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Throwing a sickie

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Hattie's Kitchen

10:20 / 09.07.04

In one of my old jobs I took advantage of rather uptight male boss by phoning in fake sickies on the grounds of having "women's problems"...I could hear him cringing down the phone, and spluttering something like: "Oh...er...oh, OK then" and no more questions would be asked. That was a nice job. When I could be bothered going in...

Totally agree with Sax about the Northen work ethic/guilt complex thing - since moving to London, I don't think I've ever thrown a fake sickie, and only stay off work when it's physically impossible for me to stand up without vomiting.

Jack The Bodiless

11:15 / 09.07.04

"I don't know what's happened... I bent down to pci up some loose change, and now I can't straighten up again..."

Got me out of stockroom duty for two weeks when I were a lad, holding down university, a job at Woolworths and drinking full time in the bar. Downside was I had to continue my pained expression for the entire of those two weeks, and shuffle down the road after leaving work in the evening with the exact same pained shuffle (because some folks drove past me on their own way home), only for me to Keyser Soze back to normal once I'd turned the corner. Found out after a while that a fake limp, extended for too long a period, plays havoc with your hip.

Goodness Gracious Meme

11:21 / 09.07.04

Agree with Jefe on outrageousness. Not too much explanation, but something pretty hardcore usually shuts people up. I had a motorbike accident(was in Leeds and couldnae be arsed to come back to London)....

Ex-best friend/housemate and i used to regularly ring up for each other and do 'concerned partner'/'I'm insisting he go to the doctor' routines...

Mind you, we had both gotten into that position of being so useful/experienced in our respective poxy jobs that they kind of had to let us take the piss.

I love that situation.

trouser the trouserian

11:22 / 09.07.04

I've found the best way to escape detection is to claim something really outrageous.

Years ago, I managed to get off one of those godawful unemployment retraining schemes (COBOL programming) by faking a psychotic attack in the manager's office. They just told me to go home and 'not to worry' about completing the course.

11:30 / 09.07.04

Vague-but-potentially-scary works well too. "Family problems", for example, comes complete with dayglo DON'T GO THERE warnings.

pointless and uncalled for

11:42 / 09.07.04

There is the gross out option. Nothing that affects your ability to call up in a normal voice but one that they want to stop talking about as quickly as possible.

Rectal fissures is good for this. Remember, you will have to be the kind of person that is prepared to go into significant detail. Two words is not enough, the prospect of two or three minutes on the subject of your bleeding anus is.

Only unfortunate if your boss has actually had this condition.

Hattie's Kitchen

11:47 / 09.07.04

Aye..

Me: "Yes, sorry, can't come in today, having a particularly heavy period this month, there's lumps in it and everything..."

Works like a charm.

12:13 / 09.07.04

Remind me never to employ you lot.

12:14 / 09.07.04

You couldn't afford me, sweetmeat.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:22 / 09.07.04

do you know that your underlings don't comprise half the posters on this thread, Saxy-boy?

Bwahahahahaha--shit, sorry boss.

12:28 / 09.07.04

We just kinda use them as personal days. Hey boss, can I have Thursday off? And can you make it a sick day so I still get paid? Thanks. The boss does the same thing, everyone's cool with it.

I never call in sick when I'm actually sick. I'd just feel silly. Unless you count a hangover, and even then very rarely.

12:31 / 09.07.04

And come to think of it, when I called in sick with a hangover, I didn't really make anything up. I just said I didn't feel well and wouldn't be coming to work that day. Nobody really makes a big deal over it in my experience.

12:32 / 09.07.04

do you know that your underlings don't comprise half the posters on this thread, Saxy-boy?

Good God. Cold shiver time. If this is true, please tell me that you're not Jim, BiP. I couldn't bear to think I've flirted with you all these years if you are.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:41 / 09.07.04

I couldn't bear to think I'd flirted with you all these years if you weren't Jim, Jim.

wembley can change in 28 days

13:06 / 09.07.04

Wait, I can explain texting in sickies to make myself look less reprehensible! At my office, you're basically expected to put in 7,5 hours a day over the week and be there between the hours of 10 and 3, so you're not late if you come in at 9:55, as long as you get your weekly hours in, so you don't really want to call people too early.

My boss doesn't want any phone calls before 9, because we all have mobile phones that we take everywhere and he can't be arsed to take any work-related calls before he's at work. So I text in at 8:30 or so. Then he calls me back at 9:30 and I can .. uh, see his name on the phone display and down a glass of whisky and smoke a cigarette before answering... yeah. Upstanding, c'est moi.

The period thing ALWAYS works. I usually just use the word "monthly" and my boss is ready to give me the week off. But I only use it when it's true, honest..

wembley can change in 28 days

13:09 / 09.07.04

Besides, which is worse -- calling in sick, or spending your "hardly working" day on Barbelith and getting paid for it?

13:32 / 09.07.04

I couldn't bear to think I'd flirted with you all these years if you weren't Jim, Jim.

Even you wouldn't sink so low.

14:28 / 09.07.04

Every time I call in sick when I'm not, I then immediately start with debilitating cold/allergy symptoms for no good reason. I think my body knows I'm fundamentally an honest person and tries to help me out. So full of hate.

I wanted to call in sick today, in fact, because I felt almost ill enough to justify it and dammit, it's Friday, but I'm afraid I'd then get too sick to run the errands I was going to call out to get done.

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:14 / 09.07.04

Sax, hypothetically like, would it be a major problem re.flirting if I was Jim?

*waits on tenterhooks*

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:07 / 09.07.04

Useful hint- (which, being the guilt-ridden fuck I am, I've never actually reaped the benefits of, but there's always next week...) when starting a new job, turn up HORRIBLY hungover as often as possible. Therefore, if you DO phone in sick, they won't assume it's through being too hungover.

The other side of this whole question is hypochondria- not only did we have a guy who once demanded that he be allowed to go home because "I think I'm having a heart attack"... they called him an ambulance, only for its crew to find him standing outside having a cigarette. Neither the ambulance crew, his boss OR the rest of us who had to do his work for him after he left were terribly impressed...

There's also a guy, a lovely guy by the way, who's a total hypochondriac. We've figured it's worth doing the extra work so we can play the game of "everyone invents a disease and talks about it loudly... whoever's disease he phones in sick with first wins".

19:15 / 09.07.04

Not a sickie story so much as nice advice for a late morning... for "stuck on the delayed train" hangover extra 1-2 hour grab try switching your bedside alarm clock to pick up static instead of the station, turning it up and holding the phone next to it whilst you call. Sounds really real.

Caveat being - make sure you're vague about the actual train you got in "stayed at the missus'" etc, so snipey colleagues who get the same train in can't shoot you down.

19:36 / 09.07.04

Pertinent point this minute, from Xoc: who, on their deathbed, says, "I wish I'd spent more time at work"?

22:54 / 09.07.04

How not to pull a sickie No#1

off the cuff excuses are probley the worst

Last christmas my brother, who works nights, got a call from a friend of his "dude i just saw your girlfreind with another dude" my bra, naturally distressed as he had been with this chick for a couple of years, leaves work to find out that, yes, she had been seeing someone else and yes, he had been taken for a red faced twart. a couple of days later he returns to work still a bit fucked up about the earlier events and still no idea what to tell his boss.

So my brothers standing outside the office door and finally gets called in "why have you been off?" my brother flaps it and says the first thing that comes to his head
"my girlfreind died"
instantly he realises the fuck up hes made but also the truth that he can never ever go back on what he has just said, panicing he elobrates
"she got hit by a car" searching his limited brain he finds somthing that he belives is feasable, but in reality only happens in soaps
"we had to turn the machine off christmas eve, i was holding her hand" at this point he even manages a little tear.
of course his work place are sypathetic but a little suspicous, the thing is they can never call him on it just on the off chance its true. and my brother is feeling so bad about such a outragious out of order lie, when ever anybody mentions it the guilt make him look as if he feels really bad, and only adds to the effect.

he constantly lives in fear his ex will turn up where he works.

hanabius yamamura

16:44 / 10.07.04

Pertinent point this minute, from Xoc: who, on their deathbed, says, "I wish I'd spent more time at work"?

... a life lesson i have kept close to my heart since the days when he was my mentor in days gone by

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:41 / 11.07.04

I took one day off in two and a half years as a school librarian, though I suspect that the knowledge that there would be a mess that would take me ages to sort out if I didn't go in was one of the motivating factors.

Since moving to where I am now I've tended not to call in sick more than six or seven times a year. I had a run of genuine colds with fluey-symptoms which cleared up by lunchtime, ironically one time when I felt bad and forced myself to go into work it then developed into a genuine cold which laid me out for a couple of days. I've thrown the genuine sickie a couple of times, once when I had a friend up to stay, but I tend to feel a little guilt for doing it and avoid doing it now, because I know I could get myself into trouble for keeping on doing it and, as it's a job that I like doing really, it just seems daft to do so.

14:33 / 27.08.04

I was off sick yesterday and watched a programme on UK History about longbows, discovering that the old two-fingered salute dates back to the battle of Agincourt, because the French used to chop the forefinger and index finger off captured English bowmen. Prior to battle the English used to taunt the French with the "up yours" to show them they'd be getting a volley of well-fired arrows at any moment.

See, I wouldn't know that if I hadn't been off sick yesterday.

16:23 / 27.08.04

Remind me never to employ you, History Boy.

17:14 / 27.08.04

*Gives gesture implying longbow skills are in full working order*

10:35 / 31.08.04

Sax - the only problem with that, is that it's wrong. I saw something similar when I was a lad but my old history teacher told me I was wrong; then made me research why. Bless her. This particular chestnut gets passed on as real historical fact when it is not, mostly from Agincourt, sometimes from Crecy.

The heralds that recorded the battle - both English and French make no mention of it, and whilst this could have been because they were both disgusted by it or thought it irrelevant, it is highly unlikely as herarlds were seen as impartial observers back then - sort of medieval UN inspectors.

Secondly, during battle, the only people that were captured were knights and other dignitaries who could fetch a price at ransom. The average long bowman would have been killed, as the men at arms saw them as inferior in the chivalric system.

To be fair, even if someone did capture a long bowman and want to ransom him, why would he cut his fingers off? Or why would he cut his fingers off and then kill him?

Okay, so maybe your thinking the French were swell guys at Agincourt. If they'd cut the longbowmans fingers off, there's no guarentee the same guys wouldn't be back one day with some other weapon. Not being able to use the bow means nothing if you are still good with a mace or what not. Thing is the "rules" said you were allowed to kill someone in battle but not if they were your prisoner. If you did stop to hack off two fingers they'd be your prisoner. So why not just kill them?

Lastly - most of the longbowman during this war were Welsh, not English - as they invented it.

10:04 / 03.09.04

so where does it come from?

10:13 / 03.09.04

V for Vendetta. Alan Moore invented everything.

10:18 / 03.09.04

George Morrison did it first in The Invisibles Number 1 with Dane McGowan. Well, technically it came out after V for Vendetta, but it fell into a wormhole and landed in Alan Moore's beard in 1976, where it stayed for 10 years thinking the Vietnam war was still on before Alan Moore found it and read it and it gave him the idea for V for Vendetta.

pointless and uncalled for

10:21 / 03.09.04

Along with his twin brother George?

10:22 / 03.09.04

Ah, but Moore only had a beard when he went to seed after the falling-apart of Big Numbers, when British fans decided to punish him for slagging off the UK in the intro to, erm, V for Vendetta. Before that, we was quite the well-turned-out sprucester.

10:30 / 03.09.04

Secret beard, you idiot.

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