10 Possible Excuses to Skip Work Without Suspicion
The best excuse for skipping work is one that’s believable, perhaps partly truthful, and/or completely honest. Missing work is never a positive for any employee, but it’s not necessarily a negative either, with the right explanation and context.
Regardless of why you’re skipping work, should it become a chronic issue, you can expect consequences to follow back to you. There are absent management tools and procedures to track your attendance rates, so you won’t escape the consequences forever.
However, you may be able to get away with your excuses to skip work for individual occasions, especially if it only happens once in a while. Below are ten possible excuses to skip work without suspicion:
1. Back pain
Other than the flu, back pain is the second most used excuses to skip work by employees. It’s realistic, believable, and unexpected. Saying you woke up in the middle of the night with an aching back, woke up in the morning barely able to move, or are in severe pain, this may buy a couple days to help you ‘heal’. It’s well worth a try, although you may want to be careful how you sell it.
2. The unexpected and uncontrollable
Anything that’s out of your control where you’re scrambling to make it work is a perfect work excuse. If the babysitter hasn’t shown up, some sort of emergency has transpired, if there’s a transportation delay or a car accident, or if a flight’s been delayed, etc.
These are all things resulting in a person having to miss work. These things transpire all the time. Think of what’s unexpected or uncontrollable in your life and how to exploit these excuses to skip work.
3. Migraine
A really, really bad migraine is an excuse you can give and say something along the lines of you will try to make it in later in the day if you can. This shows you want to come in to work but you can’t. Especially if it’s a female manager you’re speaking with, an unexpected migraine is something that happens and anyone should understand that.
4. House emergency
The bathroom is flooded! The basement has a leak! An appliance is in emergency and a contractor’s coming by today to fix. These are all house emergencies that work. Things break down.
When home safety is at risk, your boss should be nice about that. Claiming a house emergency can take some time to get your story straight and remember it though. You may consider writing out a few paragraphs of details to make your excuses to skip work more believable.
5. Your vehicle’s broken down
If you’re not in the city and/or have access to a transportation system, a car breakdown down isn’t a terrible excuse. A counter however is going to be, “Get a taxi!” or to find an Uber. As an excuse to miss work, this might not hit the mark but it’s an idea.
Also, if a vehicle’s broken down resulting in other plans being affected, this may also allow you to pull from the ‘unexpected’ or ‘uncontrollable’ as mentioned.
6. Child, parent, or spouse is sick
A somewhat expected excuse is when a family member’s sick and you need to attend to them. Staying home from work because of someone else’s medical emergency is hard to argue with.
That said, ensure there’s some truth to it. If your parents are both in excellent health and they aren’t dealing with any chronic conditions, you may not want to use the excuse of they’re ill. Don’t mention anything you may struggle to prove or which is easy to discard.
7. Major purchase delivery
Fridges, furniture, and similarly large and expensive items can’t be delivered to a locked residence. Someone needs to be home to accept them. If delivery can’t be arranged outside work hours, this is something you may be able to use to get away from work.
That said, a simple book delivery isn’t going to work. It needs to be a delivery of product significantly valuable or large.
8. Doctor’s appointment
A simple, straightforward excuse to miss work is a doctor’s appointment or sickness. If it’s a one-time thing, you might not have to produce a doctor’s note. This does depend on the company evidently so you may want to be careful with this one.
If you don’t want to go doctor’s appointment route, you can say something along the lines of an upset stomach or a flu-esque temperature high.
9. A day for self-care
You may need to watch on how you use this excuse to skip work but if you’re feeling burnt out, are struggling with mental health stuff, or are over-stressed, this can all be blended into asking for a day for yourself. If you have an understanding boss and use the ‘mental health’ keyword, you may be able to win a day for yourself where you can just recharge and renew your internal energy.
10. Someone’s death
Don’t use this. Just don’t – unless it’s verifiably true. There are many, many stories of managers going after social media and sources to confirm the lie an employee’s given to them that someone in their family’s died. You can’t lose the same relative twice.
If you use someone’s death as an excuse to skip work frequently, it’s also going to raise suspicions that you’re lying. You will lose the trust of your employer and from there, you’re a problem.
