Craziest sick excuses for work

Getting your toe stuck in a faucet is usually not the best excuse to call in to work for a sick day.

By

Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily

Tue, Oct 16 2012 at 12:35 PM

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Employees who call in sick when they aren't really ill are far from alone.

A new study from CareerBuilder found that in the past year, 30 percent of employees have called in sick when they were feeling just fine.

Besides not feeling well, the research revealed that most common reasons employees call in sick are because they just don't feel like going to work or felt they needed to relax. Other popular motives included having doctor's appointments and needing to catch up on sleep or run errands.

Other employees had some more colorful explanations for their absences, the survey found, including:

Employee said her dog was having a nervous breakdown
Employee's dead grandmother was being exhumed for a police investigation
Employee's toe was stuck in a faucet
Employee said a bird bit her
Employee was upset after watching "The Hunger Games"
Employee got sick from reading too much
Employee was suffering from a broken heart
Employee's hair turned orange from dying her hair at home

While many employees see no repercussions for calling in sick when they aren't ill, others find out the hard way how much damage a white lie can do. The study shows that nearly 20 percent of employers have fired workers for giving a fake excuse.

Overall, 29 percent of supervisors have checked up on an employee to verify that their illness is legitimate, mostly by calling later in the day or asking to see a doctor's note. Other supervisors have had co-workers call to check on a suspected faker, while some have gone as far as to drive by the employee's house.

With the holidays right around the corner, businesses should prepare for an increase in employee sick days. More than 30 percent of the employers surveyed notice an increase in sick days around the winter holidays, with December being the most popular month of the year to call in sick.

The study was based on surveys of 2,494 U.S. hiring managers and human resource professionals and nearly 4,000 U.S. workers.

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Comments: 6

divette2000 Dec 02 2012 at 6:08 PM

December is a busy month bc usually employers replenishing sick time in January and anytime not taken in the current year is lost. People use it as extended vacation days, it should be just for sick days...

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Starbuck Oct 17 2012 at 5:16 AM

This is why we are known to joke now and then about calling in well! It's like nervous breakdown prevention - for you or your dog.Or your dead grandmother. Guess it's also why a boss on one long ago job didn't believe me when I told him I was late because the car caught fire on the way to work. It did! It really did - smoke billowing out from under the hood and very scary. It wasn't my car, but it WAS my ride to work! But, you know, I got there! In all seriousness though, there are plenty of people

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ready and eager to replace an employee who fools around with their job - not a good idea! And if your earliest jobs were in factories (that didn't produce fair trade products!!) it's ingrained in you to go to work no matter what you have to do to get there - unless you're laying right next to that grandmother who is being exhumed. It's all kind of brutal really.