Remember that old line? Apparently some employees believe it still has legs even after graduating. We love lists here at The Hire Sense and CareerBuilder offers up one of my seasonal favorites – Thirty-Two Percent of Workers Called in Sick With Fake Excuses in the Last Year.
I have no idea how many companies still separate sick days from vacation days – I was under the impression most companies just offered PTO now. At any rate, a couple statistics from the survey:
Twenty-seven percent of hiring managers reported they have fired a worker for calling in sick without a legitimate reason.
The most popular motivator for missing work was the need to relax, according to nearly half (48 percent) of workers. (ed. – sounds like a work/life imbalance issue)
One-in-four workers said they consider their sick days to be equivalent to vacation days and treat them as such.
Ah, but now for the best part of the article – the list of lame excuses. It needs no further comment, but I did bold my personal favorites.
1) Employee was poisoned by his mother-in-law.
2) A buffalo escaped from the game reserve and kept charging the employee every time she tried to go to her car from her house.
3) Employee was feeling all the symptoms of his expecting wife.
4) Employee called from his cell phone, said he was accidentally locked in a restroom stall and no one was around to let him out.
5) Employee broke his leg snowboarding off his roof while drunk.
6) Employees wife said he couldn’t come into work because he had a lot of chores to do around the house.
7) One of the walls in the employee’s home fell off the night before.
8) Employee’s mother was in jail.
9) A skunk got into the employee’s house and sprayed all of his uniforms.
10) Employee had bad hiccups.
11) Employee blew his nose so hard, his back went out.
12) Employee’s horses got loose and were running down the highway.
13) Employee was hit by a bus while walking.
14) Employee’s dog swallowed her bus pass.
15) Employee was sad.