Faking Illness To Skip Work: Bizarre Workplace Excuses

A new CareerBuilder Survey report says of all the worker absentees who have reported sick, 30 percent are hale and hearty and only pretending they are sick to take the day off. 

However, even though that may not come as a surprise, what is surprising are the ridiculous and bizarre excuse that they make and how skeptical the bosses are of their employees, that they go to absurd lengths to catch them.

The online poll conducted by Harris Interactive surveyed around 4000 workers and nearly 2500 hiring managers and human resource workers.

It was found that workers called in sick when there was lots to do and the “allergy” excuse that the worker has made to stay from the workplace is actually being allergic to doing hard work.

Other strange excuses that the survey listed included one employee who said he forgot that he had a job. Another said that he was upset about his favorite team losing a match and was so distraught that he was disinclined to work that day.

One chap reported that he was unable to report for work as he was “sick from reading too much.” One excuse really took the cake, the employee reported that he would not be able to come for work as his “dead grandmother was being exhumed for police investigation.”

Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder vice president of human resources said that apparently what motivates them to make such bizarre obviously fallacious excuses is that “Some subscribe to a ‘less is more’ mentality while others may feel the more detail they provide; the more believable the excuse will be.”

For some reasons, employers, even if they know that the worker is feigning illness will take the extra step in finding out and exposing the fakers. The most common way of doing it is by asking them to submit a doctor’s certificate confirming their alleged illness or calling up the worker later in the day.

14 percent of the employers said they actually drove past the worker’s house to catch him unawares. 18 percent of the employers said that they actually paid other workers to keep a tab on the truant workers and report when their activities.

There are many reasons why employees deceitfully take advantage of sick leave days. The main reason was that they wanted some extra time for themselves. Some 34 percent decide on the spur of the moment that they just did not feel like working on that day and prefer to report sick. Around 30 percent said their bodies were tired and they just wanted to rewind and recharge themselves.

Only 15 percent faked the day off because they had personal work to do and 22 percent needed to seek an appointment with their doctor.

Haefner however, advises workers that it always pays to be honest. You lose face if you are caught and it could “bring your professionalism and reliability into question,” she says.

Moreover, if you repeatedly play truant, you could even end up losing your job. 17 percent of bosses said they fired an employee faking illness not to report for work.

Just make sure that you don’t overdo it. Who knows you could be having sick days for the rest of your career, if your boss decides he has had enough.