I was attacked by a bear! — and 8 other lame excuses for being late to work

After yesterday’s super-serious Animal House post — Toga! Toga! Toga! — let’s lighten things up a bit with a list of the most memorable tardiness excuses employers shared in a recent CareerBuilder Annual Survey.

• Employee dropped her purse into a coin-operated newspaper box and couldn’t retrieve it without change (which was in the purse)
• Employee accidentally left the apartment with his roommate’s girlfriend’s shoes on and had to go back to change
• Employee’s angry wife had frozen his truck keys in a glass of water in the freezer
• Employee got a late start because she was putting a rain coat on her cement duck in her front yard (because rain was expected later that day)
• Employee’s car wouldn’t start because the breathalyzer showed he was intoxicated
• Employee attempted to cut his own hair before work and the clippers stopped working, so he had to wait until the barber shop opened to fix his hair
• Employee’s car was attacked by a bear (had photographic evidence)
• Employee drove to her previous employer by mistake
• Employee claimed to have delivered a stranger’s baby on the side of the highway

As someone who delivered his second child on the sidewalk in front of the Pennsylvania Hospital on a freezing February night in 2011 — no, I’m not a ob-gyn, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express the previous night — I take umbrage with the last “excuse” having any sort of pejorative connotation associated with it.

But, I’m sure you good folks have heard your share of good employee-lateness excuses. Let me hear ’em in the comments below.

Have a nice weekend.