Managers Reveal Times They Questioned An Employee's Excuse Until They Got Proof

Think of the most outlandish excuse you've ever had for screwing up at work. Could you prove it? Did your supervisor believe you? Either way, we all have to cover our butts at some point.

JacobTheHobo asked, Managers of Reddit, what was an excuse an employee gave that you thought was 'BS' till you saw proof?

Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.

One of my colleagues said he would be late because of heavy rains. It turned out that he was living in a flood prone zone and he showed up to office shirtless because it was wet and soiled by muddy water, with a video of his car floating and totaled on the road near his house.

A family friend was trying to go to work a few years ago. Problem was, it was snowing so hard that he couldn't get his car out of the garage. His solution? Taking skis and skiing to work with them. Of course, there were parts he had to walk, but he skied a lot of it

When I managed a convenience store, a guy who was there didn't complete all his closing tasks until about 1 am (we closed at 11 pm). It usually only took about 15 minutes. He said it got super busy and someone had diarrhea in the middle of the store he had to clean up. He was known in the past for being lazy and finishing his job and milking his time to get more hours in so I really thought he was just saying stuff as an excuse.

Went back and watched the recording from the night before to be sure before I called him out though and I'm glad I did. You could clearly see about 20 people come about 10 minutes before closing (a dance or something in town was coming to an end) and one guy was leaving a stream of liquid poo around the store before running to the bathroom to try and clean himself up.

Guy was scheduled to come in for his first day. Got a flat tire on the freeway on the way in, called in, manager was cool and told him to take care of it and come in the next day. Next day rolls around and he calls in again, this time because his radiator overheated on the freeway. Even took a picture and texted it to management and HR. Manager, still cool, told him to come in the following Monday to give him time to get his car repaired. New employee is, of course, grateful.

Monday rolls around, and my manager gets another call. New guy was on his way and got into a car accident on the freeway. Manager got pissed this time. New guy told him to look out the window since our building was on a hill that overlooked a large stretch of freeway. Sure enough, off in the distance was new guy's car burning merrily away.

15 minutes before her shift is supposed to start I get a call from the employee saying she had just been in a fender bender but she was alright and would be at work in 45 mins to an hour after getting the insurance info sorted. 45 minutes later I get another call. She wasn't going to make it work that day because her car had been hit by another driver and was totaled.

I didn't believe her until I saw the pics of the three-car sandwich with her car firmly squished in the middle.

A guy in my public speaking class stopped showing up for about a month. Suddenly he reappears and says he got jumped and was stabbed 6 times and that's why he missed class.

6 times?

He pulled up his shirt to show the group of people who had huddled to hear the story. It looked like a grenade had gone off with how fast the huddle of people torqued their bodies away from the sight.

Yeah, 6 times.

Not a manager, but a coworker showed up over an hour late because "A goose was guarding my car door."

He had a video on his phone. A Canadian goose, sitting in his driveway. Every time he'd approach the car it'd spread its wings, lower its head and begin charging at him honking.

Hilarious as hell and totally worth the almost two hours of solo work.

Guy I knew lost the tip of his big toe on a building site, someone knocked over one of those large concrete slabs things they have.

He was ringing his boss, who didn't believe him, so his asked the ambulance driver to turn on the siren.

One of my team was off for a week holiday, called up to say he'd fallen off a bed and broken his neck.

Yup. Neck brace, several weeks off work, rehabilitation. Remarkable how he was able to recover so quickly.

Someone said they got a medical recommendation from the doctor for a sick leave, which legally will be giving them a paid day off... for.... wait for it..... being drunk.

Saw the medical chit "too drunk and hungover to work", called up the clinic, drove all the way to check out if the thing exists. Bravo, bravo.

I was temporarily fired for not showing up to work for a couple of days. I had been called up for jury duty and was selected for a court case so I filled out a time off request form and faxed it to my supervisor to approve. When I got to the office after finishing jury duty walked into my bosses office brandishing: 1) my jury summons, 2) the original time off request form and the fax sheet and 3) paperwork from the court to prove I had reported for duty and served. He called my supervisor into his office and asked her about the time off request form. Turns out my idiot supervisor not only forgot to hand the form in but for the past couple of months, she had been carrying it around with her.

I know a guy who said he was kidnapped by terrorists in the Middle East on vacations, he had the police reports and everything.

EDIT: for those asking why he would go on vacation in the Middle East, he said he was visiting family.

I had a similar sort of experience working at a Ren Faire one year. Other employee and I strike out to grab lunch, do in fact help a little old lady walk up the (Fairly uneven) trail away. This takes us awhile so we're about 10 minutes late to call. Boss is pissed, demands to know where we were.

"Sorry, we were helping a little old Lady cross the road."

Boss is incredulous until one of the other performers pipes up:

"No, I saw them, they were literally helping a little old lady cross the road."

I had a guy no-show one time. He called like an hour after he was supposed to be there, saying that he blew three tires while on his way to work.

Turns out, he saw a box in the road and assumed it was empty. So he ran over it... It was a box of drywall screws. They scattered, blowing not only the tire he hit it with but also both rear tires as well.

Apparently, lots of cars also picked up screws as they went around him before a fire truck was able to get there and block off the two lanes. He showed me a photo of him and a cop, standing next to a row of like 15 parked cars, all with flat/quickly deflating tires.

And that's the story of how my idiot coworker learned never to assume containers in the middle of the road are empty.

I had an employee call me saying he wouldn't be able to make it to work because he was in jail. HR called the jail, and sure enough, he was charged with possession of a controlled substance and domestic abuse.

He didn't work out.

This one was me.

A few years back my birthday was on a weekend. I had taken Monday off work, but then Thursday night something went wrong. I woke up sometime after feeling really messed up with a sticky face, so got out of bed and turned on a light. My room looked like a crime scene. Nightstand knocked over, blood soaking my sheets, on the floor, smeared on the walls and door frames heading towards the bathroom, all over the sink, and staining a towel horribly.

I had had a grand mal seizure in my sleep, fell out of bed, and hit my head repeatedly on my nightstand, cutting it up real bad. Sometime after that, I got up and tried to clean myself up and went back to bed, but was still so messed up that I have no recollection of it (postictal). I then woke up sometime later to find the blood everywhere.

So I'm standing there, feeling miserable and looking at myself, thinking, "There's no way I can go into work tomorrow, but I have to let my boss know and I don't want him to think I'm just trying to extend my birthday weekend." So I snapped a picture of myself in the mirror, smeared with blood, face bruised and swollen, and texted it to him at like 2 in the morning with a message that I wouldn't be coming in due to having a seizure.

I then cleaned myself up, changed the sheets, and went back to sleep.

Heart surgery on Friday (ICD device fitted), in the office Monday. Got called a bullsh_tter until I showed him the wound.

Had an employee that took bereavement time because his mother passed away, okay it happens. Four or five months later he took bereavement time because his mother died, I was like WTF? He tells me he was adopted, his birth mother had just died, and the first one was his adoptive mother, okay wow yeah fine.

Six months later he takes bereavement time because his mother died, I was like your kidding me right? Nope his parents that adopted him divorced when he was 8, his father remarried when he was 12 and the new wife adopted him.

Had a guy call me 30 mins before his shift started to tell me he was locked in his house and couldn't get out. When he finally came in he had a receipt from a locksmith and the old lock, which had had to be drilled out.