A little help playing hooky

A survey by the Web-based company careerbuilder.com revealed that one-third of workers admitted calling in sick when they felt fine at least once in 2006.

Playing hooky has been around longer than time clocks, of course. Some delinquents make a second career out of finding excuses for missing a day’s labor. Any veteran manager will tell you that the creative and brazen ones work harder at getting out of their shift than they do on the job.

Patrick Hyland

As the crunch of the winter heating season approaches, Internet-savvy entrepreneurs are making it easier than ever for your employees to get away with documenting non-sick days off. Dozens of Web sites offer fake appointment slips featuring medical letterhead. Others offer more creative options, including fake jury duty and funeral service notices.

For chronically absent employees too lazy to think up any more reasons, myexcusedabsence.com advertises “real excuses for any situation” and charges $24.95 for a package of five templates that buyers can print and fill out. It includes doctor and dentist appointment notes, along with funeral, emergency room and medical evaluation documents.

As co-founder of the year-old Web site observed in a recent news article about his business,”Convenience in this country sells.” Indeed.

Yet, chronically absent employees may be running out of ideas. In the careerbuilder.com survey, 1,150 hiring managers were asked to share the most bizarre excuses employees have given for missing work. The top 10 were:

1. Employee was poisoned by his mother-in-law.

2. A buffalo escaped from the game reserve and kept charging the employee every time she tried to go from her car to her house.

3. Employee was feeling all of the symptoms of his expecting wife.

4. Employee called from his cell phone, said he was accidentally locked in a restroom stall and no one was around to let him out.

5. Employee broke his leg snowboarding off his roof while drunk.

6. Employee’s wife said he couldn’t come in to work because he had a lot of chores to do around the house.

7. One of the walls in the employee’s home fell off the night before.

8. Employee’s mother was in jail.

9. A skunk got into the employee’s house and sprayed all of his uniforms.

10. Employee had bad hiccups.

How do these excuses compare to those you hear on the front lines of the propane industry? Drop me a line and we will print a sampling in a future issue.

Patrick Hyland
Editor
phyland@questex.com