I’m sure that one of my employers thought I was making this one up.
I was quite late one day because that morning I had put regular dish soap in the dishwasher and turned it on while I was getting ready. I was in a new home and this was my first dishwasher, and I didn’t know you shouldn’t do that. I kept hearing a weird thrumming noise from the kitchen and finally went in to see what was happening. I opened the dishwasher and an avalanche of suds poured out and covered the entire kitchen floor. It wasn’t as bad as that scene with Jack Lemmon in Mr. Roberts, but it was in the neighborhood.
I had to call in and say that I’d be spending the morning clearing suds out of my kitchen. I’m sure it sounded lame. Took me a couple of hours to clean it all up.
I once had a consultant miss a meeting because he “thought it was still Sunday.”
This man was notoriously hard to work with, so I had called to ask him when he was available, and then sent him several reminder emails. He also was amazingly difficult to get rid of - for some reason the boss’ boss thought he was irreplaceable.
Not employees, but I’ve had some doozies from students (I teach college voice). I had one students who was quite likely the flakiest person in the history of… history. She would regularly miss several lessons in a row with no notice, then waltz in a month later as if nothing had happened. If I had her now, she would either fail or be kicked out of my studio, but I was a new teacher then and was far too forgiving.
My favorite series of excuses by far: she missed a couple of weeks in a row. When she finally showed up, I asked her where she’d been. No explanation for the first week, but the second one? She woke up in the morning, decided that she needed to make up with her ex-boyfriend who lived in Washington DC, booked a plane, and flew out there. All righty then. A year later she called me (which was at least a step in the right direction) to tell me that her boyfriend (the same one) had flown in to surprise her for Valentine’s Day, and she couldn’t come to her lesson because she “didn’t want to leave him alone.”
What, is he going to pee on the carpet if you leave for an hour?
A few weeks ago I had an employee call out for an especially unique reason. We are her second job. Her first is at the local arena.
Employee called out because:
She had dressed for work and then peered out into the arena for a moment to watch the Harlem Globetrotters play. They were chasing someone around with a bucket of water and supposedly splashed it all over her just as she peeked through the door. Her only uniform was drenched so she could not come in.
I’m a bus driver, and rather apalled at how flagrantly some of my co workers will call in ‘sick’ on an arbitrary whim.
I do feel compassion for those unlucky folks that have a lot of family drama or illnesses. But that’s what FMLA is for, and assuming the paperwork is done properly and its a legitimate reason, its all hunky dory.
However, some times its for something stupid- Gotta come in a 4AM todaY? nah, just won’t show up. Route I don’t like to drive? call in sick. They’ll take it to the extreme- if they are bidding for their schedule for the quarter, and end up stuck with something they don’t like (because of low seniority, or changes in the schedules or something) they will CONVENIENTLY be out on Industrial injury leave…for exactly 3 months, just in time to come back to do the schedule they want. :dubious:
Of course I’m kind of biased because I have such crappy seniority my schedule/role is to perform all the work the old timers are too damn lazy/whiny/etc to show up like they’re supposed to :mad:
Muffin, I wish. But laid off mill workers don’t want to work for min. wage. I can’t say I blame them. But I worked at a call centre for about 6 weeks while waiting for an RN job to come up back 4 years ago.
Curious…does the “I have to go to Winnipeg to bail out my landlord’s son” hold any water to you? Is there any way to bail someone out without actually being there? This worker puts up great numbers when she works, and has been with us since we were working out of the home office, but frankly the excuses for not coming in are wearing thin.
I was a dining room supervisor at a bar / restaurant once-upon-a-time. My boss (the owner) was a sucker for hard luck cases. He would hire just about anyone with a sad story and leave it up to his supervisors to deal with the aftermath.
He hired a girl that grew up down the street from me. Patty had started having kids at 15 and had three or four by the time we were in our mid-twenties. Once the youngest began school, her AFDC caseworker told her that she would be losing about half of her benefits. Time to get a job.
Jon hired her for a five day work week. Most weeks, she only showed up for four. The kids were sick, the dog threw up, she had to bail the old man out of jail, etc. The excuses just kept coming.
One Monday, after a particularly busy, shorthanded weekend that she had called out not just one day, but two, I set her down for a come-to-Jesus. After explaining how her call outs affected the business and her co-workers, I asked her why she only showed up for four shifts.
Her answer: “'Cause I can’t make the rent in three.”
After that, I scheduled her for four or fewer shifts per week. That way I could schedule all of her days off.
I, myself, have called with an almost unbelievable excuse. My apartment building was on fire. Fortunately, nothing in my apartment was damaged, I was only an hour late and they had seen the fire trucks from my job, one mile away in a small town.
Missread, Patty sounds like my ex-husband. Working 4 or more shifts a week was for chumps. His idea of solid financial planning was to make exactly twice your rent /month. One check for rent, one check for PAR-TAY! (And then, every few months pay the phone bill. Did you know that “They respect you more when you put down “big chunks” all at once, instead of the sheep who pay every month” Silly me, caring more about “net 30 days” than “respect”)
I was being poked and probed at my local A&E (Accident and Emergecy/ER) when a bloke came in after having the hiccups for over 24 hours - he had gone into shock and was in a very bad way.
I work at a bar; we had just hired a new girl and after training for five shifts, her first Real Live Solo Shift was at 11 a.m…
Her father called in drunk for her.
As in, “My daughter is too drunk to call you, so I’m calling to let you know that she’s too drunk to come to work.”
When he was told to inform his daughter that she wouldn’t have a job by the time she sobered up, he did not–strangely–seem at all surprised.
As an odd postscript, she became something of a regular after that…she’d show up around noon, obviously not sober, and have a couple of shots with her boyfriend. Once she showed up at eleven, and I was working and I told her that we don’t open til noon, so she’d have to wait…
And she said, “You open at ELEVEN! Not TWELVE! I used to WORK here!”
I not-so-gently reminded her that the bartender shows up at eleven to set up the bar, which opens…AT TWELVE. And if she’d ever been remotely sober she might recall that fact.
In my varied employment career, I’ve encountered a wide variety of excuses.
Some were clearly excuses and not particularly original ones: ‘My wallet got stolen so I couldn’t come to work’; ‘I’m in the country and have no mobile connection and I have car trouble and the dog got sick…so I’m not coming’ etc.
But my favourite is from a corporate EFL student in Moscow who studied early in the morning. He was meant to call a minimum of 24 hours in advance if he needed to cancel a class.
One morning, when he hadn’t called to cancel, I set off for work. Then my cell phone goes.
“I am sorry! I forget! I am in Siberia! It is too far to come so I must cancel! I am sorry!”
It was such a charming (and clearly genuine) excuse that I just laughed and turned around and went home again.
I had a coworker once who walked up to our manager and their regional manager and announced she was leaving to go to a friend’s softball game. She was instantly fired.
The ones I was thinking about are the folks in their 50s who don’t have a hope in hell of finding another well paying job in the region, who have deep family and community roots so they won’t be moving away, who have homes that they very much do not want to lose, and who have a good work ethic, unlike the welfare skids that the various government programs tend to place with employers. It takes time for them to become resigned to their new “unemployable” situation, but once they have run out of funds, they get out there and work like dogs to make ends meet. The trick for you would be to establish the connections with the union halls so that the stewards would recommend you to laid off members when they come knocking.
They are working, or are about to find work. The trick is to have them come to you for work rather than go to someone else, and then for you to keep them, for they will still be keeping their ears open for better paying jobs.
This one sounds legit – it sounds like your employee will be standing as a sureity for the accused. (Sureity = sure I’ll keep Buddy out of trouble and haul his ass in to all his court dates – an assurance to the court.)
Once arrested, a person may be released temporarily until trial by the police or by the court. At it’s lowest level, all that is required of the person is that he or she promises to appear at his or her court dates. At the next level of severity, the court will require someone (a sureity) who has some sort of relationship with the person to promise (to give an assurance) to supervise the person to ensure that the person will not get into further trouble and that the person will appear at his or her court dates. At the next level of severity, the court will require someone who has some sort of relationship with the person to promise to supervise the person to ensure that the person will not get into further trouble and that the person will appear at his or her court dates, and just to put some pressure on the suerity, the sureity will have to deposit some money with the court, so that if the accused gets in further trouble or does not show up for a court date, the sureity will not get his or her money back from the court.
BTW, the above applies to Canada. YMMV if you are not in Canada.
(And a minor nit – when it comes time for the court to return the sureity’s money, it is paid to the accused, not the sureity, which as you can guess, occasionally makes for some interesting situations when the accused keeps the cash rather than handing it over to the sureity.)
