What's the funniest excuse you've ever heard?
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5,885 Posts
I'm sure that you've heard some really flimsy excuses from employees for doing something wrong or missing work. I'm looking for funny but true stories about excuses that are amazingly lame, ridiculous, or unbelievable. I want one I can use in HR Hero Extra, which is a supplement to our Employment Law Letters.
Please post your funniest war story here -- flimsy excuses or anything else that happened at work. If I use your story in HR Hero Extra, I'll send you an HR Hero goody bag. It's an HR Hero tote bag containing a denim HR Hero shirt, an HR Hero T-shirt, and an HR Hero baseball cap.
Please -- only post stories that you know are true. For example, you heard it directly from the employee or his supervisor. If I use your story, I'll contact you at the e-mail address you gave when you signed up for this forum.
Thanks for your help. This should be fun.
James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
[email]jsokolowski@mleesmith.com[/email]
Please post your funniest war story here -- flimsy excuses or anything else that happened at work. If I use your story in HR Hero Extra, I'll send you an HR Hero goody bag. It's an HR Hero tote bag containing a denim HR Hero shirt, an HR Hero T-shirt, and an HR Hero baseball cap.
Please -- only post stories that you know are true. For example, you heard it directly from the employee or his supervisor. If I use your story, I'll contact you at the e-mail address you gave when you signed up for this forum.
Thanks for your help. This should be fun.
James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
[email]jsokolowski@mleesmith.com[/email]
Comments
Poor guy. Not only was he dreaming about washing dishes but he got written up for being late.
[email]paulknoch@hotmail.com[/email]
Female employee fails pre-employment drug screen. Tests positive for cocaine. Tells me that she has never used cocaine, but that her boyfriend is a cocaine addict. Sort of like Ozzie Osborne meets June Cleaver. She then shares with me that she had sex with him the night before the test, so that's why she tested positive.
I'm sure this employee told me the truth but it's so weird that I thought I'd share it. We had a monthly conference call with all 26 of our branch locations. The Branch Manager in our Ankorage, Alaska branch missed the call. He called me later to apologize and told me he missed the call because when he went to leave his house to drive to the branch for the call, he opened his door and found a moose standing on his porch. Moose will can tear your house down if it's wooden and the moose gets mad enough or excited enough. He told me that he was trapped in his house for an hour until the moose finally left his front porch and wandered away. I told him that I believed him (which I did), but that even if he was telling a lie, it was such a great lie, I'd excuse him on originality alone!
Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]
Please believe the moose story. I used to live in Anchorage. If the moose are in town it is because they are hungry. A hungry moose (1,600# with lethal hooves) can be an ornery animal. They have been known to attack people & cars and do a lot of damage.
I did believe the guy. He had never missed a conference call before and was honest as the day is long. However, because I'm sitting in Nashville, Tennessee, it was the most unusual story I'd ever heard!
Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]
James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
1. We had a position that required a drug test after a contingent offer was extended. We always warned candidates that the position they were interviewing for required a drug test if we made them an offer, then when we made the offer, the candidate was once again reminded that if they accepted the offer they would have to take a drug test. So one day I make an offer to a guy and he accepts and I schedule him for the drug test. Don't you know, it comes back positive. I call up the guy and let him know that he tested positive. He says, "There's this product at GNC that will clean my system out so that I can retake the test and pass. I'll go buy it now if you'll let me try again."
2. I had a man come in for an interview for a temp position. I noticed that he had a significant gap in employment. I said, "So, can you tell me what you were up to between 1995 and 1997?" He said, "Just chillin'" A few months later another man comes in with a significant employment gap. I say, "So, can you tell me what you were doing between 1996 and 1998?" He says, "Just chillin'" I sat back and laughed and said, "We seem to be getting a lot of that lately. How exactly would you define 'just chillin'?"
Kymm
I had a pregnant employee who asked if she could take a week or two off without it counting as maternity/pregnancy leave. I asked her to supply a doctor's excuse for consideration, and she did - from a dermatologist. Her excuse was that her pregancy was causing her to break out in acne, and she was too embarrassed to be seen in public.
I often get a kick our of the reasons people claim to have left their previous jobs. It's amazing how some people have such bad luck that every former boss they've had has been a jerk (or worse). I also had a 19-year-old applicant who said she left her three previous jobs because in each instance her supervisor thought she was having an affair with the supervisor's boyfriend or husband - including the job at Hardee's where the supervisor was a gay male.
James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
[email]jsokolowski@mleesmith.com[/email]
The first happened during an interview. I had a candidate interviewing for a production position. One of the questions I asked him was about his future goals, where he saw himself in the next 5 to 10 years, etc. His reply was, "I'd like to have your job hon!" Then he said, "oh, that wasn't very smart. I probably won't get the job now, huh?" Needless to say, he didn't.
The second story comes from an employee who was always making excuses. We had a random drug test and his name came up. He kept saying he couldn't go, he couldn't go, so he was escorted down to the clinic to be tested there. Lo and behold he came up positive. His excuse was that somebody spiked his cake. He was referred to the EAP (we give our employees one chance with a mandatory referral to the EAP, a work continuation agreement etc. - they are non-DOT employees). After the EAP assessment, he needed to have another drug test done before he could come back to work and it had to be negative. The day he was to go down and have this done, our Director of Sales came over and asked me about an email he had received. It was a receipt for purchasing a kit to beat a drug test. It had the name of the product, the employee's name and address that it was shipped to, the date it was ordered and sent, etc. For some reason, it was accidentally emailed to our corporate email address (which goes to our Sales Director) instead of his own! When confronted with it, his excuse was that he bought it for a friend who didn't have a credit card.
Unfortunately, for reasons I won't go into, he was not terminated at that point. Later, after he came back to work, his name came up for another random test. We are a secure facility with a guard and gate at the entrance. When this employee arrived at work that morning and saw the guard coming out to hand him his notice that he was selected, he made a U-turn and left. He never called in and was gone for the next two days. When his boss finally got ahold of him, he told his boss that he never showed up at the gate, it must have been his girlfriend who was borrowing his truck and that he was home in bed because he hurt his hand working on her car over the weekend.
He is now no longer employed with us.
1. I was sick and could not come to work.
2. My phone was out of order so I could not call in.
3. I was too sick to drive over to the store to a pay phone
4. My wife has no drivers license so she could not drive and call for
me.
5. As soon as I got to feeling good enough to get out of bed, I drove
to a pay phone and called in.
I was so impressed/amused by this excuse that I gave the employee one more chance. He straightened up and has stayed out of trouble since.
But the one I enjoyed the most....
An employee called in on Memorial Day weekend, he had a bad cold and ear infection and just couldn't come in at all that weekend.
Well that weekend, I went out of town to the beach and who do you suppose I was standing behind at the Tiki Hut? When he turned around with his drinks, he walked right into me. He smiled, greeted me and walk on past...he was about 10 feet away before he realized who he'd smiled at. I've never seen anyone get sick so fast in my life, the poor kid actually turned green.
Congratulations to Paul in Cannon Beach for submitting the funniest excuse. He had an employee who explained that he was late for his dishwashing shift because "I dreamed I was already there."
Paul wins our HR Hero goody bag -- an HR Hero tote bag containing a denim HR Hero shirt, an HR Hero T-shirt, and an HR Hero baseball cap. And we'll put his story in the HR-de-HaR-HaR feature in the June HR Hero Extra, which is a supplement to our Employment Law Letters.
Thanks to everyone for making the Employers Forum so great.
James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
[email]jsokolowski@mleesmith.com[/email]
I went home for lunch and discovered a male Chickadee flying around my living room. My cats had returned from their morning jaunts (through their cat window) and were fast asleep on the bed. Since I really didn't want to come home that evening to furniture-carpet-etc. full of bird droppings, I herded the bird out of the house before returning to work. When I finally returned to work (YOU try chasing a bird out of your house!), I walked down the hall to my office to a lot of laughter and smart-aleck comments -- this wan't the first time this had happened. My cats have created their own unique version of catch-and-release!
James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
Just to take your mind off the issue - if chickadees are like most species of birds, typically the males are more colorful than the females. Nature did this so that the males could distract predators away from the nesting females. Therefore - visually it should be quite easy to tell the male from the female.