As someone who is chronically early or on time for almost everything, it burns my ass when people are late. Whether it’s someone at work or a friend who can’t manage to get to happy hour or dinner or wherever on time, it pisses me off. Of course, I understand that sometimes “things” and actual emergencies come up. I’m not some weird time Nazi.
However, you only get so many courtesy strikes with me. I can’t deal with excuse after excuse. I lose my fucking mind when people make it a pattern. Even worse is when they try to give some bullshit excuse. Just own it. Say, “I’m sorry I’m late. There is no good reason why it happened. I just fucking suck at life and I honestly deserve to be breathing a second-class quality of air.” That would make me happier than hearing about how your dog got sick and puked right before you walked out the door for the 100th time.
Anyway, since nothing ever changes, people are still always late. With that in mind, a recent survey asked a few thousand hiring and human resource managers for the stupidest excuses they received in 2016 as to why employees were late. And they are really fucking stupid.
According to Career Builder:
When asked how often they come in late to work, more than 1 in 4 workers (29 percent) admitted they do it at least once a month — up from 25 percent last year — and 16 percent say it’s a weekly occurrence for them — up 3 percentage points since last year.
More than 2,600 hiring and human resource managers (of which, more than 2,300 are in the private sector) and more than 3,400 workers across industries participated in the nationwide survey, conducted online by Harris Poll from November 16 and December 6, 2016.
Here are the 13 Most Outrageous Excuses for Being Late to Work
- I forgot it wasn’t the weekend.
- I put petroleum jelly in my eyes.
- I had to watch a soccer game that was being played in Europe.
- I thought Flag Day was a legal holiday.
- My pet turtle needed to visit the exotic animal clinic.
- The wind blew the deck off my house.
- I overslept because my kids changed all the clocks in the house.
- I was cornered by a moose.
- My mother locked me in the closet.
- The pizza I ordered was late being delivered, and I had to be home to accept/pay for it.
- The sunrise was so beautiful that I had to stop and take it in.
- My mother-in-law wouldn’t stop talking.
- My dad offered to make me a grilled cheese sandwich, and I couldn’t say no.
I mean…these are all horrific. Everyone of these people should have been promptly fired and/or euthanized. It’s the only humane way to handle the situation.