From The Readers: The most extraordinary employee excuses for being late to work

Last Friday, I blogged about CareerBuilder’s Survey of bizarre excuses for being late to work.

And, don’t get me wrong, there were some good ones in there (e.g., “I was here, but I fell asleep in the parking lot.”), but I had a sneaking suspicion that some of the readers of this blog had heard some better ones.

I was right.

In no particular order, and without revealing the identity of the reader, enjoy:

1. Employee was three hours late and claimed his tardiness, which was due to “flooding,” forcing him to take a different way to work. (Company is in a major metropolitan area; employee lives 15 minutes from work; it was drizzling.)
2. A young man (approx. 21 yrs old) was always late on Mondays….not just minutes late, but an hour or more. When I questioned him, he told me he had a ‘sleeping disorder.’ Turns out that he confided in a co-worker that his ‘sleeping disorder’ was that he didn’t sleep because he partied all weekend! This is the same young man that I begged the company’s owner NOT to hire – because he was late for his interview – by an hour!
3. (Pay attention here, Ok…) My employee had missed two days of work. When he arrived on day three, he told me that he had been in a fight with his girlfriend’s husband. He (the husband) then refused to let him use the car to come to work!
4. EE calls at 2:30 for 3:00 start letting me know she couldn’t come in ‘because she had to do laundry.’ I asked if she knew this before 2:30 and she said, “no.”
5. I was on time, but I dropped the cake I made for a coworker getting out of my car and had to go home and bake another.
6. Bank teller on final written warning. Was late 45 min. Her excuse was, “I left early, and everything was fine until the car in front of me stopped. I hit my brakes and stopped in time, but it scared me so bad, I [pooped] my pants. I had to go home to shower and change. You can come smell my car seat if you think I’m lying.” I declined the sniff test, and gave her a “get out of jail free” for the incident.

Have a great weekend!