Taking a page out of Van Halen’s book, eh? 
Oh lord, I had one of those this semester. And I do a face to face “grade check” about 2/3rds of the way through the semester, just to prevent end of semester sticker shock and to give every student EVERY opportunity (in case having an “easy A” class eludes some of them), this one student, upon seeing the C, was shocked to find out that tardies and absences counted (even though it says that in two places on the syllabus). Actually rolled his/her eyes at the notion that showing up and on time was part of the grade.
Sigh…
And then STILL continued to miss classes and was the only one who’d claimed that I didn’t explain the finals class schedule well enough for him/her to understand. All of the other 23 students got it and it wasn’t more complicated than "the last class consists of X+1 hours instead of the normal X hours, ergo you must attend the whole finals class to get credit for the whole thing.
I’d been telling the class that (and finals schedules are posted in the main class listings book) for three weeks prior to finals.