How to "phone it in" when you're out and about...
...I'm rather troubled by all the people saying they forgot to call in sick and had to do it in London/seaside or wherever they've bunked off to.

Read and learn. You'll often find these little cublicles called phoneboxes which, whilst not completely silent, have been designed to make phone calls in with at least some element of privacy and silence.

Look for one on a quiet'ish street and phone from there. By all means use your mobile (or do 141 to hide the number), plus holding your nose/breath from the stench of stale piss adds to the not sounding like your normal self essence of the call.

Plus wherever possible, don't embelish your story, keep it short and sweet. Better still to leave a message with admin/secretary as you're too ill to wait to speak to boss. I usually go with "Hello it's golddust, I'm not feeling very well so won't be in today. Please let my boss know. Bye."
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 13:40, Reply)

Senile Dementia
Around five years ago, I used to work at the foodcourt at my local International Aiport (a truly hellish job). Anyway, I had a rather, how shall I say, mental colleague, who clearly in no way lived in reality.

He claimed to have a wife who was a European supermodel (despite being a rather obtuse and ugly 50 year old) and has a Ferrari which he won in a lottery (yet he cycles to work). He apparently rents out a villa in Spain to the Beckhams and was only working cleaning tables for "the fun of it".

Anyway, he was also the master of sickies. Sickies so ludicrous that you would give them to him just for the audacity of trying them.

1) He called in saying that he had fell down his stairs and broke his neck... he lives in a bungalow.

2) He had SARS. No joke, he called in to say he had a 24-hour case of SARS.

He's still there.

EDIT - Oh, yeah - "First post! Woo Yay! (length/girth joke) etc etc.
(r4gnar0k, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 13:39, Reply)

Went Cruising
It was my sisters 21st birthday last weekend and to celebrate she decided to go for a 3 day mini cruise for the weekend. Unfortunatly for me working full time and not remembering to ask for the time off i had to pull not 1 but 2 sickies!

Friday afternoon i had to leave early for a 'Dentist Appointment' in reality i had to be at portsmouth by the time i usually finish work.
Then on Monday morning i had to get a family member to call in for me with 'Food Poisoning' as i was still at sea when my monday morning shift started.

Unfortunatly Karma kicked in on sunday evening and i was sick, sea-sick so when people asked me how i was on tuesday when i returned to work i wasnt lying when i said i spend most of sunday in bed and throwing up, i just left out the but about being off the western coast of france at the time!

Wouldnt change anything had a awesome time on the boat watching england in the world cup on saturday while spending the day getting hammered on cheap booze and drinking games! Not to mention spending all of saturday night hanging out with a hen party! Great Fun!
(arsebiscuits, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 13:22, Reply)

Driving
I'm skiving right now. I'm one of the UKs boys in blue, and I've not been on duty for 2 days as I'm attending a driving course, to improve my skills behind the wheel. In theory, its careful planning, full of highly professional resoponse driving passing the skills onto a new generation. In reality, I'm being paid to drive about in a 2.5 litre RS turbo admiring the finest tourist hot spots in the county. Hey, if i'm skiving I might as well go someplace nice. And eat bacon sandwiches. Oh, the irony. I'm also being paid to be taught by a higly trained responce driver, who teaches the royal family escorts emergency driving skills. I love my job. I get paid to skive.
(menashem, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 13:15, Reply)

Trailing Spouse
Bubble (the missus) got a job in Belgium last year. I had wanted to move to Thailand, but no, she got the job in Belgium. Typical.

Now I'm stuck in a country that won't employ me because I can't speak Dutch and refuse to learn French with nothing better to do all day than play computer games, ride my mountain bike and drink good cheap beer.

Hold on.

roll on the next 8 months :D
(Freegan Bikefascist, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 12:24, Reply)

Dead
I booked a late deal holiday, such a bargain so I told the HR Manager that my ex wife had died and I neede to comfort my kids. Thikning about it, it was sort of a half truth as I would like it if she croaked so I could stop maintenance money so I can go on another holiday. Mmm, I might have to say that one of my kids has died for that one.
( frogdog Fuck Your Holy Leaders, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 12:00, Reply)

Diarrhoea.
D-I-A-R-R-H-O-E-A.
( Captain Wow currently being a cunt in Infamous, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 11:24, Reply)

Not on the register
During the last two years of secondary school, I was for some reason not on any register for P.E, R.E and I.T. This meant I could either.
Not go to the lesson (R.E happened to be the last of the day so I could go home)
Or join any lesson which took my fancy.
Might explain why I drew a big tree on my R.E exam paper and didn't answer the questions
( Adamsky, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 11:05, Reply)

extended holiday
I was on a driving holiday round the south of France a while back. Time came for a return home and I simply couldnt be bothered. I phoned the boss and said I had a bad dose of the runs and was too ill to travel. I extended the holiday by a further 10 days.
They were rather skeptical but I didnt give a rats ass.

My bowels are actually kind of screwed, but its something I can live with, but I often used this as an excuse for further random days off and for spending several hours in the crapper when I was feeling a bit lazy.
(dave likes cheese, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 11:04, Reply)

another one...
... This time at PC World...

I had an argument with a friend and punched a wall... Although this does make me sound like I think i'm a hard nut, i did belive the wall was plaster board (henceforth wanting to put my hand through it for more satisfaction)... but oh no it was a stone wall - not f**kin brick - a STONE WALL... I broke the bone behind my knuckle and had to get it put back in place... I did however manage to get a couple of weeks off work... then on my return managed to stay out of anything resembling work for about 2 month for it to heal!!! plus i said i done it in a fight in town! so i looked hard!!! :-p
(likeajackhammer, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 10:26, Reply)

Another...
Oh, and another, not me, but a kitchenhand at my wife's work (posh chocolate cafe in Melbourne). Not quite a sickie, but anyway, he turns up for work something like four hours late, manager goes up and asks him what the story is. His answer?

"My housemate put food in my shoes."
(The Turgid Dahlia, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 7:49, Reply)

Try to Skive
As a student nurse i have to make up especially good excuses to get out of work, Im using toothache at the moment, but it cant last much longer, i told them i got my antibiotics two days ago!!! Bastard, looks like im going back this week!!!
(lankynyack, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 6:32, Reply)

Attempt, Failure, Success
Quite a few years ago I was feeling mildly dodgy one morning (I had taken to drinking heavily in order to forget my shitty job, and also for the joy of drinking heavily) and thought I would take the opportunity to blag myself out of Friday’s work in order to better ease myself into the weekend. Tragically, I was told that I’d "better come in else you’ll regret it" and that made me pretty angry, though not angry enough to get sacked, so I got dressed and then ate an entire 500g block of vintage cheddar cheese. I had got a mild case of food poisoning from some dodgy cheese the week before, and figured that my "sicky memory" would eventually register my subconscious dislike for cheese and hopefully make me throw up. All I had to do was hold it down until I got to work.

The train ride went okay and the first forty-five minutes of work went along as well as you might expect, and I was getting a little nervous, afraid that I would never vomit. As luck would have it, at about the fiftieth minute of my increasingly-horrific day, a colleague was standing by my desk talking about something, and as I was nodding my head unenthusiastically and saying "Yeah, yeah, okay, sounds good, I'll get ri-"...FLOOSH! A tremendous fountain of hardly-digested Cracker Barrel in milky-white bile, replete with the amber tang and acid burn of last night’s bottle of Old Crow, erupted spectacularly from my mouth, covering my keyboard and the front of my desk. I hadn’t even felt it coming up. It got all down my front and my colleague made a hasty retreat – legend has it that she went and had a little vom herself in the kitchen. The boss, from his office two rooms down the hall, had actually heard the spew hitting the desk and he came storming out, demanding to know what was going on.

Long story slightly less long, I got the rest of the day off, and was also told that I didn’t have to come in on Monday either if I didn’t feel up to it. Naturally, come Monday, I didn’t feel up to it. Got sacked a month and bit later for "not being a team player" but fuck it, my puke-corroded keyboard and mouse got replaced by some fancy wireless kit which I nicked.
(The Turgid Dahlia, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 6:19, Reply)

a moving story..
Had to cover my fellow manager at the music venue I work at once because he had chronic constipation...

5 days on and he still hadn't forced one out (that's what happens if you eat gravy exclusively)

On the last night of my cover, I was supposed to move all the little tables and stools in front of the stage for the weekends big gig. I fucked that off though solely for the reason that I could pop in the next day on his opening up shift and seee if he 'needed any help moving his stools'...

punarific...
(blackfacedfightinggibbon, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 5:36, Reply)

One of our former employees...
used to get his girlfriend to call in & say that he had come down with a really bad case of the flu. However he would come to work the next day & tell us that he got a flu shot at the doctors & he was feeling heaps better. Dumb cunt.
One of his other tricks was when he cut his thumb at work. I took him to the doctors & the doctor said that there was no reason that he couldn't resume work on light duties & to keep his thumb covered up for 3 days. However the next day he calls in saying his thumb hurts way too much & he can't come in. This particular day was Pay Day. So naturally he shows up to et his pay 1/2 an hour before the workers finish holding his mobile phone in his injured hand texting somebody with his un-covered injured thumb that apparently "hurt way too much". We kept him for 1 week after that then sacked his ass.
( Sir Pigeon Nipples Did you sit in some sugar?, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 4:21, Reply)

It's all in the mind...
A friend once told me he used to say he had "an acute ideomatic thrombocytopaenic purpura" or, loosely translated, a nasty rash that nobody can explain. Haven't had the chance to try that one...

Once, however, after getting mind-blisteringly drunk with my brother, I completely hallucinated phoning my boss, explaining that I was too drunk to come to work and that it would be best that I stay in bed... So when he called me at 2pm my response was "I told you - I'm too drunk today"..

'scuse length, it's to make up for not having a car.
(Monkeyking, Wed 14 Jun 2006, 1:40, Reply)

Can't use this one too often.
I'm currently off work because I just had my left arm amputated. Took my shoulder blade, collar bone and two ribs, too.

I'm left-handed too. Life's a bitch like that.

Shitter, huh?

Get back to work, you lazy bastards.
(TwoFourAlpha, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 23:31, Reply)

Drunk
I worked for this company for about a year and a half, and being a temp-worker, i got switched between departments every now and then, to wherever it was busy.
Anyhow, i had just been moved to yet another department, when a friend of mine chose to celebrate her birthday on wednesday night in the bar i work at myself in the weekends. One beer led to another to another to another, thus resulting in the usual "i'll go home after this one"-bullshit you always tell yourself when drinking on a weeknight. Last bus came and went without me.
"Fukc it, i'll take a cab home" thinks me, and i proceed to yet another(this time really the last one) bottle of beer. Cue to 3 am when all customers have gone and just me, said friend and 2 other staff that were still there. "Let watch a movie on the beamer" was yet another great plan, and more beers followed.
At some point i realise that it's 5 am, and no matter what, i'm in no condition to work 8 hours in an office at 8 or 9 am. I decide to pull the all-or-nothing trick. I switch off my phone, proceed to drink 'till 9 in the morning, fall asleep and wake up at noon. I go home, go to bed again and switch my phone back on at 9 PM.
Voicemail.
" Hi, we missed you at the office today, could you please contact me asap?"
"Sure. Tomorrow" The next day i pick up my phone to call the office. I never worked on friday, so i had that day off anyway.
"Hi , where were you yesterday?"
I put on my most surprised voice;
"Huh?? I took that day off two weeks ago, i thought i'd told you!"
Turns out that someone in that department hadn't showed up for work a couple of months earlier, and they found him in his home, he had committed suicide.
"No, no problem, we're glad everything is okay with you. Enjoy your weekend and see you on monday"
One of the big escapes. Not one you can pull off on a regular basis.
(Bokbiertrol, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 23:06, Reply)

"Hi Steve. No, don't bother picking me up today...
... I've got these chest pains. Yeah, I phoned NHS Direct. No, they... hang on, got to go - there's a couple of paramedics running up my drive with a portable defibrillator."

It was all true too!
Turned out to be heartburn, but it took three doctors down at the hospital all morning to work that one out.
( teedyay, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 22:24, Reply)

How to get off school...
We had a lad in school that aquired the gift of being able to make himself sick at will. His speciality was just after lunch; he'd walk in to the common room, shout, "Guess what I've had for lunch??" and... well... show everyone.
He achieved fame by getting sent home four consecutive Thursday for a month at 4:05 pm, that's five minutes after PE started. He'd complain to the teacher of having an upset stomach and, before the teacher could reply, vomiting all over him (or her). The teachers cottened on by making sure every teacher capable of hosting PE had their turn (who wants to be puked on twice?).
Vile lad; his idea of a good time was to wank in to a matchbox and tell girls he had a horrid spider in it.
(DustyD, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 22:17, Reply)

I can't come in today...
... I've got insomnia.
( teedyay, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 22:14, Reply)

Getting away with it...
I work in Human Resources (Personnel to the rest of the world) and you should see some of the cases that come across my desk. One person went off sick after 9/11 (despite not knowing anyone killed etc) and then ended up getting ill health retirement because it messed him up so much. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people who make up fake stuff and get away with it. I try to talk managers into realising that their staff are abusing the company's goodwill and that we should discipline them but no-one ever seems to have the guts. Sigh...Also rather interesting how many patently World Cup related sickies we have seen even in the first week!
(SpongyMonkey is an honorary East Anglian on, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 22:11, Reply)

Fire Drill
Not really a sicki but thought id post it any way. when i was in school we had the regular twats who would set the fire alrm off every other day. So cramming like 800 people out of the main doors was looong, so me and my m8 being 2 foot biggr thn evry1 else decided to smash our way thorugh all the little shits only to b cought by the biggest freaking teacher ever, when asked"what the hell do u think ur doing" i splurted out "Adding realism". yeh i thought it was realistic telling the headteacher tht infront of my parents...Little cunts :D
(R0z, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 22:01, Reply)

I wish I had invented
my stay in hospital after an asthma attack.
My work decided during this time that I was to be made redundant and sent me the notice so that I got it the day I came out of hospital, nice people.


Edit - cunts
(kaedesmith, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 21:46, Reply)

Always works
If you ever want a day of sick with no questions asked, I always put down on the sick form 'Explosive diarrhoea' - no one ever asks anymore questions.
(veniceboy lives in California, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 21:31, Reply)

Skipping punishments...
I went to school with a great deal of cock-ends, but one of the more offensively stupid tits was a retard called James Mallender.

One of our standard punishments was to run up a hill called Winder, and take a brass-rubbing of the trig-point Plate to prove we'd reached the top..

this punishment was usually bestowed upon miscreants who were messign around after Lights-out... and had to be completed before breakfast the next morning. So.. the night you recieved the punishment, you'd be getting up at 3am, getting into your running gear, and preparing for a 2 hour run, with a signed bit of paper....

It was usually Mallender that got us caught, and it was he that came up with the worst excuses.

*At the base of the hill "I can't go on, my knee has locked" ... then WALKS to a bench and sits down "I'll wait here.. it will have fixed itself by the time you come down.. can you take my bit of paper?"

*My favourite.. Half way up... bear in mind that this isn't even a munroe.. It's 1550 feet.
So.. Half way up... "I can't go on.. I have altitude sickness"


Twat.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Tue 13 Jun 2006, 21:13, Reply)

Back at school, when I was about 13...
...just as I'd started my legendary reign of sickies that lasted the rest of school. I'd faked a sickie- you know the sort, headache, feeling sick, 'migraine'- for Wednesday and Thursday. I'd been told I was definitely going back on Friday.
So, early hours of Friday morning, I have a seizure and get taken into hospital. I got out at lunchtime feeling fine and got taken to McDonalds.
The irony of it all is that in the resulting hospital appointments I got tablets for these migraines I'd been having...do I feel guilty? You betcha.
(and now for someone completely different, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 20:20, Reply)

Young lad has problems
I fondly remember the story of my friend's 5 year old who, upon deciding to take a sickie (to get out of pre-school, of course), couldn't think of an actual ailment to describe, so he just used one he had heard on a TV ad for painkillers.

His excuse?

"Headaches, back-aches and period pain."
(talbo, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 17:18, Reply)

Mmm... cat puke tea
I'm calling Australian clients from the UK at the moment so have a an early start. This morning, I had to get up at 3.30am for work as usual and had a cup of green tea (mid-twenties health kick moment!)- you don't put milk in it so I just picked up the mug and started drinking it whilst getting ready for work. (sort hair out, feed cats etc) Halfway through the cup I there was a brown blob which turned out to be cat food in the cup. Bleeeuuurgh! Don't know whether one of the little f*ckers spat in it or whether it had fallen in the kettle(?) but it was very much a dry retch moment. Went to work and made a cup of tea and took an enormous mouthful to take the cat food taste away (reason cats lick their asses isn't it? To take the taste away) and the milk was off. So that mouthful was distributed liberally all over the wall and computer.

Note to b3ta: don't try drinking cat food, it grosses you out, you feel like shit and gives you a phobia of drinking tea, but it isn't a valid reason for a day off work (damn!)
(motorbike thieves should be chainsawed, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 17:08, Reply)

four days into my brand new job
I came down with labyrinthitis - it is nothing to do with David Bowie but rather an infection of the inner ear with symptoms which are rather like being very very drunk. Sounds like fun, but it lasts for two weeks and there is no treatement.

it took me ages to learn to enjoy booze again. But don't worry, I persevered.

Not really a sicky as I did keep trying to come into work, dispite not really being able to stand up on my own.
(moogster, Tue 13 Jun 2006, 16:37, Reply)