Russians Make up Creative Excuses for Being Late to Work

VLADIVOSTOK. December 21. VOSTOK-MEDIA – The research center of the on-line recruitment website SuperJob.ru has drawn up a list of the most popular excuses for being late to work, based on a recent poll of 400 Russian company directors and heads of organizations.

The poll revealed that the most popular excuse for being tardy to office, according to the employers, is getting up late (15 %): “An employee confused day with night, overslept and thus failed to arrive in time”; “An employee overslept and failed to arrive in time to work, because he had had a quarrel with his mother and been away from home overnight without batting an eyelid”.

The second popular excuse is a traffic jam (10 %): “An employee lives near his job. When asked about being late, the employee gave an excuse of traffic jams. ”

According to the poll, 7 % of employees are often getting late to work due to various diseases r because of feeling sick. Such excuses as friction at home (“Yesterday, my wife hid my shoes to keep me from going to the garage with my friends. Early in the morning she forgot to give them back to me and I had to call her and search the shoes in the house.”), forgetfulness (“I’ve thought today is my day off.”) and problems with pets (“The tortoise has caught cold. It was coughing all night long and I slept very badly.”)

Less popular excuses are problems with transport (4 %): "I went fishing last Sunday and get my car drowned in the river somehow. I had to walk to the city". The same percentage of respondents failed to make up an excuse saying something like “Things turned like that” or “I don’t know. It just happened”.

The least popular excuses are alcohol drinking, problem with alarm clock, getting stuck in an elevator and bad weather.

Some employees gave such unusual excuses for being late to work as “I was kidnapped by UFO”, “Ive forgotten my ID at home”, “I got no money for the bus” and “I’ve gone astray”.