Employers Reveal Best Excuses for Calling off Work

Last month my friend was sick for a couple days and had to call off of work. Let me just say that my wishes-to-remain-anonymous friend will work until they feel like death and then when they have no choice but to accept the defeat of illness, they’ll stay home, wrapped up under the covers with hot water bottles and try to sweat it out.

Unfortunately, my friend works for a company that doesn't allow sick time to be used as it should. My friend's work requires employees to schedule sick time FORTY-EIGHT hours in advance. That's right, my friend has to know FORTY-EIGHT hours ahead of time that they're going to be sick and they have to get approval to be sick. If like what happened last month, my friend doesn't schedule when they're going to be sick FORTY-EIGHT hours in advance, they get written up and put up for review and could face job loss. Because you know, life isn't stressful enough and their spouse absolutely loves wondering if their significant other is going to be jobless because they got sick and have legitimate sick days to use.  "Asinine" is really the only nice word I can think to describe how I feel about the whole thing and I'm not even the employee.

Seriously, though, you'd think if you had an employee with available time to use for sickness and if they've got a fever and all the other ugly stuff that typically comes with being ill, you'd want them to use the days they have to get well and not spread more sickness among their co-workers. Nope. Not where my friend works.

I don't condone calling out from work and lying about being sick when you're not because life has a funny way of running full circle and biting you in the hiney. It's called "karma." But, if you're determined to play hooky and are looking for the best excuse to give your boss that he'll buy, tell him you've got the flu. According to Esquire, your boss will probably believe that you've got the flu, and even if he questions the legitimacy, he'll still want to stand on the side of caution because nobody wants to catch that nastiness. Well, nobody except for the people who run the company my friend works for.

1,000 bosses were asked what sick excuses they'd most likely buy and the flu tops the list followed by back pain, an injury because of an accident, and believe it or not, stress. At the bottom of the list is a migraine which surprises me because a migraine can actually be more debilitating than stress.

[via Esquire]