ALT-7 Best Excuses for Calling in Sick
The very best excuses for calling in sick are either the totally plausible and unavoidable ailments, or audacious stories of extreme illness so spectacular that no one will ever dare call your bluff. Read on for some corking excuses for taking a sick day.
Let's get one thing straight. Obviously you're not actually sick. If you were you'd tell the truth. No, you're a bit hungover, or you're waiting for a parcel delivery, or you just don't fancy getting up. Fine, it happens to the best of us and no one should judge you. Let's also assume that you're male. It might not be particularly politically correct to point it out, but women can get out of work any time they feel like it just by claiming some kind of ghastly menstrual problem. If they have a male boss, they won't even need to finish the sentence before he tells them to take off the rest of the week. Now that qualification is out of the way, on with the intricate webs of deceit.
Injury
Injury excuses are popular, but tricky. Falling down the stairs and bruising yourself badly, or spraining an ankle, seems like a great excuse for a day off work. But then you have to remember to limp a bit when you can next be bothered turning up for work, or people will start to get suspicious. So think outside the box. Compare and contrast:
"I can't come into work today, I slipped on my driveway and put out my back,"
with
"Sorry, I need a few days off, I was zipping up my trousers and I got my old chap caught in the zip. The doctor thinks I might lose a testicle. It looks like a Saw movie down there, seriously."
You just sound a bit pathetic if you can't get from your front door to your car without hurting yourself. But a hideous genital mutilation that involves a toilet appeals to both juvenile humour AND pity. You will be mocked mercilessly on your eventual return to work, but the story is so outrageous and so humiliating that no one is going to think for a minute that you might have made it up. And if you do forget to wince every time you sit down, no one is going to demand to see your flapping empty nutsack unless they really want some sort of unpleasant legal document in their inbox.
Obviously you should not try this exact story if you're planning on sleeping with anyone in your office at the Christmas party. But even then you can always claim future days off for reconstructive surgery on the old meat and two veg.
24 hour flu
People probably do get genuine 24 hour bugs and things, but to any boss they reek of falsehood and duvet days. Even if you really do have 24 hour flu, you will probably find yourself wanting to invent more symptoms or take two days off just to make it seem more realistic. If you just want to call in sick for one day, 'a temperature' just sounds weak. Consider:
"OK, I was on my way in, wearing my best suit as well, when I felt this rumbling in my guts. I thought, this isn't good, so I pulled over. I'd barely switched off the engine when my bottom EXPLODED. I'm serious, I've got the beach towel from the trunk wrapped round me now like a damn nappy, my suit's ruined, I need to get the car bleached. Even this phone smells funny."
Again, you become pitiful, contemptible, but also invulnerable. What kind of boss is going to question further a grown man who admits to having soiled himself in the car? You will be an object of scorn, but you just scored a free day in bed, friend.
Food poisoning
If you've been drinking all weekend and need to take Monday off to recover, never, ever, EVER claim you have food poisoning. In some cultures, food poisoning must now be virtually synonymous with hangovers. INSTEAD use a double bluff:
"I'll be honest, I was drinking all weekend, I felt pretty rough even before I went to bed last night. But, man, you know that norovirus? I think I must have picked it up at the kebab shop. My temperature's gone through the roof and I've never puked like that before."
Norovirus is a godsend for the Monday morning skiver. It offers the vomit and diarrhoea symptoms of food poisoning, and tends to be picked up where food is prepared, but rather than actual food poisoning, which can kill you and takes weeks to recover from, you are only properly ill for about 48 hours. Everyone knows how infectious it is, you can catch it many times (this author has had 3 bouts to date) and it is almost always doing the rounds, especially in winter.
Cancer
What kind of sick puppy would fake cancer? The kind who wants a brilliant action-packed day off work, of course! Now, almost everyone knows someone who suffers, or has even died, from some form of cancer, so it's an emotive subject, but you don't have to spit on the memory of your dead Auntie Maude by pretending to actually have a diagnosed case of cancer. Instead:
"Look, I'm really sorry, I need to go see the doctor today and they can't fit me in until this afternoon. I... well... look, it's probably nothing, but I found this lump and... I wanna get it checked out. My Auntie Maude, you see, she - well, yeah, look, I'll be in first thing tomorrow, OK?"
Wouldn't you believe it, this lump, wherever you choose to pretend you found it, turns out to be a completely benign cyst. So when you roll into the office the next day you don't even have to pretend to be ill or hide your elation at having got away with a free day off work, because you've just been given the all-clear from a cancer specialist, OF COURSE you'd be happy!
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
"I can't come in today. Sick? Uh, not exactly. It's my brother, he has leukemia, and well, my bone marrow matches. They need to do an emergency transplant. I... don't know what the recovery time for that is. I'll let you know, and I'll try and be in tomorrow. Look, I've got to go, my brother's already in theatre."As with cancer, this relies on the idea that people will assume no one would ever be sick enough to come up with such a story. By pinning the illness on a relative, however, you again leave yourself free to bound into work the next day without a care in the world and arouse no suspicion. "Transplant? Oh, yeah, it turns out we're not a complete match. They kept me hanging around, but in the end they found another donor."All of the above excuses will work, guaranteed, but... well, if you're really so desperate for a day off work that you're prepared to fake cancer symptoms, perhaps you should just consider getting a new job. Your heart is clearly not behind your current career...
