Karen MacCannell received a call from an employee who was running late.
“He said he was distracted backing out of his driveway because his brother was sick,” she said. “As a result, he was hit by another car. Simultaneously, he said, his house caught fire and then he was robbed.”
MacCannell said her boss chuckled as he overheard the tortured excuse. “Tell him to pick one,” the supervisor said.
Tardiness was such a problem with some employees that MacCannell and her co-workers developed a long list of common explanations. When one of the workers invariably would call in late, MacCannell would just say it was “a No. 10 or a No. 23.”
MacCannell today works for a different company, but still smiles at the memories.
Habitual tardiness inspires creativity in employees to an extent that may not be apparent in their other work. Maybe it’s because that of all the office policies a worker can break, running late is one of the most common.
According to a new study by Chicago-based CareerBuilder, nearly one quarter (23 percent) of employees admit to being tardy at least once a month, with 15 percent arriving late at least once a week.
“Most employers understand that occasionally things pop up and cause employees to be behind schedule. The trouble comes when tardiness becomes a habit,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.
Serial late-runners, for reasons likely known only to them, seem unable to simply say this is their nature and work on the problem. Instead, many offer reasons that not only wouldn’t stand up in court, they are routinely laughed out of the lunch room.
I had a frequently tardy employee once who, having used the standard excuses of the alarm clock not going off or needing to stop for a prescription, graduated to increasingly elaborate explanations such as “my cat got caught in the wall” and “I drove all the way to work, but forgot my teeth.”
These aren’t too far from some of the memorable stories uncovered by CareerBuilder in its survey. They included:
- Employee accidentally put Super Glue in her eye instead of contact lens solution, and had to go to the emergency room.
- A hole in the roof caused rain to fall on the alarm clock and it didn’t go off.
- Forgot the company had changed locations.
- Employee got a hairbrush stuck in her hair.
- Got to work on time, but fell asleep in the car.
- Woke up on the front lawn of a house two blocks away from home.
- Was watching something on TV and wanted to see the end.
- Got scared by a nightmare.
- Thought Halloween was a work holiday.
Following are the common reasons given for being late for work:
- 39 percent – Caught in traffic
- 19 percent – Lack of sleep
- 8 percent – Problems with public transportation
- 7 percent – Bad weather
- 6 percent – Dropping the kids off at day care or school
If you’re running late, should you lie?
“It’s best just to tell the truth,” says workplace etiquette expert Colleen Rickenbacher. “If you show up late claiming traffic was bad, but you’re holding a Starbucks, you’re gonna get busted.”
Source: Tulsa World
