My favorites are:
**
“I was drunk.” ** Yeah… sometimes this is true, but it’s just as likely that you were just all horned up and wanted to get laid, and now you’re trying to rationalize your choice of partners. Or you said some sort of “in vino, veritas” thing, and now you’re trying to backtrack and say you didn’t mean it.
**“I ran into some traffic.” ** This may technically be true, but the common users of this line are people who for some reason, can’t abide by actually being early to anything, and therefore fuck about until the last minute, and then are late because they didn’t plan far enough ahead to be there on time in the case of traffic or other unforeseen events.
**“I wasn’t feeling well” ** Again, it may technically be true, but blaming your non-appearance at a function on ill health when you’re really hung over from the night before is a BS excuse if ever there was one.
**“I may have something going on… let me check and get back to you.” ** Yeah. If you don’t want to do whatever it is, or you don’t want to commit to it, just say so. Dithering about whether or not you have another thing is a BS excuse; you know if you do and you know if you don’t. Commit one way or the other and say so.
Desert Monk and Martian BigfootOut of honest curiosity, what are we supposed to say instead? That we actually SAY “I don’t want to have sex with you”? These don’t sound like BS excuses but as a less mean way to say “you’re not my type”.
Attempting to qualify a stance as an opinion, doesn’t automatically discount objective reality-based facts. If you’re wrong, sometimes you’re just wrong.:o
It was one of those times when the world was supposed to end the following day. I invited my friend out for “End of the World Nachos” - meaning that our last meal would be our favourite, lol. She declined because she said her daughter really wanted sushi. I told her to ask again - I mean, nachos! - and she came back and said no, she’s insisting on sushi.
Okay, no big deal. A couple weeks later I was hanging out with her daughter and mentioned the “End of the World Nachos.” I said I’d invited her mom but she declined. The daughter said “That’s odd. I would have loved End of the World nachos.”
It also avoids the situation down the line where Bossman comes across the code and asks—with a tone of disgust reserved for SPAMMERS and politicians: “Who wrote THIS?”
“I did, you said just get it to work.”
“Well it’s not working NOW, is it?”
“But I never expected anyone to go out of their way to enter bad data!”
“What a BS excuse… This is the ugliest code I have ever seen…”
But the opposite of “thrown together kludge” isn’t really “pretty”; it’s “simple and efficient and clear”. Calling taking the time to make something simple and efficient and clear “making it pretty” is the bullshit excuse for not taking the time to do the job properly. It’s dismissing the work other people do to make things actually effective as just window dressing.
Doesn’t necessarily mean the mom’s wrong, though. It could’ve been the daughter’s way of excusing herself.
Or perhaps the mom didn’t tell the daughter about the other option, and the daughter was insisting on that without knowing the other possibility. And the mom may not have told her because she may not have thought daughter would be included.
Really, if you were on mute, and just spent the last 15 seconds of silence trying to answer the question that was posed to you on the conference call, you wouldn’t need the question repeated, but we’ve all been there, so let’s ask the question again.
My fave was a manager hanging up on a conference call because he was absolutely livid and needed time to cool down, lest he start cursing up a storm. “Sorry, my line got disconnected.”
“I just can’t understand why . . .” (I am too mentally lazy or perhaps empathy-impaired to attempt to understand why)
I last heard this from an of course American lady who was incensed that European cities had the effrontery to be spelled differently in different languages. “I was looking for Vienna on the map and it turned out they called it Ween! I just can’t understand why . . .”
Fuck I’m tired of excuses. I have a few too many artistic types around me who think if they just hold out on getting a normal job for a few more weeks, suddenly they’ll be making so much money doing a drawing a month or selling CDs that they won’t need to work for anyone else. So why can’t they find a job now, and quit it when they make it big? Because it would stifle their creativity, of course. No, you’re just fucking lazy and making excuses.
The thing is, I could definitely do with losing a few pounds, and I’m not really sure what “big-boned” is even supposed to mean, but I certainly do have big bones. Even as a kid I noticed I had a particularly round ribcage (it sounds funny, I know) which, in the wrong clothes, makes me appear obese as opposed to a little chubby.
I’m close to PaulParkhead on this one. I’ve never actually said it (it’s too much of a cliché) but I’ve thought it, in a case where I really did like the other person and was somewhat interested, but was realistic enough to know my level of interest would never match hers. I had no criticisms of her, really, but a good relationship needs more than just “no complaints”.
You know, you’re right. I was sort of seeing it from the perspective of my own 17 year old self, and frankly, that was a person who somehow, at least subconsciously, thought every girl had an obligation to have sex with him. Confronted with that kind of crap, I do understand why women may find it best to thread lightly. That’s a hell of a jam, to want to be friends with someone and running into the problem of them basically being drooling horndogs, ruled completely by the little brain in their pants. I mean, what the hell do you say? It’s not like “I don’t want to have sex with you” would have produced a better result.
I don’t get irked by most excuses…mainly because rarely am I in a position for someone to give me one. But one that kinda annoys is one I’m probably guilty of saying occasionally. “But…you’re different.”
Usually said by someone who is complaining about some facet of their lives, which makes you think they’re looking for advice. So you might tell them how you coped with a similar situation. Instead of trying to relate your experience with theirs, they immediately look for some critical difference that renders your advice meaningless.
Like, you might say, “I used to be like you. But then I woke up one morning and said to myself, ‘You know what? This shit has got to stop.’ And I then started doing X, Y, Z and before you know it, I started feeling better.”
And then they say. “But…you’re different.”
Thing is, sometimes they’re right. I believe people are masters of the self-delusion. I can say I woke up one morning with a grand epiphany and I chose to act on it and that my choices resulted in positive results. But I don’t think it’s ever that simple in actuality. Still, “But you’re different” just sounds lame.
My current least favorite is “I never got the log in information!” for one of the online courses I oversee (I’m an LMS Admin for our organization amongst other things). Uh, really? Not only can I re-send the e-mail you were sent, I can see your activity logged into the course too. We had someone waste our time with that yesterday and I’m a bit worried that person is gonna get fired because she insisted to her boss that she never got the log in information so that’s why she didn’t do any work, but her boss asked to see her online activities and we provided them, showing that she read at least everything in the welcome section before flaking on the rest of the work. Dumb excuse to use if you* actually logged in*…
