It may not be on your wellness program’s list of healthy foods, but recently cupcakes have been in the news in relation to Human Resources.
In the past year, nearly one third (32 percent) of workers have called in sick when not actually ill, according to a recent CareerBuilder survey. Along the same lines, 30 percent of employees say they’ve gone to work despite actually being sick in order to save their sick days for when they’re feeling well.
While you may think most workers would pretend to be sick while they are playing hooky, there were a few employees who came up with some pretty unique explanations for missing work.
Here are a few real-life excuses that employees used for being absent:
- Employee’s false teeth flew out the window while driving down the highway.
- Employee’s favorite football team lost on Sunday so needed Monday to recover.
- Employee said that someone glued her doors and windows shut so she couldn’t leave the house to come to work.
- Employee claimed a swarm of bees surrounded his vehicle, and he couldn’t make it in.
- Employee got lost and ended up in another state.
- Employee couldn’t decide what to wear.
And lastly, just in time for Thanksgiving, one employee said the chemical in turkey (tryptophan) made him fall asleep, and he missed his shift.
What’s the weirdest excuse you’ve heard an employee use (or you’ve used!) for being late? Tell us below.
Cupcake Confections and Their HR Connections
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It may not be on your wellness program’s list of healthy foods, but recently cupcakes have been in the news in relation to Human Resources.
A lot of people are reporting problems with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). So what do cupcakes have to do with that?
According to the New York Post, several phone numbers listed for ACA enrollment centers by New York State Health Department are actually the numbers of private businesses, including Brooklyn Cupcake, which has gotten hundreds of phone calls since the ACA website has been having problems.
The bakery’s owner is quoted by the Post as saying, “I have nothing to do with this … they are calling my telephone off the hook.” The paper reports that a skin care salon and a pharmacy are also getting errant calls.
A Health Department spokesperson says the phone numbers are being corrected, but the business owners may think the whole situation is half-baked.
And cupcakes are in the news in relation to wrongful termination, according to an article on lawyersandsettlements.com, which says a paralegal was unexpectedly called into her boss’s office at the end of the day and told her position was being eliminated, and she was being terminated. The boss then offered the stunned ex-employee a cupcake—to “celebrate a new change and transition.”
And this was a law firm. And the cupcake may have been a leftover from a colleague’s birthday celebration!
Of course, these weren’t the only issues in the situation, but the cupcake was certainly the icing on the top of the paralegal’s complaints for a potential lawsuit.
These cupcake tales remind your SBT editors of a recent story about a worker who gave his employer notice on a cake—perhaps a cupcake was too small.