We’ve all had times where we just didn’t want to go to work today, even when we feel perfectly fine. The workforce has provided an abundance of excuses for calling in sick or missing work.
A new survey by CareerBuilder has revealed the top 10 excuses for taking a day off from work. The career website noted that workers may not entirely be honest when they miss work, but their inventiveness has certainly enhanced over the years.
There have been a wide range of reasons given to the office for playing hooky. One excuse consisted of simply just placing the casserole in the oven, while another explained that they had to return to the plastic surgeon to tweak the results just a bit to make it perfect. A worker even informed the company that he had gotten “lucky” and didn’t know where he was.
In the past year, more than one-quarter of employees have called in to work sick when they were feeling well, down four percent from the previous year. Nearly one-third reported that they merely didn’t feel like going to work, while roughly the same number of respondents said they just wanted the day to bum around. Close to one-fifth conceded to taking the day off to visit a doctor, and about another fifth wanted to catch up on sleep.
With the polar vortex and immense blizzards engulfing much of the United States, just 11 percent cited the bad weather as an excuse to miss work.
Who is the likeliest to play hooky? Professional, business services and sales employees rounded out the top three. IT, retail and leisure and hospitality employees were the least likely.
Although there are workers who are conjuring up clever excuses to avoid work, there are plenty of workers who have been trekking to the office when they should actually be home in bed recuperating from the flu.
More than half (53 percent) reported going to work when ill because they believed the work wouldn’t be completed. Roughly 40 percent also went into work because they couldn’t afford to lose a day’s wages.
Of course, experts warn that there are plenty of dangers of missing work, particularly getting caught. There have been an abundance of reports of employees being fired because the boss or a colleague discovered their ruse on social media.
According to the study, one-quarter caught an employee lying about being sick through social media. The consequences? Only one-fifth have been dismissed, but more than half just been reprimanded.
Here are the top 10 excuses given to miss a day of work:
- Put a casserole in the oven.
- plastic surgery for enhancement purposes needed some “tweaking” to get it just right.
- Sitting in the bathroom and her feet and legs fell asleep. When she stood, up she fell and broke her ankle.
- At the casino all weekend and still had money left to play with on Monday morning.
- Woke up in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it.
- Employee had a “lucky night” and didn’t know where he was.
- Got stuck in the blood pressure machine at the grocery store and couldn’t get out.
- A gall stone they wanted to heal holistically.
- Caught their uniform on fire by putting it in the microwave to dry.
- Accidentally got on a plane.
The online survey was conducted with 2,203 hiring managers and human resource professionals, and 3,103 U.S. workers between Aug. 11 and Sept. 5. It contains a margin of error of +/- 2.09 percentage points and +/- 1.74 percentage points.