Outrageous Employee Excuses

A new study released recently shows that American employees are some of the most creative in the world when it comes to making excuses for being late to work.

The survey was performed by CareerBuilder, which says that traffic and lack of sleep topped the survey of tardiness explanations by employees. There were some more unusual explanations on the list too, which included a cat suffering from the hiccups to an employee who thought they might have won the lottery.

Creativity regarding these excuses is needed more often than not because of the amount of times the excuses are needed. The study shows that 16 percent of employees show up late to work once per week or more. Close to 30 percent of employees show up late to work at least once per month.

The vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, Rosemary Haefner, warns against late behavior in the workplace.

“Punctuality — or lack thereof — can impact how your commitment, reliability and performance are perceived by your employer,” she said.

Becoming a regularly late employee can lead to consequences such as job loss. The survey revealed that over one-third of employers have fired an employee for not showing up to work on time.

The survey said that the most common excuses used for being late to work include lack of sleep, bad weather, spouses, pets, watching television, traffic, taking kids to school and transportation issues.

The survey also provided some of the more ridiculous excuses used by employees when it came to showing up late for work:

• My cat was suffering from the hiccups.
• I became distracted by watching the ‘Today’ show.
• I thought I won the lottery (but I didn’t).
• My angry roommate cut the cord on my phone charger, so my phone didn’t charge, and my alarm didn’t go off this morning.
• I think my commute time should be counted towards my work hours.
• I think a fox stole the keys to my car.
• My leg got trapped between a subway car and the subway platform (which actually turned out to be a true story).
• I am not late to work because I had no intentions of arriving until 9 a.m. (even though my start time is 8 a.m.)
• I am late because I had a job interview with another company.
• I was late because I received a phone call from the state’s governor (which actually turned out to be a true story).

The CareerBuilder survey included 3,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals along with 7,780 workers in the United States.