Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Excuses, Excuses

We all use them, mostly when we dash through the door a few minutes late and feel the need to justify our tardiness to those in the cubicles around us.

"I can't believe how bad traffic was this morning!" 

"Silly me!  I couldn't find my keys.  Would you believe they were in the freeze?"

"I must have hit the power button instead of the snooze and I totally woke up late."

But all those excuses are now officially lame because of the reason my co-worker gave us for why he was going to be late to work.
 
HIS ROOMMATES CAR WAS BOMBED!!!

Okay, so as it turns out it wasn't bombed in an Al Queda kind of way.  But in the e-mail sent to the people in my department the word BOMB was used.  Images of IED in Iraq and tales from the IRA flashed in my head.

I guess my co-worker left his apartment in the city at 9AM and noticed an unusually high number of neighbors gathered around some cars on the street.  So he edged his way to see that they were all looking at three cars that were completely burned out.  And one of those cars belonged to his roommate.  Apparently someone threw some sort of incendiary device (you know, the kind people in malls chuck off the roof to kill zombies) and it burned three cars.

So my co-worker had to go back inside and wake his roommate with the news that her car was now a piece of charcoal.  Seriously, there is no better alarm clock than that one.

Anyway, I now feel like I can never have an excuse for why I am late because he just set that bar way too high.

Sadly I think the only thing that can trump an exploding car is alien abduction and I don't want to use that one. I don't need my co-workers thinking anal probe every time they look at me.

~ The Office Scribe

4 comments:

Stacy said...

We've got a guy with lame excuses all the time too. One of his best was..."a guy karate chopped my front door." Yup, that was why he was late to work. Priceless.

David said...

Mmmm... I had an excuse as good as that one for being late when I was at high school. I used to live in the coast with my grandma, and our house was in the side of the hills. One night I was falling asleep on my room when I heard a loud noise coming from the garden (at the other side of my room's wall). A car had been pushed down hill and had finally rolled over and fallen into our garden. The thing is, even so I wasn't late for school. I guess I was too shy to take the opportunity.

dadadadio said...

I have a Word file on my PC..."Valid Reasons For Missing Work"...which is a compilation of excuses offered by coworkers but one guy dominates the list. He misses an average of 5 days per month.....no kidding.

Why does he still have a job? The bossman is friends with his mom.

Anyway, the list is up to 33 excuses, mostly bizzare excuses like..."My cat lost it's tail."... and..."I had two flat tires this morning."

He usually leaves voice mail for the office manager before she gets in so he doesn't have to face the music. She's kind enough to play them back for us. If it's a new excuse I add it to my list.

If I ever need to miss work I know all these reasons have proven to be acceptable.

The list is gold.

The Office Scribe said...

Dadadadio, I want that list.

And Stacy, what if your co-worker lives in a village plagued with ninjas?

David, always use an excuse if you can. Keeps life interesting.