Excuses, excuses

Ugh. It's been that kind of day. The kind of day, that, no matter what your workload is, you just want to take off and do some serious shoe shopping (and no, that's not everyday for me, thankyouverymuch).

Unfortunately, when you own your own business, you can't just take off (well, you can, however, there's no one else to defer the work to. So sick days, personal days, vacation days, mental health days... they all add up to more time spent catching up. Which, I've found, is not worth the headache). Since I technically have no boss to report to, I don't have to drum up any "mental health day" excuses to use upon calling out. However, today I stumbled across a list of the most ridiculous excuses for missing work (originally from Careerbuilder, via SavvySugar). Now while I have a soft spot in my heart for those who donate blood, I would imagine that donating "too much blood" is probably going to have you missing a lot more than one day of work.

Some other excuses of note:

Employee didn’t want to lose the parking space in front of his house.

Employee hit a turkey while riding a bike (This may have been the above employee, biking tow work due to aforementioned parking issues).

Employee said he had a heart attack early that morning, but that he was “all better now."

Employee contracted mono after kissing a mailroom intern at the company holiday party and suggested the company post some sort of notice to warn others who may have kissed him.

Employee swallowed too much mouthwash.

Employee’s wife burned all his clothes and he had nothing to wear to work (ummm, you SO have bigger problems than calling out of work).

Employee’s toe was injured when a soda can fell out of the refrigerator (I think this is like the episode of the Office when Michael Scott burned his foot on the George Foreman grill. That he keeps--and uses--at the end of his bed. Because he likes to wake up to the smell of fresh cooked bacon. Yeah, this is so Michael Scott).

Employee’s psychic told her to stay home (um, probably because she was going to get fired anyway? Just guessing).

Some more statics for ya:

Nearly one-in-ten workers (9 percent) who played hooky admitted to calling in sick because they wanted to miss a meeting, buy some time to work on a project that was already due or avoid the wrath of a boss or colleague. Others missed work because they just needed to relax and recharge (30 percent), go to a doctor’s appointment (27 percent), catch up on sleep (22 percent), run personal errands (14 percent), catch up on housework (11 percent) or spend time with family and friends (11 percent). Another 34 percent just didn’t feel like going to work that day.

Sigh. So I guess one day if I ever did give up the glamourous life of a freelancer, I would certainly know what NOT to say when calling out. Although, something tells me that telling the boss that "I can't come in, because the shoe sale at Nordstrom cannot be missed!" might not be much better (unless I was working for Marcy or Becky).