--- title: 7 Crazy Excuses Employees Gave for Calling In Sick This Year description: More than a third of full-time employees told a CareerBuilder survey that they'd played hooky from work at least once this year. authors: - name: Kristen Bahler role: Managing Editor url: https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/ bio: Kristen Bahler has spent more than a decade turning culture, work and consumer spending trends into conversation-driving stories. Today, she leads Money's sponsored content channel and reader-favorite franchises like Best Places to Live and Best Places to Travel. education: Northeastern University, MA Journalism at_money_since: 2016 articles: 52 covers: - Business - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-bahler/ published: '2016-10-20T10:30:39.000Z' modified: '2016-10-20T10:30:39.000Z' section: Business tags: - Call in sick - calling in sick - Careers - Leisure - pubdesk - sick day word_count: 363 canonical: https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Man sleeping on couch](https://img.money.com/2016/10/gettyimages-667652071.jpg) While fewer employees are playing hooky this year than they did in 2015, more than a third of workers still say they've called in sick when they were in perfectly good health. That's the finding of a CareerBuilder survey, which asked more than 3,100 employees if, and in what circumstances, they had faked an illness to get out of work. About 35% of the full-time workers polled said they've called in sick when they were feeling just fine -- down from 38% last year. The reasons varied. The largest chunk of respondents (28%) said they “just didn’t feel like going in to work.” Another large segment (27%) said they took the day off to attend a doctor’s appointment. Almost a quarter (24%) said they needed to just relax, another 18% said they needed to catch up on sleep, and 11% said they took the day off to run personal errands. CareerBuilder also polled 2,500 employers, asking them to share the “most dubious excuses” employees had given for missing work. Here’s a condensed list of the craziest examples provided: - Employee said the ozone in the air flattened his tires. - Employee’s pressure cooker had exploded and scared her sister, so she had to stay home. - Employee ate cat food instead of tuna and was deathly ill. - Employee was bowling the game of his life and simply couldn’t take a break to go to work. - Employee was experiencing traumatic stress from a large spider found in her home. - Employee was sick from eating too much birthday cake. - Employee had "better things to do" -- although, frankly, this may be one of the most honest answers given. One-third of the employers said they have checked to see whether an employee who called in sick was in fact telling the truth. Of those, 68% said they asked to see a doctor’s note, but another large group said they had called the employee. Shockingly, 18% said they had gone as far as driving past an employee’s house. The takeaway? If you want to take a [Ferris Bueller-style day off work](https://money.com/how-to-call-in-sick-ferris-buellers-day-off/?iid=sr-link2), make sure you're coughing up a storm when your boss drops by, and not partying on the front porch. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Business", "item": "https://money.com/business/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Employees", "item": "https://money.com/employees/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "7 Crazy Excuses Employees Gave for Calling In Sick This Year" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/", "name": "7 Crazy Excuses Employees Gave for Calling In Sick This Year", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2016-10-20T10:30:39.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2016-10-20T10:30:39.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "7 Crazy Excuses Employees Gave for Calling In Sick This Year", "articleSection": "Business", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2016/10/gettyimages-667652071.jpg", "width": 7952, "height": 5304, "caption": "Man sleeping on the couch exhausted" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kristen Bahler", "url": "https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/#author", "description": "Kristen Bahler has spent more than a decade turning culture, work and consumer spending trends into conversation-driving stories. Today, she leads Money's sponsored content channel and reader-favorite franchises like Best Places to Live and Best Places to Travel.", "image": "https://img.money.com/2016/08/kristen.png?w=350&h=430&crop=1", "email": "kristen.bahler@money.com", "jobTitle": "Managing Editor", "alumniOf": "Northeastern University, MA Journalism", "sameAs": [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-bahler/" ], "worksFor": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2016-10-20T10:30:39.000Z", "description": "More than a third of full-time employees told a CareerBuilder survey that they'd played hooky from work at least once this year.", "abstract": "More than a third of full-time employees told a CareerBuilder survey that they'd played hooky from work at least once this year.", "@id": "https://money.com/excuses-call-in-sick-play-hooky/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2016-10-20T10:30:39.000Z", "wordCount": 363, "keywords": [ "Call in sick", "calling in sick", "Careers", "Leisure", "pubdesk", "sick day" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Business", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Employment", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment" ] } ] } ] } ```