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One survey found that December (19%) and January (23%) are the months when people most often lie to their boss about why they need to miss work. They do so primarily to rest and chill out (50%), spend time with family (30%), run errands or take care of personal matters (21%), and invent a lot of excuses to get their way.

However, this data might make managers more suspicious than they need to be, because sometimes the genuinely odd reasons people give are actually true. Online accounts show plenty of cases where employees really did stay put due to unusual pet issues or plain bad luck—things that sound made up but weren’t.

Discover more in “I Couldn’t Stop Laughing”: 47 Weird But Surprisingly True Excuses For Missing Work

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#1

A coworked called in when I was getting off shift and he was going to replace me (front desk at a hotel) and he said he couldn’t come in because he had to go donate plasma to get some money for food. Turns out he had not eaten in about two days so he had food for his kids. ( He JUST got the job at the hotel and had not made it to first paycheck yet )

After I found out later that day when he did show up, i gave him $100 for groceries, and a ride to the grocery store.

#2

My husband had to call in because one of our goats was in labor, the baby was in the wrong position, and I needed him to hold the goat while I repositioned the kid.

Boss didn’t believe it (or didn’t care, it could have really gone either way with him), so my husband snapped a picture of my arm in the southern end of a northern bound goat and sent it to him.

#3

My buddy called in saying “I can’t come to work on time because there is a cat resting on my car”. Legit caterpillar excavator fell on his car from a poorly parked low boy trailer. He got a new car and the best call out EVER!

#4

“Hey I can’t come to work today. My fish is giving birth.” Turns out that fish is extinct in the wild so they’re worth quite a bit of money. And they eat their babies if they’re left in the tank with them. No wonder they’re extinct in the wild.

#5

I had a promising new recruit that came from overseas (this was a job in Australia).
He showed up for one shift, but missed his next shift, causing me to pull a double to cover for him.

I tried calling a number of times but didn’t get through.

There was no response for a couple of days, so I figured the guy just flaked on us and didn’t want to talk to me.

On the third day, he calls me.
“Cpl_crud, sorry. I understand if you’re p****d with me and if I’ve lost the job. I was in hospital and couldn’t charge my phone, so I didn’t know how to get in touch.” (it was 10 Years ago so it wasn’t like everyone used the same charger).

I am generally too generous, so I gave the guy a second chance. I worked in show biz an occasionally good people go on benders that last a little too long.

Anyway, he shows up for the next shift with one hand bandaged to the elbow.

Turns out the guy was bitten by a Whitetail Spider. He had a necrotising reaction and they had to cut a chunk out of his hand…

To this day he’s been a good friend and has always excelled at his work. And, of course, we still call him “spider matt”.

#6

I was a lifeguard through HS and college. One of my guards went home on break, then 5 minutes before she was due back she called in, saying she’d be late coming back because she was saving a bird who fell in her pool. She came back to work with a bird in a laundry basket and we took turns babysitting it.

#7

My tiny skinny coworker “I can’t come in today, a group of guys tried to [attack] me and I send two of them to the hospital. I have to file a police report.”
I didn’t believed until she actually got sued for excessive use of force.
Apparently she was black belt in a couple martial arts.

#8

A coworker said her cat hid her car keys. About a week later I caught one of my cats carrying my car keys around the house.

#9

Guy used the excuse that his grandmother [passed away]. It was the third time in 6 months that he used the excuse. When we were getting ready to let him go another manager brought up the fact that he had met all three grandmothers, two were lesbians, earlier in the year.

#10

I had to call in to work because my cat was trapped inside my desk. My supervisor could hear him yowling as I called in. He tried so hard not to laugh at my predicament.

#11

I had a TBI and used to experience sporadic anterograde amnesia– essentially, I’d have episodes where my brain had a hard time making new memories until I (typically) threw up, had a migraine, and slept it off. I felt myself getting an episode and so I called in to work and found coverage for my shift. I lived within walking distance of my work and evidently I kept forgetting I called in, so I showed up at work 3 times because I would leave, be walking home, realize I was late for work and race back. After the third time my coworker called a friend to walk me home and put me to bed. I loved my coworkers, they were so sweet.

#12

Once I was very late to work because the steering wheel of my car fell off. I pulled over by hitting my brakes that were out of alignment and was blocking a lane if traffic. People were honking at me, so I took the steering wheel and put it on the roof of my car. My managers were like ya sure – that’s [nonesense], do you expect us to believe that… Then a Co worker, who heard our conversation, said, oh ya I saw him and his steering wheel was on the roof of his car.

#13

“I had a baby on the side of the road.”… she was pregnant and didn’t know it apparently. It was a healthy baby girl.

#14

I worked part-time at a restaurant while studying archaeology at university. I worked 3 or 4 shifts a week for several years, and one summer I was juggling shifts with days I was helping out on the university dig when I completely mixed up the day, not realising until I checked my phone during a breaktime on the excavation. There were a series of messages from confused and increasingly concerned colleagues, and one from my boss, who had to come into cover my absence on her day off (not good).

I was 25 miles from anywhere in the middle of a field without my own transport so there was little I could do until the end of the day when I popped into work on my way home to apologise again and get it over with, expecting a “make sure it doesn’t happen again” scenario. I showed some photos on my phone of the Roman skeletons we’d discovered that day just to prove it, and suddenly all was forgiven with pretty much the entire staff, including the chefs, passing my phone around and asking loads of questions and generally going “whoa!” – my boss even said something like “beats hanging around here all day!” – I didn’t say anything 😅.

#15

I had someone call my office phone and say “hey I’m not going to be in today. Or ever again for that matter” and then she’s nervously laughed and hung up.

Turns out, she had come into possession of a large amount of money from her wealthy deceased (and estranged) husband. What makes this even crazier, is that a year prior or so, she called this same office phone and was obviously in shock. She said: “I won’t be in tonight, I just got hit by a truck? Yeah it was a truck.” She then asked me to call the police because she contacted me first! I did end up calling emergency’s services and the accident did indeed happen. Her car was destroyed and she was quite shaken up, but she came out relatively unharmed.

She is a very nice and sort of shy woman, so I was honestly impressed. Godspeed Gail, Godspeed.

#16

In college, I worked at a restaurant and another server tried to call in because her chinchilla ate her wallet. She said she “wouldn’t feel comfortable driving without a license”….after several moments of incredulity, my manager sent one of us to go pick her up.

#17

Mine was because I had been bit by a bat and had to go get rabies shots immediately due to the delay in testing/results. 🦇.

#18

I was the employee – just a couple weeks into a new job and one evening the police served a no-knock warrant on my house. Mine was the wrong house, they wanted one a couple doors down. In doing so, they smashed in the door and I wasn’t able to replace it that night. I know my boss didn’t believe me, but later I was able to provide proof.

#19

My co-worker called in to say she couldn’t come in because she woke up with a fat lip. However, she was on her way to work anyway because it’s a hospital and she was worried her lip was an anaphylactic reaction. We all were rolling our eyes because she is full of drama and now our staffing was screwed because she couldn’t work. We all said “Pop a Benadryl and get to work!”
Then she showed up.
Her lip was enormous, like 6 times the normal size, it was pulling the skin from the rest of her face, was super red, swollen, looked like it was going to pop. Her eyes were even slanted from the weight of her lip, it was insane. She went to the ER and it was a bad reaction to a blood pressure medication she had just started. It took a week for her to return to work, but her lips got blistered, oozed, shed all the skin, it was horrible. We all felt really guilty for not taking her seriously.

#20

US Navy- One of my underlings went on leave and was gone for two weeks, and on the day he was supposed to come back, he called me and asked if he could come in the next day. He starts off with, “Promise you won’t laugh.” ensuring I will laugh. His excuse was that he’d gained too much weight and couldn’t fit into his uniform. Not the tight dungarees from the 90s but the roomy camouflage the Seabees wear. He was a big beefy dude, so when he went to the uniform store, they didn’t have ANYTHING in his size. He ended up meeting an old salty Seabee at the NEX (Navy exchange) while he was searching for the bigger pants who took him home with him to give him his huge pants. Once he got the name tag sewn on them he’d be in (the next day) Weirdest excuse ever, and I couldn’t stop laughing. (With him…yeah…not at him…).

#21

Not my Story, but my friends:

He comes into work at morning and immediately get a call from his colleague. He’s in Prague (We live in western Germany), because he went to a Party somewhere in the Netherlands during the weekend and met two Czech girls and when they told him they had to go home he insisted to accompany them as a good (really really drunk) Gentleman. Well turns out they meant home as in their home country, got into a train and drove all the way over to Prague…

He never realized until he finally got off the train. A picture snapped and sent proved his claims and he was excused for work.

#22

First day on the job. Said he was arrested by homeland security for carrying knives (it was a butchering job…). We made fun of his outlandish story. Actually was arrested by homeland security.

#23

Not an employer, but a co-worker. A guy came in late and his excuse was, “I pulled off the door handle and couldn’t open the door to leave”. And sure enough he brought the broken door handle with him to work and took pictures of it.

#24

I once sent an email to my team telling them I was WFH because a SWAT team was raiding my apartment complex. Boss replied stating “they are on to you”.

#25

I had boss who kept a list of weird reasons people called off work. These are a few that occurred while I was still working there:
1. I got bit in the face by an alligator
2. My one son stabbed my other son with a fork
3. I can’t get out of my driveway because the crime scene truck is parked there

Fun stuff and ALL true!

#26

Not someone, it was me. It was the morning after a snow/ice storm. I went out and started warming up my car. While it was warming I started scraping my window. At the time I had a really cheap scraper with a piece of metal attached as the part you scrape with. I hit a hard patch of ice on the window and the metal piece broke off the handle and flew into the snow. Between the defroster and scraping I cleared enough ice off the window to try to go. As I backed out of my parking spot somehow I managed to run over the piece of metal from my scraper and shredded my tire. I gave up, went in an and called in for the day.

#27

House exploded. No one is really sure anymore who got the first text/vm or whatnot or who even sent it. It was a bit of a cloud of confusion. But the guy was a jokester (in a totally harmless, professional way, nothing bad) so it was a “boy who cried wolf” kind of situation for a couple hours until news broke that a house blew up over on the other side of town.

#28

I had a girl no-call no-show two days in a row. She finally returned my calls on day three with “oh yeah! I forgot to tell you I was going to be on a boat!”

I forgot to continue her employment after that.

#29

“Uh, I can’t come in today”

“Why?”

“I’m in jail.”

“Oh. Do you need bail money?”

“No it’s cool, my mom is coming.”.

#30

I took a sick call from his wife who was surprisingly calm and said “He needs to be put out sick cause he was shot in the neck.” He’s alive btw missed spine and artery.

#31

One time I was several hours late because a garbage bag of used cat litter burst all over my car seats as I was taking it out to throw away.

You can’t just…go to work without dealing with that.

#32

Co-worker X was riding a bicycle to work when Co-worker Y bumps into him with his car, no injuries but they were a few minutes late from working it out. The very next day Co-worker Y calls in “Yeah, going to be late. I hit Co-worker X again and this time I had to call an ambulance” Co-worker X was fine and still rides his bicycle.

#33

Had a dude call 4 hours into the shift he missed. He fell asleep on the bus and ended up on the other side of town. the bus schedule in that area is slower than the rest of the system, so he had to wait to take the bus back. by that time it’d be 2 hours left. so he just called in for the day.

#34

I work at home, and I couldn’t come to work one morning because i quite literally locked myself out of the house going to put out the trash and my roomate was in another state.

#35

Guy called in saying he felt sick from a spider bite and wasn’t going to make it in. Sure enough, had gotten himself bit by something poisonous and was hospitalized a few hours later. Didn’t show up to work for the next 3 days, but when he did, he had a doctors note explaining everything.

#36

I hit a wild turkey going 70mph on the freeway. Wrecked the radiator up. I live in a major city.

#37

This guy said he had chronic kidney stones and had to go to the hospital. The next time I saw him he showed me the 3 stones he passed.

#38

Guy called in to say he couldn’t make it into work because he was working in his backyard, stood up too fast and hit his head on a shelf.

Boss man said sure take the day off but come back tomorrow. Guy comes into work the next day with this jagged cut on his head that hadn’t fully healed. What he failed to mention was that the shelf he hit his head on had a nail in it.

One for me:
Got KO’d playing basketball and ended up with a minor concussion. My boss (who has never played or seen a basketball game) laughs and gives me the “yeah right”

Next day i turn up to work with video of me diving for the ball and an opposing player who’s half a foot taller than me and probably twice my weight plowing right through me as if i wasn’t there, spinning me around and me laying on the court spread eagled until my team mates picked me up. I didn’t know what actually happened myself as i never saw the guy, blacked out and woke up looking at the ceiling.

My boss thought Basketball is a non-contact sport.

#39

Might get buried, but I was the one calling out a few years ago. I woke up Monday morning and couldn’t find any of my car’s keys. I have my everyday key, a spare (both are electronic), and a valet key (not electronic). I usually keep the latter two in the same drawer but they were both gone. I spent all morning looking and finally I get a text from my brother. Both of my siblings visited over the weekend, so my brother was saying he must have accidentally grabbed one (we have similar cars which have identical keys) and was already in New York visiting his girlfriend when he noticed (I live in Maryland). I called my sister, who I let drive my car over the weekend. She checked her pocket and, sure enough, she had another key. At her home in Wisconsin, since she apparently forgot to empty her pockets before she got a ride to the airport.

The third key, the non-electronic one, was still missing. Anyway, I had to call my boss and tell him I couldn’t drive to work because one of my car keys was in New York and the other was in Wisconsin. He didn’t believe me until I had my brother and sister send me pictures of them with the keys next to street signs/buildings. I live an hour from work so a cab would have been nonsense. My boss laughed it off and let me use a sick day and I had to pay $250 for a spare key to be made. All around stupidest day of my life.

About a year later my sister found the valet key in her purse, also in Wisconsin. Why did she need two keys? More importantly, WHY DO I NOW HAVE FOUR?!!!!

#40

I was a manager at Chi-Chi’s in the 90s…had a girl call in fat. I laughed so hard I gave her that shift off.

#41

Her neighbor’s bull got loose and she had to help him herd it back home.

#42

There was a guy at my old office who couldn’t come in because his path outside was blocked by a wasp.

#43

Coworker called in, but his friend got attacked by a shark while they were surfing before work.

#44

This is actually from an employee of my father, he told him he was ran over by a cow. It was true.

#45

Co-worker called in once saying a squirrel had just run up his chimney. I never did hear the follow up to that one, I can only imagine the squirrel was on the way back out of the house.

Also, a different co-worker didn’t show up one morning, no call, no nothing. Around 2 that afternoon, she did call, saying she’d taken half a sleeping pill that was lying next to her vitimins.

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