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Employees’ most creative on-the-job sick leave excuses

October 23, 2014

In the past year, 28 percent of employees called in to work sick when they were feeling well, down from 32 percent last year, according to a CareerBuilder survey.

While 49 percent of employees said they have a paid time off program that allows them to use their time off however they choose, 23 percent of those workers said they still feel obligated to make up an excuse for taking a day off.

Employers reported the following real-life examples when asked to share the most memorable excuses for workplace absences:

  • Employee just put a casserole in the oven.
  • Employee’s plastic surgery for enhancement purposes needed some “tweaking” to get it just right.
  • Employee was sitting in the bathroom and her feet and legs fell asleep. When she stood up, she fell and broke her ankle.
  • Employee had been at the casino all weekend and still had money left to play with on Monday morning.
  • Employee woke up in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it.
  • Employee had a “lucky night” and didn’t know where he was.
  • Employee got stuck in the blood pressure machine at the grocery store and couldn’t get out.
  • Employee had a gall stone they wanted to heal holistically.
  • Employee caught their uniform on fire by putting it in the microwave to dry.
  • Employee accidentally got on a plane.

Though the majority of employers give their employees the benefit of the doubt, 31 percent said they have checked to see if an employee was telling the truth in one way or another; 18 percent have fired an employee for calling in sick with a fake excuse.

More than half of employees, 53 percent, said they have gone into work whrn sick because they felt the work won’t get done otherwise, and 38 percent did the same because they can’t afford to miss a day of pay.

At 35 percent, employees in professional and business services called in sick most often in the past year, followed by sales employees at 34 percent. On the flip side, employees in the IT, retail, and leisure and hospitality industries were least likely to call in sick this past year at 22 percent, 21 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The online survey was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder among 3,103 US workers and 2,203 hiring managers and human resource professionals between Aug. 11 and Sept. 5, 2014.