his garden.

Dillydallyalltheway · 05/05/2019 07:58

Several years ago when I was a manager of a shop, weather was absolutely atrocious one morning, I was well aware that there would be a couple of phone calls for some staff who really would find it difficult to get to work, and indeed I would have agreed that they should not come in because if it got worse they wouldn’t have been able to get home after their shift. However, I was pretty unprepared to get a call for one member of staff who rang saying she wouldn’t be able to come in because her taxi didn’t turn up to collect her. Problem was, that she really didn’t think about this excuse because she actually lived 2 doors away from me and it was a 5 minute walk to the shop !! What made it even worse was that a couple of hours after ringing in, she came into work with her daughter to get some bread and milk!

PrincessCessy · 05/05/2019 08:05

We had a fantastic cleaner whose grandmother died three times.

It was definitely the same grandmother - she had moved somewhere far away where she had no other family connections. By the time her grandmother died a third time I called her out on it and blocked her number.

BlagMyChicken · 05/05/2019 08:19

I had an (ex)employee once tell me that she couldn’t be at work for 9am every day as the train was too busy full of people who needed to be at work for 9am...

LynetteScavo · 05/05/2019 08:59

DD told her Reception teacher she was late to school because we'd moved house to America, near Disneyland and it takes a long time to get to school now. Hmm

I've had "I scratched a mole on my head and it won't stop bleeding" from someone who really didn't want to come and see me at work. The same person told a colleague they were half way to see us, then remembered they were pet sitting guinea pigs who needed to be let out if the shed, so had to go back home to do that. The same person also told me she had to answer her phone at all times because her son had a heart condition. A year later he joined the army.

PookieDo · 05/05/2019 09:13

Someone late to an interview said they were late as they ran an animal over on the way and stopped to pick it up and put it in the boot of their car Envy

Cattenberg · 05/05/2019 09:16

BobLemon
“Family emergency”

“I was rushed to hospital”

9/10 times these words are uttered, it’s bullshit

I can believe that, because we once had a new recruit who didn’t turn up on her first morning and left a message with the recruitment agency saying that she’d had a “family emergency” and couldn’t come in. Ever.

Marlboroandmalbec34 · 05/05/2019 09:21

I used to manage a large team and really thought I had heard them all until I took this call:

“I cannot come in as I have thrush and cannot close my legs”

Otterses · 05/05/2019 09:45

Years ago, I was annoyed that my deputy manager was late in. She was seriously flakey, and had an excuse every day for her timekeeping.

Eventually, she showed up and gave some excuse about finding a bird that was sick... so I sent her upstairs to put her coat away, then when she came back down I went up to carry out some interviews.

Throughout there was this awful scratching noise. Turned out there had been a sick bird, and she thought it was dead Shock you can imagine my shock when I opened the box and it flew out at my face.

Eustasiavye · 05/05/2019 13:18

Dp used to work as senior management for one company. An employer rang in to say he needed time off work because his grandmother had died.Dp asked him if his parents were divorced. Oh no they are very happily married was the reply.
Well explain to me then how come you have 4 dead grandmothers was dps response.
Total silence, I don't I have 2 grandmothers.
Well according to my records you have had time off work for dealing with the death of 4 grandmothers.
The employee wasn't bright enough to fathom that dp kept a diary of a sense and reasons time off was authorised.

thankyourforthemusic · 05/05/2019 14:09

I once worked with a colleague who said her clothes didn't fit her because they had shrunk in the wash . I may have believed her I hadn't worked there long , I had a sneaky peak at her fb pictures and she had put several stones on over a couple of years . I suspect the machine wasn't the culprit Grin

Saharasunset · 05/05/2019 19:36

Someone I work with said they couldn’t possibly make the morning meeting that we had scheduled as the bus they take had broken down and they were waiting for a new bus to be sent out. They had obviously forgot to speak to their colleague who also gets the same bus and arrived at work in plenty of time...