Employees Get Creative with “Sick Day” Excuses

October 16, 2012 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – In the past year, 30% of workers have called in sick when not actually ill, and many have given employers creative excuses, a CareerBuilder study discovered.

Next to actually being sick, the most common reasons employees call in sick are because they just do not feel like going to work (34%) or because they felt like they needed to relax (29%). Others take the day off so they can make it to a doctor’s appointment (22%), catch up on sleep (16%) or run errands (15%).

Some of the more creative explanations for employee absences reported by employers are:

• Sobriety tool wouldn’t allow the car to start;
• Forgot he had been hired for the job;
• Dog was having a nervous breakdown;
• Dead grandmother was being exhumed for a police investigation;
• Toe was stuck in a faucet;
• Bitten by a bird;
• Upset after watching “The Hunger Games”;
• Got sick from reading too much;
• Suffering from a broken heart; and
• Hair turned orange from dying it at home.