The guy I replaced on the graveyard shift at this hospital in New Orleans occasionally called in to say he'd be late due to getting pulled over in Atlanta. Buddies of his lived in North Carolina, & he'd zoom out there most every weekend. He's since moved up there for good.

One of my sportscasters once called in to say he was having a bad hair day. To this day, I can't watch WKRP because I actually lived it.

I called my boss and said I'd be out because I was going to appear on Fox & Friends and Fox News Live. I know, sounds like I'm bragging, but that's the way it was.

I call off so infrequently I probably don't need excuses. But seeing as how I am always the first person at work, I get the luxury of giving my not coming in messages to voicemails. The two I've used were:

"Yea...it's just not happenin'...I'll think of a reason later."

and "Hey, I have 24-hour ebola, I'll see you tomorrow."

I can't come in today...there's an exceptional thread on Wizbang that I just HAVE to stay home and read!!

I wsh I had one..I never call in sick..

I called in one time to work and told them I was dying in a French Hospital.

Oh wait a second..I am not dying I am already dead. See ya in hell Usama....Your room is right next door.

Y. Arafat

"I'm just too damn WELL to work today."

I grew up in Southern California. I have used the “Surfs Up” excuse too many times. Gotta love those South Pacific hurricane’s!

PS: I've actually had to use the "Tree attacked me in my own home" excuse before.

Wifey and I have called in "sex" before. But not officially...

I had a guy call in one time with malaria....and it turned out to be true! Not much can top that around here.

"The power went out (a not uncommon experience in southern Spain) so the garage door wouldn't work."

It wasn't until later that I discovered that there was a manual release for the door. But I still had to walk/hitch a ride into work that day.

Okay, so I was a bit of a stoner (think Ridgemont High) in my youth. I had a job at McDonald's that really put a cramp in my style - especially when they scheduled me for Saturday nights. Well, one particular Saturday night presented quite a conflict - my shift or this party that everybody I knew was attending. It was a great party, I mean it was a GREAT party. On the way home I had a major case of munchies and decided to stop for some fast food. I had a very interesting conversation with my boss at the drive-in window at McDonald's (ooops), right about the time I would have been getting off - had I not called in because I was having an emergency tonsilectomy - or appendectomy, I can't remember now. I was never very good at thinking things through back then. Anyway, I really didn't miss the job all that much.

I have a problem with my eyes: I just can't see coming in today.

"My alarm clock didn't go off. Well, no boss, it wasn't a power failure, it's a wind-up clock. Yes, I did set it, it just didn't go off."

The pathetic part is, it was all true. And I wound up taking that clock back to the store for a refund.

My old boss was a master of excuses not to come in to work. I used to write them down on my calendar, and periodically go back through them.

My least favorite were the ones in which he would give me wayyyy too many details about his physical condition. He was diabetic and did not take good care with his diet, so any little illness would throw his blood sugar off and keep him in bed for days. The worst of these was a "I think I had some bad orange juice" day that turned into 3 days of diarrhea and vomiting. I heard all about it every morning. Ugh.

He also used to be the treasurer of his HOA, so he'd frequently call in or leave early to prepare for HOA meetings or deal with HOA business.

He had regular out-of-town guests, and one day he called in and told me that he was going to be late (it ended up being 4 hours late) because he had to pick up his friend at the airport, and then his friend was going to help stain his back deck while he was in town, so he had to take him to Tempe to buy paint. (Like they don't sell paint in Scottsdale where he lived?)

One Monday he left at noon because the night before he'd been club-hopping with some friends (he was 60 years old, mind you) and lost his debit card, and was going to retrace his steps to see which club he'd left it at. (This is what the telephone is for, sir.)

One day he came in three hours late because he had agreed to drive two neighbor ladies (not even close friends) to the airport because they were going to Europe.

He was the master at giving too much detail, which made everything sound like a really lame excuse, and we all knew he didn't really want to be there anyway. He eventually took early retirement for health reasons, after calling in sick every day for two weeks and then not coming in for another two weeks without calling in.

There are days I miss his lame excuses. My coworkers and I are often tempted to use them in strange combinations when we call in these days.

One girl at work in a hospital in Florida called in because she was shopping at a sale in WalMart. Her reasoning was that she stayed late at times and therefore deserved to shaft the rest of us in a very understaffed department.

I teach 6th grade and when one of the little you-know-what's haven't managed to actually contaminate me, I do feel the need for a "mental health day" every couple months or so. And 'm pretty sure I'm going to have to call in sick of my sixth period" soon.

Just say that you ate some bad fish the night before and you are sick. Nobody will ever question it.

"My Monet heirloom painting was drenched by the leaky bathtub in the upstairs apartment."

This secretary didn't last long.

I always say that I'm "having stomach problems." This can mean a variety of things, all of which nobody wants to discuss with you.

I used to work at an ad agency and we had this ding-dong blonde who worked in the sales department. We had been preparing for months to roll-out a presentation for a potential client. The morning of the presentation, she called in sick because of a "bad wax job." We pulled the presentation off without her, but were nonetheless a little annoyed.

The next day she came into work and you should have seen this girl's face. She had gone to some Vietnamese beauty salon and had her moustache waxed... she had a huge red burn mark and rash across her upper lip that was about 3/4 inch wide and 3 inches long. They had pulled off the top layer of skin when they ripped off the wax! After seeing her we all forgave her for missing the presentation... no one could look at her without bursting out laughing.

I once worked with a guy who called in to say he could not get out of his steep driveway much less get to work one rainy morning. He claimed it wasn't the water so much as all of the worms that had crawled out onto the driveway surface that created the slick conditions and made his driveway impassable...

We busted his bawls for months!!!

One of our employees complained his alarm didn't go off. It was 4:00 in the afternoon. The manager simply said, "Didn't I fire you last week?"

...sheet suck.

The dog ate my car key.

Just last week I called in because I was getting the floor in my kitchen replaced that day, so I was going to drop my cat off at a friends place on my way in to work--I didn't want him escaping when the workmen went in and out the door. Well on my to the office, the cat was literally bouncing off the car windows (evidently he didn't like riding in the car). He then came over and sat on my lap. I was happy that he finally decided to sit still, until I realized that he intentionally took a runny crap all over me. The people at work thought it was hilarious...I didn't.

Still drunk from last night... having trouble holding on to the floor.

Priaprism.

My sister got out of final exams her freshman year in college due to a case of amnesia. Not exactly calling in to a job. And not exactly a lame excuse. But I'm sure it sounded like one!

I know the best one ever.

It wasn't my story, but rather a very good friend's.

This friend had been out all night drinking and partying. He overslept a bit, and was enormously hung over. He called in to plead alarm clock problems and said he'd be in late. But he still felt like complete sh!t.

When he went to the bathroom to shower, he found that rain from the night before had gotten in an open window (he lived in a basement apartment) and gotten all over the floor. That was just too much for him, so he called back in, said he had leaking pipes, and that he'd not make it in as he now had to wait around for a plumber to come in and take a look at things.

My friend worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, and this happened on the morning of Sept. 11. All of his coworkers are dead. He had gone back to bed and slept through everything, only waking up when his despairing mother called him on the phone.

I always liked the:-

"the voices in my head told me to stay home and clean the guns today"

one, but I have never tried to use it, even though some at work would believe it!!

My senior year in college, I lived off-campus, and thus relied on my car to get to class. One sunny September on a Friday morning, I started walking to my car (which I had bought new a month before) and noticed it was tilting oddly. When I got to my car, the I realized the reason that it looked slanted was because someone had stolen all 4 chrome wheels off of it and left it on 3 cinderblocks.

I had to call my econ professor and leave him a voicemail that I would be missing class because someone had stolen the wheels off my car and I couldn't get to class.