Pretty much everyone has done it, you need a day off of work or school but have no real excuse. I've always figured that, to a point, the more outrageous your excuse the better off you are. Are you on your 12th dead grandma? Did you get abducted by aliens? FOCUS: Your best excuse for missing a day of work, or even school?
In high school I called in sick two days when I was really only too sick to go in once. That's pretty much it for me. Hopefully others will do better...
I find that if I really want the day off, the best bet is to say you have the runs. No one questions it. Ever. I was 18 through my senior year of high school, so I could call myself out. The secretary knew me, and would only go as far as saying I needed to tell her in advance about my almost weekly dentist and doctors appointments.
I've used my period as an excuse quite a few times. Women understand and men don't want to talk about it.
Where I work now, when we call in we don't have to give a reason. Usually if I call in though I just say I'm not feeling well and leave it at that. I've never been in a job where they ask why I don't feel well and demand a doctors note. I have always wanted to use the following senario though. Me: I'm sick so I'm not coming in today. Boss: You don't sound sick. Me: I'm fucking my sister, that sick enough for you. I'm obviously not fucking my sister but I always get a chuckel when I hear the exchange in my head.
Hands down my best and most honest excuse was my "skibola" calls from 2006. It was a year of epic snow in New England and younger Fawkes gave less of a shit about shit. I'd call into our main switchboard and leave a long winded general delivery message about how I was suffering from skibola and was headed to a treatment center up north... and always ended it with "hope for a cure". I took a fuckton of days off that winter and started having fun with the messages making them progress updates such as... "The skibola virus has entered my central nervous system (GAH!). The pain is unbearable. They say my only hope to slow it down is fresh pow and off-piste tree skiing. Wish me luck and hope for a cure." My boss, annoyed that I was having fun while he worked did find them amusing so at least I had that going for me. Nowadays I just disappear or send a text saying, "won't be in". Right now I'm supposed to be in Iowa... instead I'm contemplating where to get breakfast from the comfort of my couch.
I've called in sick to work once in the last 3 years and that was because I was sick. Even if it's something small, I just can't bring myself to tell a lie.
Much like Guy Fawkes, I took a shit load of days off in 2006/2007 to snowboard. I think I called myself in sick close to 25 times that year. I was a senior in high school and we had a certain amount of days we could miss before we lost credit. I would call the school and tell them that I would like to cash in a sick day. The first time they called my mom to make sure and after that they never called again. My parents always knew I was skipping and didn't care. I would go to school sick as hell just to save my sick days for powder days. One teacher tried to send me home when I was really sick but I convinced her to let me stay. She was a skier and understood.
Not mine but probably the funniest excuse I ever heard. I was taking a law class in college and the teacher was a complete burn out of a lawyer who everyone took advantage of. The guy just believed everything that was told to him. One day someone didn't come to class after being specifically told it was important to attend. The next day he is in class the teacher asked him "Why weren't you here yesterday?" To which he responded "I got stabbed." "You got stabbed?" "Yeah. In the chest." "Are you ok?" "Yeah. I'm fine." The guy just accepted the answer...we later found out he was suspended from the bar but kept practicing law.
I want to know how you can bring this up without feeling like an ass. Do you sugar coat it, like "I'm having lady problems and will need to miss work today and probably the next couple days," or do you straight up shock your employer with "I HAVE COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF BLOOD POURING FROM MY VAGINA, WON'T MAKE IT TO WORK TODAY." Even if I'm curled up in the fetal position from the cramps, I can never bring myself to bring something like that up for fear of embarrassment or them thinking I am using my gender as an excuse. I usually take a bunch of ibuprofen and suck it up.
I have had no problems sending out a text to my team saying I'm just tired and will be staying in bed jerking off all day, talk to you tomorrow.
My wife does the same. Just sucks it up and deals with it. Gotta admire it, although as I understand it, the severity of periods varies from woman to woman. The wife might just be getting off easy, while others are buckling at the knees. FOCUS: I have never called in sick. Those in my line of work would consider me a hero, especially those I work for. Others, however, would call me a chump, for a variety of reasons. Fuck them, and the horses they rode in on.
I've only ever used the standard excuses: migraine (I do get them), sinus headache, nausea, throwing up. Though I did take off half a day saying my dog had been getting sick all night so I hadn't slept. Hey, if married people get to use spouses & kids, I get to use the dog. Thing is, in the last 4 years I've only ever called in sick because of too much alcohol the night prior. I don't necessarily get the classic hangover, but I get the brain fog & complete lack of desire to move around. I worked for an entire week with a horrid cough before finally seeing a Dr and finding out I had walking pneumonia.
I will say that being the boss, especially of a startup, means that you're working stupid hours. All the time. I have no qualms about saying "I'm taking the afternoon" or "I'm taking a long weekend", because it happens so infrequently. Who's going to bitch? The guys I employ? With all the shit weather we get around here in the Spring, when a nice day hits, I'm off up the mountain for an afternoon floating in a lake. I'll deal with shit when I get back. By the same token, my minions also don't have to do the 9-5, mon-fri thing. They get to work when it suits them. Sure, it works out to 40 hrs a week, at a minimum, but it's suited around their life. Get your shit done by the deadline, don't hold up anyone else by being late, and we're all happy. I have one guy who doesn't start work until 2pm every day, because he deals with his kid and stuff until noon. He sits down at 2pm, happy, stress free, guilt free, and pounds out code off and on until midnight. That's actually been one of the hardest things to get across to one of my "old-school" business partners. He wanted an office, with developers in the office from 9-5. Fuck that. Let them work from home, on their own schedule, and we'll keep ticking off the features that need building.
I called in sick to work one morning because I'd been shitting myself silly all night long (including waking up at one point to find myself shitting the bed; my girlfriend was less freaked out than I was, what a champ). The partner I was working for called my cell to get an update on some research. Sucks when you take a sick day and don't even get the day off. And last week I got to tell the person I'm doing freelance work for that it's going to be delayed because a tornado knocked out our nuclear power plant. Not exactly the same as missing a day of work, but a damn good excuse anyways.
Is it really that hard to call in sick to a blog? "Dear Internet, I'm not going to be coming in today..."
I called in sick to school when I was a senior in high school with excuse that I crashed into a cop car. The sad part was, it was absolutely true and no one believed me. They made me bring in a copy of the police incident report and everything. What a fucking pain in the ass that entire ordeal was.
I rarely call in sick. I don't hesitate to take a day or two off occasionally but I try to schedule it 3 or 4 days in advance. Whenever I take a legit sick day, work seems to pile up more than usual. I think people dump stuff on my desk that they wouldn't normally because they know I'm not there to hand it back. A couple days after I had knee surgery I got a call asking if I could come into work for a couple of hours. I was dumb enough or hopped up on enough pain killers to agree. I went in high as fuck, looking like shit and they decided to spring a meeting with a client on me. I don't remember anything but apparently I nailed it. I guess it's nice to know I'm needed because it gives me a sense of job security but, seriously, leave me alone when I call in sick.