We’ve all heard the classic excuses—“I’m sick,” “my car broke down”—but sometimes people get wildly creative when they want to skip work. From the ridiculous to the downright unbelievable, some call-off stories are too good not to share.
So, I asked the Bored Panda community: what’s the funniest, strangest, or most outrageous reason you’ve ever heard someone give for missing a shift? These stories might just make you question what’s possible… or how inventive people can get when they don’t want to show up.
#1
A colleague rang the office and said she didn’t have the “feels” for work today. WTF?!
#2
I worked at an auto parts supplier in Michigan. One guy called his boss and said he couldn’t get out of his driveway after a snowstorm. We laughed so hard when the boss told us this—because the guy lived right across the street. The boss was not amused.
#3
My dad once told his boss he needed a replacement car because his vehicle had first been kicked by a giraffe and then damaged by a charging rhino in northern Germany. Even more absurd, it was actually true.
Security was kind of lax in safari parks in the ’80s...
#4
A lady on her way to an interview with me called after she wrecked her car. And I mean right after the wreck—even before calling 911. She was crying and freaking out. Pretty sure she was in shock and not thinking logically. I first made sure she was okay, then quickly told her it was fine, we’d reschedule, and that she needed to hang up and call 911 instead.
That made it feel even worse after she was able to interview with us—and she was totally unqualified for the job she’d applied for…
#5
My employee at a day spa told me she couldn’t come in because Mercury was in retrograde.
#6
A trainee once called in to tell me that she “forgot how to get to work.” She lived at the corner of the block—she didn’t even have to cross the street to get there.
#7
"It's raining."
#8
A woman I once worked with called her boss (on a Monday, of course) to say she couldn’t come in because she had mixed up the little bottles and used nail glue instead of contact lens solution.
#9
I have three from the same coworker:
1. She stepped on a rake that flipped up and hit her in the head, giving her a concussion and causing her to miss several days of work.
2. She was boiling water for spaghetti and splashed it on her bôôbs, causing such severe burns that she couldn’t work for days.
3. A family of skunks moved into her house, and when she tried to get rid of them, they all sprayed so much that it permeated her entire house and all her clothes. She couldn’t come to work until the skunks were gone and the smell had dissipated—several days off, of course.
Oh wait, I forgot one: she called in sick one Monday after bragging about going parasailing all weekend. This woman was a real trip!
#10
I was unlocked inside my house. I live in an older apartment complex, and my building is doing some slight settling. My front door has a habit of sticking and not fitting right. As I was leaving for work one morning, the door wouldn't latch, and the deadbolt wouldn't work either. I had to call out and wait for maintenance to come and fix my door, because I wasn't going to leave my place unsecured.
#11
Years ago, when I was in college, I worked at a local, family-owned market that also had a bakery, grill, coffee bar, and some other things. I was there for three years, and it was kind of a wild place to work.
Anyway, one guy called in from jail.
Another dude called in from California (we live in Arizona). He went on vacation and just didn’t return.
#12
Me! I worked at a university/med school campus—not in a city, but its own place. There was no public transportation from my town to it, so I had to drive every day—a 30-mile, one-way commute. Parking was tight. Very tight. One morning I got to work, drove around for 30 minutes looking for a parking spot, and couldn’t find one. I called my boss: “Hey, bossman, I can’t find a parking space. I’ve been here a half hour driving around. I’m going home.” He said, “See you tomorrow, have a nice day!” So I went home and had a lovely day.
#13
I had to call in one day to say I was going to be late. One of my cats had brought in a live snake, and it was in my closet. I was going to be late to work because I was too scared to go into the closet and get my work clothes. I was waiting for my dad to drive over to my house to get rid of the snake. This was not the first, nor the last, time this happened...
#14
I was managing a company in a rural area. One day, a lady called me and said she would be late because there was a grizzly bear by her car.
#15
A friend of mine had a large mirror beside his side of the bed. One day, his wife moved the mirror, and he didn’t notice when he went to bed. He didn’t go to work the next day. His excuse to his boss: “I woke up and didn’t see myself in the mirror, so I thought I had already gone to work.”
The boss laughed.
#16
I had an a**e clown email me saying she couldn’t come to work because she was locked in her apartment. When she went to open the door, the doorknob came off. I called and asked her to show me, so she videos herself putting the doorknob back on and opening the door… and the door had a deadlock, so the handle was irrelevant.
#17
A local radio DJ used to joke about “calling in scared”—saying things like, “I’m afraid I can’t make it in today.”
#18
Not me, but my boyfriend. He had a coworker who’d call in sick a lot and have even more days where he had to leave work early.
My favorite reason he gave for calling in sick was that he had a pointy toe. I have no idea what it meant, but he was apparently fine the next day.
As for the half-days, there was one year where this coworker had to leave early because it was his dad’s birthday and he wanted to visit his dad early to avoid meeting his siblings, who apparently had some drama going on. This happened, mind you, three or four times that year.
#19
I was the somebody. I got out of bed before I was fully awake, lost my balance, and took a header into my laundry hamper. I also wrenched my knee pretty badly.
#20
One lady rang in to say she couldn’t come in due to “women’s problems.” No further explanation was offered, and the male boss was too embarrassed to ask for details.
#21
I had a coworker who didn’t show up to work for a week. She called in and told the boss she was sorry, but she had been in the hospital and couldn’t call before then. Sounds reasonable, right? But this woman was known for lying about anything and everything. I told someone that I didn’t believe her. They called the hospital and asked—nope, never heard of her.
They called her back and asked why she lied, and instead of coming clean, she doubled down and said she “signed herself in using her mother’s health care card,” which you cannot do in the country I live in—it would be fraud. After calling the hospital to double-check that it wasn’t true (not sure why they bothered), they called her back and she finally confessed to being on a bender with her boyfriend and just didn’t feel like coming in or calling out.
I still shake my head at the fact that they didn’t fire her for that.
#22
Ooh, ooh! A guy who reported to me told me his grandma passed and he wouldn’t be at work on Friday to travel to the funeral. The conversation with the entire team at roll call went like this:
Colleague: “Boss, I won’t be in on Friday, grandma died and I need to travel.”
Me: “Condolences, sorry to hear—but didn’t both your grandmas pass away last year?”
Colleague: “Eish, ya boss, you know… my forefathers, ya, they each had a mother.”
Only in South Africa.
#23
When I was a manager of a store, I had a woman I had hired call in on her first day of work, saying she couldn’t come in because her dog had just had puppies.
#24
I couldn’t sleep and finally tried a sleeping pill. When my alarm went off, I was so incredibly groggy I couldn’t function and had to call in.
#25
I went to Montreal for the weekend, and now it hurts when I pee…
#26
I called out of work one day because the ceilings where I live collapsed. I stayed home to help shovel out the mess.
#27
I had a coworker who was notorious for calling in. It was always something like, “I have to take my cat to the vet,” or the like. My favorite was, “I can’t come in because my wife has a yeast infection.” LOL
#28
Not super unusual, but I had a guy call off because he “had a lot of errands to run.” I couldn’t even be mad—I was so caught off guard by his honesty. But I told him next time, maybe just throw a cough in there and say he’s not feeling well instead.
Another time, I had a guy call off because his dog was sick. Not that unusual—I’m a pet owner, so I get it.
What made it unusual were the three messages he left after that, going into graphic detail about his dog’s post-surgery complications. I know way more about Cupcake’s genitals than I ever wanted to know. Ever.
#29
I called in to work once because I slipped getting onto a city bus, dislocated my kneecap, and slid under the bus. Worse, I have cerebral palsy, and I injured my stronger leg, so I had a really hard time walking without help after the kind people at the hospital returned my patella to its proper spot.
#30
I have two stories.
First, when I was discharged from the Army, I got a job at a lumber company as a delivery driver. One of the yard guys was a “topper”—anything you said you had done or knew, he had done or knew something better. One day, we got a large sheetrock (wallboard) order for delivery in the afternoon. He was next in line to be a helper (it had to be hand-carried into the house), and the load was assigned to me. I got the truck loaded, and we agreed to head out after lunch. Ten minutes before meet-up time, he called and claimed he couldn’t go because he had just backed over his dog in the driveway. I took a different guy, and we ended up splitting a very generous tip.
Years later, as a manager, a driver called me on a Wednesday morning to say he would be sick on Sunday night. It turned out his father had watched the Weather Channel and saw that there was a possibility of snow that day.
#31
I worked with a woman who had a host of phobias. One of them was that she wouldn’t drive in the rain. If she went home for lunch, she wouldn’t come back until it stopped raining—even if that meant the entire day. For reasons I’ll never understand, they put up with it.
#32
I work for an environmental consulting company. We had a paid summer intern who was likely still in college at the time. His job was to go out with the boss to help with field work each day. The kid called off because his chinchilla fell into the toilet and got wet. He had to take it to the vet to get it taken care of—or something like that.
#33
My colleague didn’t show up for work one morning. No contact from him. The next day, no show again, still no contact. A few days later, we started to worry and tried to call his mobile—no answer. We tried to contact his housemates, but no one really knew where he lived.
Three weeks later, he finally called in. The supervisor was surprised to hear from him, but nobody expected his next words: “So I was in prison up in the North. Do I still have a job or what?” It went through HR, but he resigned before any conclusion was reached.
For clarity—this was in Ireland; “up North” refers to Northern Ireland. He had some previous driving offenses. He went on a trip with friends who rented a car. He drove, crashed, and was under the influence. Luckily, no one was seriously harmed.
#34
We had a team meeting—everyone was in the room except one guy. We were waiting, and the manager decided to give him a call.
The guy picks up, and the manager asks, “Where are you?”
A normal person would say, “Got stuck in traffic,” the usual.
This guy? He goes, “I’m at the bookies across the street.”
The manager had the phone on speaker, so everyone heard and burst out laughing. He wasn’t even scolded, as the manager asked him for some particular games’ odds.
#35
I had one job where we had to give a reason for calling off. However, my union argued and won that if we had the time, our sick leave had to be accepted.
I would call off and tell management I broke my arm or back. When I told them I couldn’t come in because I had explosive diarrhea, management asked me not to give reasons anymore.
#36
2020 election: a dude left work because he was stressed about the Georgia recount. He took the whole next day off too!
