Sometimes life happens and you have to miss work even though your managers and coworkers may not believe your excuse. These employees never clocked in for their shifts, but they have valid excuses with visual proof.
Car Troubles
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“Guy was scheduled to come in for his first day. He got a flat tire on the freeway on the way in, called the office, and the manager was cool and told him to take care of it and come in the next day. Next day rolls around and he calls in again, this time because his radiator overheated on the freeway. Even took a picture and texted it to management and HR. Manager, still cool, told him to come in the following Monday to give him time to get his car repaired. New employee is, of course, quite grateful.
Monday rolls around, and my manager gets another call. New guy was on his way and got into a car accident on the freeway. Manager got angry this time. New guy told him to look out the window, since our building was on a hill that overlooked a large stretch of freeway. Sure enough, off in the distance was new guy’s car burning merrily away.”
Let It Burn
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“My friend called off of work for what was essentially a bad sunburn. We were working at a movie theater at the time, and because she wasn’t sure if anyone would believe her, she decided to drive up to show the managers. She has a super distinctive body shape, so when I saw her across the lobby I waved and she sort of waved back. A bit later she walked over to me and she was completely unrecognizable. Turns out that she actually had mild sun poisoning and her face was so swollen she looked like a different person. Her doctor wrote her a note because he didn’t want her near the hot popcorn poppers or deep fryers. It took her almost a week to look anything like herself again. Best part was she used the super swollen sun poisoning picture of herself on Tinder for the longest time.”
Take A Stab At It
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“(Missing class is almost as bad as missing work). A guy in my public speaking class stopped showing up for about a month. Suddenly he reappears and says he got jumped and was stabbed 6 times and that’s why he missed class.
6 times?
He pulled up his shirt to show the group of people who had huddled to hear the story. It looked like a grenade had gone off with how fast the huddle of people torqued their bodies away from the sight.
Yeah, 6 times.”
A Bloody Mess
“A few years back my birthday was on a weekend. I had requested off work the Monday following that weekend, but then Thursday night something went wrong. I woke up some time after feeling really messed up with a sticky face, so I got out of bed and turned on a light. My room looked like a crime scene. My nightstand was knocked over, blood was soaking my sheets, on the floor, smeared on the walls and door frames heading towards the bathroom, all over the sink, and staining a towel horribly.
I had had a grand mal seizure in my sleep, fell out of bed, and hit my head repeatedly on my nightstand, cutting it up real bad. Some time after that I got up and tried to clean myself up and went back to bed, but was still so messed up that I have no recollection of it (postictal). I then woke up some time later to find the blood everywhere.
So I’m standing there, feeling miserable and looking at myself, thinking, ‘There’s no way I can go into work tomorrow, but I have to let my boss know and I don’t want him to think I’m just trying to extend my birthday weekend.’ So I snapped a picture of myself in the mirror, smeared with blood, face bruised and swollen, and texted it to him at like 2:00 in the morning with a message that I wouldn’t be coming in due to having a seizure.
I then cleaned myself up, changed the sheets, and went back to sleep.”
Supervisor Needs Supervising
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“I was temporarily fired for not showing up to work for a couple of days. I had been called up for jury duty and was selected for a court case so I filled out a time off request form and faxed it to my supervisor to approve. When I got to the office after finishing jury duty, I walked into my bosses office brandishing: 1) my jury summons, 2) the original time off request form and the fax sheet and 3) paperwork from the court to prove I had reported for duty and served. He called my supervisor into his office and asked her about the time off request form. Turns out my idiot supervisor not only forgot to hand the form in but for the past couple of months, she had been carrying it around with her.”
Bath Salts Are Not Allowed At Burger King
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“I was a manager at Burger King. An employee called in and said he had a bad reaction to some bath salts. I thought he meant actual bath salts, not the other bath salts. I’ve bought some of the essential oil salts for my wife and some have made her irritated so I ran with it. He definitely meant the other bath salts because I caught him a week or so later busting out a line in the restaurant bathroom, he had a small mason jar full. I fired him on the spot. His excuse was it was legal, and didn’t think it would be an issue.”
Moms
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“I had an employee that took bereavement time because his mother passed away, okay it happens. Four or five months later he took bereavement time because his mother died, I was confused. He tells me he was adopted, his birth mother had just died, and the first one was his adoptive mother, okay wow yeah fine.
Six months later he takes bereavement time because his mother died, I was like your kidding me, right? Nope, his parents that adopted him divorced when he was 8, his father remarried when he was 12 and the new wife adopted him.”
Three Flat Tires Are Better Than One!
“I had a guy no-show one time. He called like an hour after he was supposed to be there, saying that he blew three tires while on his way to work.
Turns out, he saw a box in the road and assumed it was empty. So he ran over it… It was a box of drywall nails. They scattered, blowing not only the tire he hit it with but also both rear tires as well.
Apparently, lots of cars also picked up nails as they went around him before a fire truck was able to get there and block off the two lanes. He showed me a photo of him and a cop, standing next to a row of like 15 parked cars, all with flat/quickly deflating tires.
And that’s the story of how my idiot coworker learned never to assume containers in the middle of the road are empty.”
Busy Bee
“One of my former employees was a beekeeper as a side job. She called in one day and said she might not be able to come into work, but that she was coming in to show me why. She came in, and her right eye was very swollen. Turns out a bee had crawled up her nose and stung the inside of her nose. She wasn’t very allergic to bees, but she ended up having a mild allergic reaction and had to go to the hospital.”
Left For Dead
“A while ago, one of my ex-coworkers didn’t show up to work on a Monday because he said he was jumped, kidnapped, and put into the trunk of a car and driven two states away. He got tossed out of the car and left in the middle of nowhere. He showed us the police report.”
Wild Goose Chase
“A coworker showed up over an hour late because ‘a goose was guarding my car door.’
He had a video on his phone of this Canadian goose, sitting in his driveway. Every time he’d approach the car it would spread its wings, lower its head, and begin charging at him while hissing and honking.
It was hilarious and totally worth the two hours of solo work.”
Pain, Pain Go Away
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“I was working at McDonalds at the time.
A spot on my lower abdomen was hurting really bad. I started experiencing this some in the evening one day, but I just chalked it up to something I ate – I had french toast in the morning and I rarely make it, so I thought I had salmonella or something from the eggs.
I slept on it and I’m in pretty bad shape. I called in before work and it was a manager that I liked, so I spoke pretty casually. ‘Hey my stomach is hurting really bad, do you need me to come in?’ She said yes, so I did.
I worked 7am to 3pm, breakfast and lunch rushes. I was feeling awful. So after lunch rush was over – I stuck it out, I asked the manager if I could go home early because I wanted to go to the hospital. I’m not one to whine about pain, but it was bad.
The manager from before said to ask the second shift manager who would be covering those times. This second girl actually had a thing for me, and we flirted around at work. I asked her, trying to appeal to her empathetic side, but she laughed in my face and said no. Then she proceeded to make me do things where I had to bend over, for the rest of my shift. These things weren’t my tasks, and it was the only day in my entire time there that I did them.
I got home and asked my mom if she could take me to the hospital, which left her horrified. Several different times in my life I needed stitches and always said I didn’t need to go, so me asking to go, she knew something was seriously wrong.
I told her the story on the way to the hospital and she was pissed. She worked there too at the time so she knew the people and knew our relationships and was just really angry at everyone involved.
Fast forward through the waiting room, I’m lying on the table, I get tests, and I have acute appendicitis. It was urgent enough that the resident surgeon came from 5 hours away – while on vacation – to remove it from me.
While the surgeon was on the way to me, my mom called them up and talked to them about it, and they were completely mortified. They came to see me in the hospital the next day and apologized profusely. I thought the flirty one was going to kiss me, but the nurse shooed them away, dang it.”
Family Feud
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“At the time this took place I was running a call center. The employee that this happened to we will refer to as C. C was a compulsive liar, he had been in over 300 street fights and won them all, you know the type. C also had a habit of calling in late and missing work. One morning C calls me and tells me he won’t be in until later because he was kidnapped by his distant cousin and some of his friends, and they tortured him. Obviously I didn’t believe this and actually laughed at C (we had a pretty good working relationship). After we got off the phone about five minutes go by and a detective shows up at our office looking for C. I took the detective into my office and asked him if what C said was true to which the detective asked me what C had told me happened. I explained that he said his cousin and some of his cousins friends came up from Texas and kidnapped him because he owed them money. They duct taped him to a chair in a basement and proceeded to torture him with some sort of military infusion device (this is what he called it) that looked like a mini flashlight with about 7-8 needle looking things on the end of it. They also hit him in the head and threatened to kill him. He escaped because they said they were going to get taco bell and he was able to get out of the duct tape when they left. After I told the detective all of this his response was ‘that’s pretty much how it happened’. This was about six years ago, and since then C has passed away due to an unrelated incident.”
You’re Fired If The Building Isn’t On Fire
“At the time my manager and I were on shaky ground. We weren’t getting along, I hated his crap and he didn’t care for mine either. He was demanding a report from me which I could only produce on the office computer. I got to the office 2 minutes early (which was an accomplishment, considering I was normally 30 minutes late)
I arrive and I see fire trucks and our tiny office just in a massive ball of flames. I’m kinda awestruck like “Holy cow…” and a few minutes pass by and my boss calls and goes ‘Where are my reports?’ I said ‘I can’t do them right now’, he said ‘Whats your excuse this time?’ I said ‘The office is on fire’, ‘What do you mean the office is on fire?’ I said ‘I mean the entire office is just one big giant bonfire’, he thinks I’m lying and says he’s going to be down there in 20 minutes and if the office isn’t on fire, I’m fired.
20 minutes later he shows up, the office is still on fire and he just stares at it in total disbelief like ‘holy cow, Cohen wasn’t lying this time’ I guarantee you the first question he had to go through his head was ‘Did Cohen set my office on fire to cover up his lateness?’ To which then he asked a firefighter how long they’ve been here, but the guy told him about 2 hours.
FYI the office fire was caused by a co-worker and his need to keep every piece of paper and his space heaters. No one was hurt!”
A Gift Of Explosive Proportions
“Managing a restaurant in a small town of roughly 8,000 people in Canada. Opening server is running a couple minutes late, not a big deal. I get a phone call from this server and they are hysterical on the phone. ‘I can’t come to work because someone blew up my neighbor’. I’m a little taken back and ask, concerned ‘What?’ They reply ‘the cops have to question me, they won’t let me leave. Someone blew up my basement neighbor. I have to go I won’t be into work, I’m sorry’.
Okay, so at this point I’m thinking if they really wanted the day off they sure went through a lot of effort to make this story up. This is a small town in Canada, nothing ever happens.
So sure enough later in the day the police and fire department make some large take out orders. I go up to the front and start chatting with a fire fighter, he was white as a ghost and looked rattled. I asked what’s going on, and he can only say he’s never seen anything like it, he couldn’t believe something like this would ever happen here’ and he leaves.
I’m like, ‘okay what’s going on?’, luckily with it being a small town, word travels fast. Yes, someone blew up this employees basement neighbor with a homemade bomb. She was disabled in an accident and this guy embezzled all her settlement money and decided to fix the problem by blowing her up in her home. Worst part is he sent a ‘present’ to the house and she opened it when her daughter and helper were in the room. Thank goodness they were okay, but unfortunately she was killed.
Needless to say we gave the employee some well needed time off to deal with that as they were home during the explosion and were first on scene. Real messed up, this story even made international news. Now I give most excuses a chance cause at this point I don’t really know what could be true or not.”
Cat Got Your Eye?
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“My boss didn’t believe me until I showed up with stitches and a black eye.
My cat accidentally scratched my face, near my left eye. I panicked, thinking she had gotten my literal eye (I was envisioning eye jelly running down my face at this point, National Guard career over, etc.), and passed out. I fell on the tile floor, got a massive knot on my forehead, and had a small seizure. My husband drove me to the ER, where I got to experience facial sutures and a CT scan. This happened late at night, and we didn’t get home until about 5:00am.
I emailed my boss to tell her I was taking a sick day because I’d been hurt by my cat and had been at the ER all night. I got a ‘fine, whatever, we’ll talk about it when you’re back to work’ sort of response, which was code for ‘I think you’re full of it’. She actually felt pretty bad after she saw the state of my face.”
Delivering Pizzas and Knuckle Sandwiches
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“Long ago, a friend of mine used to deliver pizza while putting himself through college to eventually become a lawyer (which he did).
On one particular delivery, he was walking back from the customer’s apartment to his car when two guys confronted him and demanded money. When he refused, they charged at him.
The problem for them was that my friend came from a very rough background and was a well-known scrapper among our group. He put them both in the hospital, where they told the police that he was the one who attacked them with no provocation. The problem with that was both of them were already well known to the local PD with rap sheets and my friend had no negative police record.
Apparently, the cop’s reaction was (paraphrasing) ‘So, your story is that the pizza guy, with no rap sheet, while on his way to his car after delivering a pizza, just decided to attack two guys with long rap sheets, for no reason and then stuck around for the cops to get there after beating you up?'”