As Connecticut enters a second year of mandated paid leave as an employment benefit at many companies, CareerBuilder released its annual list of the top employee excuses for missing work ”“ including one who says he forgot he had been hired for the job.
Harris Interactive, which has a Norwalk office, polled 2,500 human resources personnel and nearly 4,000 workers in August and September on behalf of CareerBuilder. Nearly a third of employers said they notice an up-tick in sick days around the winter holidays, and the survey suggests 17 percent of employers have canned a worker for giving a fake excuse.
Next to actually being ill, the most common reasons employees call in sick are because they just don’t feel like going to work (34 percent), or because they felt like they needed to relax (29 percent).
Others take the day off so they can make it to a doctor’s appointment (22 percent), catch up on sleep (16 percent), or run some errands (15 percent).
Some of the more colorful explanations offered by employees included:
- forgetting he had been hired for the job;
- a sobriety control wouldn’t allow the car to start;
- a dog having a nervous breakdown;
- police investigators exhuming a deceased grandmother;
- getting a toe stuck in a faucet;
- a bird bite;
- watching “The Hunger Games” and getting upset;
- getting sick from reading too much;
- hair turning orange after dyeing it at home; and
- suffering from a broken heart.