5 excuses to leave work on a short notice

Regardless of how dedicated you are to your job, you may need to skip work on some days.

There are several reasons you may need a day or two off your busy daily life, from just not feeling like showing up to work, to personal engagements or even genuine emergencies.
Coming up with excuses may be challenging especially if your decision to skip work is a sudden development.

If you feel like just skipping a day at work or you have a personal engagement, here are some excuses that are easily acceptable on short notice.

1. Food poisoning or allergic reaction
When matters of health are at stake, people often become fearful and apprehensive, hence, a food poisoning excuse will fly with your superior at work and get you your free day instantly.

It is advisable to have tiny details like what you ate and when you ate it handy, to make your excuse more believable.

2. Call in sick
This excuse is as old as time but still works like magic. The trick to calling in sick is claiming an illness or sickness that is communicable but not too serious. Communicable because your coworkers and boss do not want to catch it too, then, not too serious because you do not want them worrying or visiting you over a sham sickness.

A favourite illness to claim when calling in sick is the flu. It ticks the right boxes: communicable and not too serious.

3. Road blockage
Due to unforeseen circumstances like accidents or natural disasters like flooding, roads may be temporarily blocked or closed.

So, next time there is heavy rainfall and you do not feel like going to work, you can easily claim that local authorities blocked the road due to flooding and you won’t be coming in or would be working from home.

4. Family Emergency
Home emergencies are valid excuses for missing work or getting days off. You could claim there was a small fire that morning, or your fence collapsed. The list of home emergencies to employ is endless. Be creative!

5. Death of a loved one
This may seem like an extreme excuse when it is not true, but people have been known to fake the death of a non-existent family member to get days off from work.

Bereavement excuses work the best and can get you several days’ break from work. It should be used as a last resort though.

There are myriads of excuses to come up with when trying to skip work, and this list is just to mention a few. Get innovative!