So today, I told a lie to my boss. I told her my grandma was taken ill, just so I could get the day off work.
The reason why I wanted the day off work, was to sort out my relationship problems. And yes, I do realise this could have waited until I’d finished work, but what the hell…
Anyway, I now feel quite guilty for lying, so I was hoping you dopers could post any stories you have, which involves you telling a big fat lie to your boss!
As you should.
Were you paid for the time off? Did it count as vacation?
After the first few times my bosses flat out and unnecessarily lied to me I became less concerned with any obligation to be entirely truthful in what I said to them.
Remember not to speak an untruth when you can obtain as good a result through silence. And avoid any untruths that can be readily checked and disproved.
Boss here. I guess it varies from boss to boss, but my employees seem to be up front with me when they want/need time off. Tell me you are taking a day off cause you just don’t feel like working = no problem. Get caught in a lie = go work elsewhere.
To some of us there’s a gray area between the two. Get caught telling me a lie so you can catch a game or go play = problems. Get caught in a lie because you feel your reasoning is TMI = leeway.
What you should feel guilty about is lying about your grandma. Come up with something better that doesn’t involve her illness! Won’t someone think of the grandmothers?!
I found that if I have private business to attend to (appointment, personal time off needed, whatever) it usually suffices to say “I have a personal matter that I need to attend to and would like the afternoon off.” I’ve rarely had anyone inquire further. You don’t need to tell a lie to get the afternoon off, just don’t say exactly why unless you really really have to.
Whenever the boss asks for volunteers to work overtime or on a weekend, what I say is, “I have plans.”
What I mean is, “I plan on not being at work during those hours.”
When I supervised staff I never gave a shit why they wanted time off or if they made stuff up about it. But I didn’t pay them either. The ludicrous excuses for time off amused me, and they didn’t get paid for it. I would only push back if there was a deadline time off would threaten.
But bosses generally don’t get fired when they lie to employees; they’re more likely to get promoted.
Maybe its my latent Catholic guilt, but I could never lie about a day off work by saying a family member was ill…That seems way too much like tempting fate.
Couldn’t you have used a vacation day?
I’ve been plenty of places that, unless you’re actively bleeding AND have a doctor’s note (mild hyperbole), they won’t accept any excuses not to be there. So if you have a cold or a dentist appointment or otherwise need not to be there, your only choice is to call up and sound like you’re trying desperately to crawl out of your own grave just to make the call.
So Ideal World, yeah, you shouldn’t have to lie. Real world with less than ideal boss? Do what you need to do to get the day off.
The thing is, I do genuinely feel awful about making up the lie. I never normally come out with that sort of stuff, and as soon as I said it, I wished I never.
I didnt take it off as vacation, as I wouldnt have got it.
And if I said I was ill, I would have still had to go into work, which I know for a fact due to an earlier experience.
But as Chimera says, in a real world, with a less than ideal boss, do what you need to.
Thats not to say I feel any better about it…
So nobody else has told a big, horrible lie to their boss? Now I really do feel terrible!
Oh yeah - as someone who’s been around the block at least a couple of times, sick or dead grandparents have got to be the lamest most unbelievable lie.
Of course, you call someone on it at your risk. My wife teaches college, and got tired of the number of dead grandparents one sememster. Funny how they happen to kick off right around test/assignment times! So she told the next kid she needed a prayer card to let him make up the test. Yep - he brought one in! 
I’m with the folk who say provide as little info as necessary. If you aren’t really leaving them in the lurch and don’t grossly abuse your leave, most bosses don’t really care why you are out. I’d just say I wasn’t feeling well, had “an appointment”, or had to take care of something.
This. Admittedly, I have a very cynical attitude toward life in general, and work in particular, but in my experience, bosses aren’t that easy to approach and ask for a favor as some in here are suggesting. I used to work for a place that, even when you had vacation time saved up and asked for a week’s vacation, management acted as if you were asking to date their teenage daughter. They made a big show of how magnanimous they were being by letting you off, telling you that the would be really behind the 8 ball the week you were gone, but “if you really need it, I guess we’ll give it to you.”
I highly doubt the bosses where I used to work would have accepted “personal business” as an excuse. I don’t doubt that a lot of people here work for great places and people, but there are still quite a few of us who have worked for companies with jerks. In that case, no, I wouldn’t feel bad about lying to a jerk boss.
I’ve had both kinds of bosses. The one at my last job got to be a good friend, to the point where I could be totally honest why I was out, but since he trusted me I didn’t actually need to provide details. “I don’t feel well,” generally covered all illnesses, and “I have something to take care of,” covered all personal matters. He usually only wanted to know if he could or could not call me during that day, and if I was so sick I thought it might be multiple days (like when I got the flu). I took the same approach with the people who worked for me.
The boss before that argued with me when I called her from the hospital to tell her I wouldn’t be in. She seemed to think we could negotiate. (She was fond of the passive-aggressive “Well, we really need you to come in, but I guess if you absolutely need the time off, it’s okay. But it would really be best if you came in.”). With her I certainly exaggerated and lied-- you’d never get any time off otherwise.
At my current gig, we’re basically consultants working from home on deadline based projects. As long as you deliver, they absolutely do not care when/where/how you get it done. The only requirement is you inform them of any time during normal business hours you will be unreachable. They don’t care or ask why, unless your absence is so protracted you will need to hand off your work to someone else. They ask that you give the length of your vacation’s worth of notice before taking that time off. That’s it. It’s very freeing. The flipside is we have no PTO, so days off essentially come out of your own pocket. That alone keeps abuse down. It’s a pretty nice system.
SazChez, I did once tell a huge lie to my boss’s boss once (the one I was good friends with). He was having serious marital problems that I was the only one who knew about, and one day he just didn’t show up for work, didn’t answer his phone. His boss asked me if I’d seen him, and I said I’d spoken to him that morning, he said he was working from home because he had food poisoning, and that I’d told him I’d tell Big Boss, but had a fire to put out first thing and forgot. I said I imagined he’d overestimated how sick he’d be and was just unable to get to his phone due to the puking. (Because TMI makes people stop asking questions). I then called my boss and left the details of the excuse I’d made for him on his voicemail, but that if he didn’t call or show up tomorrow I was going to become concerned he was dead. Twenty minutes later I get a text that says, “Not dead. I owe you.” Never did find out what happened that day.
When I supervised people I found it amazing just how many grandparents some people have.
One guy’s grandmother must have died 5 or 6 times. 
I’ve been both a boss and an employee
When I was a boss, the only time I cared about a reason is if it was for extra privileges.
As I told my staff, if you have 5 vacation days, just tell me you want one. I don’t need to know why. I recall the H/R manager called me in once and said, “Mark you have to stop your staff from using their vacation days half days at a time.” I asked why and she said, “Well they never realize that they’re using them up, with a half day here and there, for things like going to a school conference for their kid.” I told her, I’d speak to my staff in the next staff meeting, but I wasn’t going to treat them like children. It was there time off and they could use it as they see fit. If H/R didn’t like them using 5 vacation days as 10 half days used here and there, then H/R should make a new rule forbidding that.
Now if you used up your vacation days and you needed an extra day off, I’d like to know the reason. For instance, your relative was ill, or one lady who worked for me was in school and admitted she didn’t study for her test and wanted a half day off (sans pay) to study for it. Those are good reasons for it.
As for taking time off, I would always call off sick and give a simple reason. Like, I had a “Stomach problem” and was up all night.
Another boss checking in.
Tell me you need the day off for personal reasons, or just as a mental health day. Unless there is something critical going on and I can’t get someone else to cover it, you’re good.
Lie to me about it, and I’ll know that I can’t trust you anymore. That doesn’t do good things for your career, and definitely doesn’t put you first in line for promotions, perqs, or cool assignments.
If something happens to your grandmother, it will be your fault.