Comments on: The things employees will do for a day off …

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:09:51 +0000

I had an apprentice who had a habit of coming to work at the last minute, which had resulted in a couple of tardies. I had my shop supervisor caution her that after 3 tardies our policy would require a written warning and that action would put her on probation in our program.

The next morning she called from her car to say a bird had hit her windshield and cracked it and that she would be late. Without consulting me the supervisor had let it go. The very next morning she called to say she would be late, because there was a skunk on her front porch and she had to wait for him to leave so she could go to work. We wrote her up becasue she could have used the back door.

By: William

William — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:27:59 +0000

I actually had a guy who did something similar. He was a repeat offender and he initially stated that he missed work because he was unable to call or come into work after being placed in jail for unwittingly passing off a counterfeith $20 bill. When he was told that his absence would be excused upon his bringing a copy of the police report, he then explained that he never had been jailed and that he lied. Needless to say that was also his last day.

By: E

Thu, 21 May 2009 18:02:24 +0000

We had an employee who concocted a huge lie about missing an ADP payroll class. She claimed that she was sick and that the instructor of the course at ADP had sent her home early so she wouldn’t get the others attending the class sick. She also said that she had to take her friend’s car to the class (a Range Rover), which made her feel like a tough-girl. Needless to say, she never even went to the class and was terminated immediately.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:55:39 +0000

A repeat offender was getting low on new excuses when he called in sick one Monday morning. He claimed that he swallowed some pond water so he wouldn’t be able to come to work. Yes, he actually said pond water. He later told the story of how he had been working on his backyard pond over the weekend and “accidently” swallowed some of the water. He definitely gets an A+ for creativity.

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:50:03 +0000

I sent an employee to get carts out of the parking lot and he didn’t come back for 3 days. He said that he fell in an uncovered manhole and nobody heard his cries for help. I terminated his employment. The manhole in question had not been uncovered and it was in a busy area.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:54:59 +0000

Everybody uses, “sick” or “personal” when they call off. We had this one guy that would say the craziest things, just to make you go hmmmm. My favorite one was when the called off and said “a dinosaur ate my car”. He always kept things interesting…

By: SrHRGuy

SrHRGuy — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:38:14 +0000

I had am employee call in due to snow. It was 71 degrees outside and she lived 8 miles from work. I also had another employee call and quit because he had been up 48 hours playing EverQuest and just had to finish the campaign.

By: Cori

Cori — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:10:15 +0000

I had an employee concoct a story that he was in a high speed car chase with the police and he lost his wallet and could not come to work because he was waiting for the county to wire him money. See holes in this story?

By: Dee

Dee — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:11:11 +0000

We had an employee who did not show up and did not call in. About 5 hours later he called and said he had been stuck in the rest room of a gas station all this time. He claimed the door was jammed and nobody responded to his cries for help. We made him take a personal day.

By: Say What

Say What — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:45:39 +0000

I had a guy take off because his only sibling died…he and his brother Mark were extremely close and the employee was devastated. Five weeks later, his brother Mark called for him because the employee wasn’t answering his cell phone and wanted me to get a message to him. Hmmmmm…

On that same thread we had an admin. asst. that had a cat and this cat was like her kid. She had pictures of her kitty all over her cubicle and would go home at lunch everyday to be with her cat at lunch, etc. I thought it was a bit extreme but to each his own, right? She called one day sobbing and sobbing because her cat died. She took that day and the next day off to mourn her kitty. Several months later she missed a day of work because her “cat died”. One of the office girls asked her if she had gotten a new cat and she said no, she would never make her kitty share his space. I busted her and told her I had to assume she had lied about the two days she had missed OR her cat truly did have nine lives and she would need to plan her personal days better to accommodate her cat dying eight more times.