Best Excuses for Calling in Sick
First of all, the excuse needs to be appropriate to the job. If you are an extremely valuable asset, then your excuse must be very creative and unassailable. If you have union protection or have sick time as part of your compensation, your excuse does not need to be anything more than "I am sick and won't be coming in". It is not difficult to get a doctor's note if you need one. Most doctors are happy to take the co-pay, listen to a few forced coughs, and give you a day off or two.
But if you are an "invaluable" employee, you will be asked to suck it up and work through your sickness, or else telecommute from home if that is an option. If you truly want a day off, you need to put forth a good amount of effort. All of this assumes that you don't really have a good reason, such as a death in the family or a real sickness. If you want to go to the game, or fishing, following these tips should do help you get it without getting the evil eye when you return, or worse a black mark on your next review.
First, make plans in advance. If your friend calls you with court-side seats the night before the game, you will be hard-pressed to gather enough of an excuse, so avoid these types of last ditch sick calls. If you plan on using the sickness of a family member, prepare by letting some co-workers know how upset you are about the sickness days or weeks before the day you plan off, and accelerate your worries as the time approaches. The same with personal sickness; coughs and sniffles a few days before, followed up by trips to the bathroom to throw up or simply sitting in your office/cubicle looking miserable and pale. Don't eat anything and/or don't sleep the night before. Exhaustion and hunger look remarkably like sickness.
If you set things up properly or have a compassionate boss, you will be checked on, or even ideally asked if you need time off. If this happens, you are in the clear. Just indicate how regretful you are to miss work and how hard you will work when you get back. This doesn't even need to be true, as you can always use the after-effects of the sickness as an excuse for not being sensational at work. But with as much sincerity as you can, talk about how much you hate to let your team down, and hope everyone can manage without you, all of which hopefully is true!
The next step is execution of the sick call itself. If it is sickness in the family, call in suitably distracted and saddened. It should be an uncle or cousin, stay clear of parents or close relatives. Besides the karmic value, what happens when your dad calls in to work when he is supposedly mortally ill? For this reason also, steer clear of deaths in the family. While bereavement leave is multiple days off, most companies now require a death certificate or some sort of evidence (funeral notice, etc.) and if you deceive on this one, there is no easy way out, and now your integrity will be called into question constantly.
If you are calling in for personal sickness, do not over-act the part. Coughing too much generally sounds deceptive, as does retching and all that on the phone. Just sound nasal or congested or generally miserable and the call will seem sincere enough. Even if it is not terribly convincing, the most a responding agency can do is ask for doctor's verification. They can NOT ask what type of sickness you have or why it keeps you from coming to work. The less information you offer up, the better it is for you later on.
The last and often forgotten step is follow-through. This can invalidate everything else. Foolish sick-callers reveal themselves by telling "just one person" or bringing some sort of souvenir from the game or concert into work. If you are going to use an excuse to get out of work, make sure that excuse remains true at work from that point onward. One display of dishonesty can discolor the most spotless resume and sour the best working relationships.
A few advisory points: Do not use the same excuse multiple times in a year, and have a care that you don't use an excuse that might prove true in the future, or else you will seem duplicitous. Also, do not use extravagant excuses, like car crashes or getting mugged. The perpetration of those deceptions is too much work, and even when they are true, they seem extreme, and so will get a lot of people asking questions. You don't want that if you aren't telling the truth. Stick with realistic excuses that can be related to, as they are much safer.
Remember all of this when you are calling in; you will have to either confess and take the consequences or stick with the lie until you don't work there any more. This is more than many people can bear. In most cases, this means calling in sick for foolish reasons is not worth the effort. But if you are convincing and use caution, and have a really great reason (SuperBowl tickets?), following the steps above should keep you in the clear.
