Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Managers Share The Best Sick Notes They've Received From Their Employees

If you've ever had to manage people you'd know that employees have some wild excuses for why they can't come to work. Hopefully, though, you've never gotten a Snapchat of diarrhea, or have had workers show up after having been shot.

rickuk88 asked managers on Reddit: What's the best sick note excuse you've received?

Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.



So many questions.

Giphy

Guy didn't show up to work, called him multiple times. About 3 P.M.-ish he finally calls back. Goes "sorry about that but I think i might have left the country"

Dude got drunk, drove his car to the Czech Republic (about a two hour drive from Vienna, Austria, where we worked), knocked out his front tooth somehow and passed out in his car.

The whole thing was so funny, i had the selfie he took from the ER on my desk for a while.

vanityvicious

What kind of work?

wellsfargostillsucks

We worked at a call center

vanityvicious

Not even a bullet stopped this cook.

Had a cook call me from the hospital to tell me he was shot but would be in tomorrow. I said to get his rest and come back when he is ready. He showed up the next damn day with his leg all bandaged up, and while he couldn't really function, damn it he was there.

expresidentmasks

How inconvenient.

Giphy

Him: "I accidentally kicked my girlfriend in the eye last night while we were both sleeping on the couch. I had to take her to the ER."

Me: "The ER? Is she ok"

Him: (annoyed) Um, yeah sure.

bb8675309

Suspicious...

__Rick__Sanchez__

Testicular torsion can be deadly.

I know a guy from a hospital I used to work at who called in around day 3 at a new job. His excuse was that he was taking a sh*t and pushing really hard and "blew out one of his nuts".

That was exactly how he phrased it to the department manager, no euphemism. He actually did end up having testicular torsion and ended up coming in to work anyway to have it checked out.

MikeOxbigg

Hoohoooo maaaan that must be of been....ohhhh boy. Oh god no. Straining to squeeze out a steamer then BLAM your bollocks are twisted.

airwalkerdnbmusic

It can happen at any time. It's like being kicked in the balls constantly and it's lethal if it goes untreated.

RelativeCrab

Happened to my friend, ended up getting gangrenous and they took it out

Phranskepo

Nice try.

My fish drowned.

Wish I was joking, She didn't have her job the next week.

ErazerHeadz

#imwithher

Giphy

Not a manager, but a couple weeks ago i was at work. And we all suspected already that someone had diarrhea, because of the terrible smell just by walking by the toilet. It later was confirmed by the girl herself, yelling she had diarrhea as a valid reason to go home. So she did.

dutchgirl_24

It's gotta be pretty bad to be OK with screaming that in an office. Hope she's better.

thatlasstho

It wasn't even a office but a big warehouse of 2000 square meters...so it was pretty bad. But she got better, the next week she was proudly telling everyone that "she thought her butt was so pretty and nice."

dutchgirl_24

How professional.

Worked as a manager for a medium sized athletic facility, including a nice aquatics center. I was about 23 at the time, most of my life guards were 19-22 college kids from the school nearby. One guards "sick note" was just a horrifying Snapchat of explosive diarrhea. I gave him the day off, but the next staff meeting had a segment about appropriate communication between employees that I never imagined I would have to give.

Teh_swimmly

Anemia can actually be debilitating. 

Cashier at Taco Bell the other day kept openly complaining that her anemia was flaring up and she got to go. This is the same one who kept saying she got frost bite from having to sweep the parking lot when the temperature dropped from the 70's to the 50's a few weeks ago.

Tangboy60000

Brain freeze.

Giphy

Not a sick note per se but I had a staff member come back an hour late from a 15-minute break. When I asked her where she'd had been she told me she had to lay down for an hour because she ate an ice cream and her teeth hurt from the cold. I sent her home without pay for not coming to me first.

Elgre

These are legit.

Staff member had an issue with their smartphone which resulted in the loss of the contacts, calendar and any other reminders or notes that they had stored on the phone. Their job requires a lot of networking/phone use. They asked for a sick day to "get their life back together."

Another worker took a sick day once because she had started reorganizing her bedroom closet on our day off, and had severely underestimated the amount of time it would take to sort through and put everything back in the closet. "My apartment is in shambles and I can't come to work until it's cleaned up," she texted.

bookwormnj

Honestly I sympathize with both of these.

DukesOfTatooine

All the time tbh.

I once said "womans issues." I'm male.

Dazz316

I got 99 problems but a menstrual cycle ain't one.

TheBraveMagikarp

Nope, not gonna work.

Giphy

Someone I used to work with walked in with a "doctor's" note (her father is a nutritionist, I'm not mocking his area of study, but he is not qualified for the rest of this) explaining that she had broken her spine.

She walked in.

We told her that she was to remain on medical leave until she could produce a note clearing her to return to work from a doctor who is not her father. She brought in a note from a personal trainer. We let asked her not to return.

Loverboy21

To be fair, although her story does sound like bullshit, I was in a bad car accident a number of years ago and was ejected. After a guy helped pull me out of the bushes I was up and walking around until the ambulance came. I had 5 vertebrae with compression fractures. Adrenalin is a hell of a drug. Recovery consisted of wearing a plastic body brace. I was still up and walking around though.

premeditatedlasagna

She claimed it had happened three days prior, so we didn't entertain it for a second.

Also, I used to be an EMT, and I'm sure people have told you already, but holy shit are you lucky to walk after being the "walking dead" as we called them. Sometimes people stumble around with a broken neck after an accident, then sit down to become a quadriplegic when they shift their vertabrae.

Loverboy21

Yeah. I try not to think about that bit. It would have probably horrified you if you actually saw exactly how I sat down. It was pretty abrupt. The neurologist was amazed too. I had zero neurologic symptoms. Edit: in case you're curious it was T10, L1-4, and I also fractured my left occipital lobe. I didn't poop for a week cause my intestines were bruised up from the impact. Good times.

premeditatedasagna

Honesty can be the best policy.

Best serious: The ones where they are just honest about it. I don't need an elaborate story about some strange disease that wreaked havoc on your life for 24 hours. I am just happy to get a note to say say he was sick and now he's back.

Best non-serious: I once had a supervisor's mother-in-law write him a note asking to excuse him from work for a week so that he could get married (to her daughter) a few states away. In the note she wrote that he will be drunk and of no use to me or my business. It made me laugh and since I had already arranged his PTO for the time missed it was fine.

gentleman_bronco

This is fair. Totally fair.

I was assigned to read the Hunger Games SPOILER. And didnt sleep enough to because I was crying over Rue.

My English teacher told that was such a stupid excuse that she had to believe me.

TerracottaSoldier

When your schedule literally blows up.

Giphy

An intern did not show up because he said his car caught on fire. I believed him, but he still sent me a picture of the roaring inferno sitting on the highway.

Aelustelin

More from Trending

Miriam Margolyes
David Levenson/Getty Images

'Harry Potter' Star Miriam Margolyes Offers Mic Drop Explanation For Why Respecting Pronouns Matters

Sometimes it is just that easy to make people happy. This is a lesson learned over and over in our lives, but that's because it's an important one.

Actor Miriam Margolyes shared how she learned to change her behavior to make others happier. Margolyes appeared on The Graham Norton Show recently and brought up a fairly polarizing subject in the United Kingdom: trans people.

Keep Reading Show less
Elon Musk looks on during a public appearance, as the billionaire once again turns a newsroom style decision into a culture-war grievance broadcast to millions on X.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk Cries Racism After Associated Press Explains Why They Capitalize 'Black' But Not 'White'

Elon Musk has spent the year picking fights, from health research funding to imagined productivity crises among federal workers and whether DOGE accomplished anything at all besides leaving chaos in its wake.

His latest grievance, however, is thinly disguised as grammatical. Specifically, he is once again furious that the Associated Press (AP) capitalizes “Black” while keeping “white” lowercase.

Keep Reading Show less
Elon Musk; Yale University School of Engineering and Applied Science
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images; Plexi Images/GHI/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Elon Musk Gets Brutal Wakeup Call After Claiming That Yale's Lack Of Republican Faculty Is 'Outrageous Bigotry'

Elon Musk—who has repeatedly whined about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—took to his social media platform to whine about a lack of conservative faculty at Yale University.

Musk shared data compiled by The Buckley Institute (TBI), a conservative-leaning organization founded at Yale in 2010. TBI found 82.3% of faculty self-identified as Democrats or primarily supporting Democratic candidates, 15% identified as independents, while only 2.3% identified as Republicans.

Keep Reading Show less
Barry Manilow
Mat Hayward/Getty Images

Barry Manilow Speaks Out After Postponing Farewell Tour Dates Due To Lung Cancer Scare

"Looks Like We Made It" singer Barry Manilow is in the process of saying goodbye to the stage and meeting his fans in-person, but he has to press pause for a few months after receiving a jarring diagnosis.

On December 22, 2025, the "Mandy" singer posted on Facebook, explaining that a "cancerous spot" had been discovered on his left lung.

Keep Reading Show less
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers in Avengers: Endgame, the last time audiences saw Captain America before his unexpected return was teased for Avengers: Doomsday.
Disney/Marvel Studios

Marvel Just Confirmed That Chris Evans Is Returning For 'Avengers: Doomsday'—And Fans Have Mixed Feelings

Folks, once again, continuity is more of a suggestion than a rule in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel has officially confirmed that Chris Evans is returning as Steve Rogers in Avengers: Doomsday, and the internet has responded exactly how you’d expect: screaming, celebrating, arguing, and a very justified side-eye toward how Sam Wilson keeps getting treated.

The confirmation comes via a teaser now playing exclusively in theaters ahead of Avatar: Fire and Ash. There is no official online release, despite leaks circulating. If you didn’t catch it on the big screen, Marvel’s response is essentially: sorry, guess you had to be there.

Keep Reading Show less