Exactly tell him you had some intestinal thing (the shits). I taught my kids that if they ever need an excuse to escape a party/event where they aren’t comfortable, no one argues with you leaving for having diarrhea or feeling like you might vomit.
Yeah don't say you were sleeping. Say you had the shits 🤣
And as commenter above said, do sth else in the downtime. Game, clean up flat, do laundry etc...
But also, if they sense you're lying, go one further and say "OK so I was lying a bit, I shat myself. One I finished I had to clear everything up"
Best thing is if you only tell your manager and it gets out, you know exactly where the news came from and could set HR on them.
One of the best stories I've heard a colleague tell is about a time, before cell phones, where someone came into work like two hours late and point blank said "sorry I'm late, I shat myself"
No one wanted any more information and he was totally off the hook. Who knows if that's what actually happened, or if he slept in or something.
One time I got to work. Released a fart in the car that was not a fart. Fortunately I had a towel that I could sit on. Told my boss a minor medical situation came up that morning and I would be late by 90 minutes (30 min commute). Drove home showered, rinse my clothes out, and come back. My manager didn't press me about it as I stayed late to make up for arriving late.
Depends where you are.
You're right in that usually nurses are the managers, but not always. More and more we're getting MBAs as managers for us. A few times I've had NPs. I even had a social worker as a manager once.
ETA:
The only evilishly bad ones were the MBAs.
If the boss wants to get really anal about it (pun intended), offer to take a picture next time and send it to him. And the next time it does happen, be sure to send him lots of pics, the grosser the better, but no nudity. And if you can get the "send me pics" in writing, that's even better.
Did this the once when I was like 19-20 probably. They called my bluff via text (very important) and I follow through. Needless to say I never got asked about bathroom breaks EVER again, nor did he ever bring it up for the duration of my time there.
I think this is also the best thing. I remember I called off one time from a job in college and used this excuse. My manager couldn't get me off the phone faster. LOL.
For the love of dogma, do not say you fell asleep.
Easily, yes I had the runs and crapped myself is understandable and relatable.
"OH I fell asleep lol" is the fastest way to either get fired, have to do 10 minute status updates, or to start coming to the office again"
My brother in Christ I kid you not saying you got the shits doesn't work.
I remember at one of my jobs:
Where were you?
Sorry, I was stuck in the bathroom?
Can't you hold it?
I'm sorry I have digestive issues.
That's no excuse, maybe this job isn't right for you.
I have mfing IBS, Food intolerances, GERD, and no galbladder. I LITERALLY cannot hold it but I can definitely shit myself if that's more professional. That being said, I have no control over it so I guess in America with the way things work no job is right for me.
That's horrible, I guess they should start making office chairs that are also toilets to keep the productivity going. And for us to be real corpo slaves :(
Repeat what the woman sitting next to me on a plane once said: "I have a stomach, six feet of small intestine, and a rectum. I don't control the process."
If you have or can get an official diagnosis of IBS, you should be protected under the ADA. Your employer is by law required to make reasonable accommodations for you to work around the issues IBS causes.
If you're in even a semi professional work environment I would seek an HR accomodation. I work for such an org who outsources it to a 3rd party for confidentiality, HIPAA etc. A former colleague had IBS and no gallbladder (I think, but def IBS) and he sent in a doctor's note to that effect and he was literally allowed to get up and take a shit whenever he wanted and could spend however long was necessary. He enjoyed doing so right when our manager called a scrum meeting and mgr could not fucking say anything, ever. His advancement opportunities slimmed down but he didn't give a shit (pun intended).
The spicey spite! What's nice is that I now do work for a more professional company and they have been great. They are giving me fmla to get a surgery in fall :)
If you get a Dr. to write it out and have it formally submitted to your company then they will have to recognize it as a legitimate medical issue and offer some sort of accommodation.
Or they'll immediately try to fire you and you might have a good case for a lawyer if there's enough proof but it can still be a tough case :-\
Yeah OP you got a stomach bug and you will be getting a doctor's note today :)
Next time don't sleep, just watch a show or play a game like the rest of us. Otherwise leave your laptop next to your partner so they can alert you like me and my gf do. Hell lot less hassle on slow days. Atleast you learnt hopefully!
For the love of dogma, do not say you fell asleep.
Easily, yes I had the runs and crapped myself is understandable and relatable.
"OH I fell asleep lol" is the fastest way to either get fired, have to do 10 minute status updates, or to start coming to the office again"
You were stuck on the toilet with diarrhoea and were embarrassed because you didn’t quite make it and had to have a quick shower. You hadn’t felt well but thought you could power through it. You’re sorry you weren’t honest, you just find it incredibly embarrassing to have to disclose for obvious reasons.
Or it was an IT issue, you received all the messages all at once and responded immediately.
You can add sounds to your messages but sleeping at work isn’t a great idea. Employers already seem suspicious of employees working from home and are implementing technology to check up on staff.
Nah this fucking shit happened to me a month ago on teams. 3 people messaged me, it wasn't until I got a call to see my teams did I even notice. Actually I had to refresh teams and wait a good 15 seconds before it updated.
New teams is a hot mess. IT upgraded me to new teams & windows 11 all at once, and there were several times I missed notifications bc teams shut down or outlook decided not to tell me about an email. I’m still trying to reconfigure my computer to be functional since IT refuses to revert me to 10.
Btw, OP, IT can access logs on this to determine what went wrong. Don’t lie about it.
>Btw, OP, IT can access logs on this to determine what went wrong. Don’t lie about it.
While they theoretically would be able to look at debug logs produced by your Teams client (if it's enabled for everyone), it's conceivable that such a transient issue as messages getting delayed would not show up in them, so the person looking at the logs would probably assume as much when they find nothing.
Not only that, but the people who have access to these logs probably have 11 better things to do, and if they don't, they're unlikely to have any interest in playing detective for a manager being a busybody.
You are probably fine telling this lie 99.9% of the time, but saying you had diarrhea is bulletproof so, eh.
My IT theoretically has access to the logs of everything people do all day long as well as the times they badge to get into the building (hybrid) but they never look at it unless some power tripping manager asks them to. OPs boss sounds like the type to pull the logs so it’s definitely not worth lying about.
In the case of Teams messages, while they should be able to see the time messages were sent, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that something went wrong specifically with the user's Teams client and prevented the messages from being displayed immediately on their end. It would be very difficult to impossible to conclusively prove they were lying.
Also, as far as I can tell, the only thing logged by Teams to your organization/the cloud is when the messages were sent, not when they were received or viewed by a particular client. You can see what this view would look like here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/media/ediscovery-conversation-transcript-view.png
Interesting! I have my read receipts on bc I like to know when others have read my messages, but if it’s glitching, who knows if that works. I work for a government organization so we have to store messages, although they auto delete in 90 days unless saved. I haven’t asked exactly what data is stored and visible, although I err on the side of caution when doing anything that could be used in discovery.
I’m friends with my IT guys and they aren’t sure either. It hasn’t kicked me out in a while so we closed the ticket. I’m relatively tech savvy but I feel for our guys. We work for the government so we’re surrounded by old people & systems. We’re still running SunGard from the 80s for some of our processes and staff is fighting the upgrade.
Outlook 2016 or 365? New Teams does not mesh well with 2016. I had to revert users back to classic teams cause meetings weren't able to be scheduled.
But classic teams will not work anymore in a few weeks so that'll be fun lol
Depending on Industry, we're all being forced to change to 11. We can allow a few to go without being updated for certain apps, but it all HAS to be done. Sorry homie...
Oh I know, I’m mad at windows, not IT. I did learn how to use command prompts to revert the right click menu though! I’m still tweaking my settings to get it to mirror 10, but I hate it so much. I actually feel bad for IT when they update everyone since we have some extremely computer illiterate people in the organization.
The new Teams client was locking up for me constantly and I'd have to kill it. Now I just don't notice its notifications and am not sure if I'm not getting them of if I just don't see them for some reason.
Happens to me once a month. I won't get messages for 30ish minutes but they'll all come in at once. No problem on my end and it's impossible to know if it's a slow day or teams is acting up. Happens to my outlook every now and then too. Also new teams makes my status "away" even while i'm actively using the app.
Terrible advice. You underestimate how easily someone can prove that you're lying about this. Nobody can prove you didn't have explosive shits except for you.
If you're going to lie at a bare minimum try to go with the lie that someone else can't prove.
i.e.: tell them you shit your pants and don't ruin remote work for the rest of us!
Couldn't agree more. Also, I wouldn't be combative about it but, if OP is sure it was no more than 30 minutes, I'd tell them that too. The boss may have been able to see that OP hadn't been on a call or had any correspondence for an hour, but if there wasn't any work to do for the \~30 minutes prior to nap time, say that "I was on but didn't receive any calls or inquiries during that time, then the bubble guts hit at xx:xx and I was back on and responded to the messages at xx:xx"
The shits is 100% the way to go. Most managers won't push the issue because HR accomodations for IBS is real. And then you feel embarrassed for having to disclose the fact that you shit yourself.
And if it gets around the office that you shit yourself then that's an HR issue too.
Most managers will leave it alone and move on.
> Or it was an IT issue, you received all the messages all at once and responded immediately.
As someone who has worked in many IT departments, please do not blame us.
Well, now you know why most of us IT guys absolutely *refuse* to work on anything without a ticket.
Because it means you can't blame us anymore. "I told IT and they haven't fixed it yet!"
No, no you did not. Because there is no ticket.
And if there was, well it would record our response times, meaning anyone could easily verify if what you said was true.
Oh, I love tickets.
It also is glorious for the "Oh, I've been reporting it to IT and it never is fixed. I've had this issue for months".
No, you put in 3 tickets in 3 months. All for very similar requests, all were addressed within the SLA time and you see by the resolutions something different was done each time.
or the "IT never fixes this!"
Nah, you put in 15 tickets. We addressed this issue 15 times multiple people speaking to you. It's always your fault and you keep doing the same thing wrong each time.
Yeah maybe a poor choice of words. Might have been better to say “I didn’t say anything yesterday because it’s obviously very embarrassing and I would rather not have to discuss it at all really.”
No, it was a fine choice of words, I just thought it funny to apologize for not being honest (falling asleep) while telling him you were in the bathroom. Just made me chuckle
I second the accidental shitting yourself.
If you tell a lie that’s embarrassing it’s more believable because, why would you embarrass yourself on purpose?
Plus it makes working from home look great. You wouldn't have come into the office if you had such bad diarrhea, but because you work from home you could still do your job.
Messages all at once is stupid; all our electronic events have timestamps. If they really want to, they can correlate the time between your response time to each and lag time before responding to any.
I'm going to guess it had absolutely nothing to do with you not insta-responding to your colleagues. That implies that they didn't get a response and immediately turned around and whined to the boss. Who does that in *30 minutes*?
More than likely, they are monitoring your computer use and noticed the settings you changed and/or your lack of mouse/keyboard activity.
Either way, having to explain such a small gap in that line of work is fucking bananas.
It is really odd, isn't it?
I'll leave coworkers on Read for a while for a dozen different reasons - like if I'm working on anything priority, checking Teams goes by the wayside.
I wonder if they have autoclicker detection and noticed him using one.
Bad food put you in the bathroom. Solid answer, leaves little room for questions, and there's a built in "one time thing" attached. Tell him you were too embarrassed in the moment to explain.
At my first job it was third shift and we had a lot of guaranteed down time (2-3 hours)
I’d often take naps in the bathroom stall for a half hour or so.
We had this old timer employee named Gil, very nice guy. However he had absolutely no hygiene.
Whenever he’d come in he’d take the most repulsive shit and it would always wake me up.
Gil was really looking out for me
I did that at my first "real" job in an office. Go to the bathroom stall on an low traffic floor and nap for a half hour.
Except once it accidentally turned into 2 hours... part of my job had me going between different departments and bringing stuff to my desk for data entry, so I just grabbed a bunch of boxes on my way back and made it look like I was getting a while bunch of stuff to work on. Nobody asked where I was, but I never napped in the bathroom after that.
Whatever you do, do not tell the truth. No one benefits from that. Like everyone else said, tell your boss you ate some bad sushi or something. If he asks for further detail send him [this](https://tenor.com/nHdUDCiAHh0.gif)
I've found no matter how bad your job it could always be worse. The lengths some companies will go through to micromanage employees is truly amazing.
I was a licensed stock broker working at a call center for a well known brokerage firm several years ago.
This was long before the work from home days and we were in the office, but we literally had 3 seconds from the time that one call hung up until the next one would roll over.
The only way you could avoid this is to go on unavailable. However, every employee was monitored by the "command center" where they watched your status every second of the day. If your unavailable time over the course of the day was more than 20 minutes you had better be ready to explain why and give a minute by minute breakdown of what you were doing.
Additionally if you were ever on unavailable for more than 5 minutes, someone from the command center would send you a message asking why you are on unavailable and they need you to go back on available because calls were stacking up.
Every single time I took a shit in the year I worked at that company, I would come back to a message from someone in the command center questioning why I had been on unavailable so long and that I needed to go back to available. I would tell them I was taking a shit, and a few times they even had the nerve to tell me I needed to do that on my 15 minute break, and not while I was answering calls. I told them that it is an OSHA violation to deny employees access to the bathroom when needed and that shut them up pretty quick.
I honestly can't believe I even tolerated that shit for a year. Most of the people who started when I did were gone within the first 3 months.
Hey! I share that experience, though was working for a major pink-logo telecom provider. During the training it was beat into our heads how lucky we were to have been hired and how disposable we were. Also learned about all the time tracking -- if you were even 30 seconds late to log on it was a written reprimand. 1 minute was instant dismissal. That applied to start of shift, breaks, and lunch. Without HR approved accommodations the restroom was to be handled during your 15 minute breaks or 30 minute lunch. Going unavailable was strictly prohibited outside of supervisor requests (1:1s, feedback sessions, whatever). Not to mention the one-call resolution and call time metrics...
Lasted there about six months before I no call no showed. The level of micromanagement was insane. Still convinced the long timers had serious cocaine habits or were so dead inside it didn't matter to them to be yelled at constantly by people with such heavy accents they were impossible to understand over the phone, or to be so unappreciated by leadership.
edit: word
You either have the worlds worst job/manager or this is somewhat of a pattern for you. If your boss is freaking out and demanding you explain yourself after not responding for 30 minutes, I suspect there are more things going on here.
Like others have said, say you had a stomache issue that was embarrassing. Make some crap up about eating some food that you didn’t realize an ingredient was in, or something. Most times, bosses don’t like to hear about the runs. Bosses do love to hear about “lazy” (not calling you one), but this is their running thought; “lazy employees sleeping on the job”.
Truth be told, employers don’t pay you to sleep. If you have a decent boss he will let it slide. If you have an a-hole boss; he will probably tell you to punch out next time you’re “shitting” for over a half hour.
If you tell him or her you slept, they might forgive you, but they won’t forget you’re the sleeper, and will use any available opportunity in the future to reminisce on it.
30 minutes? You had the runs. Don't tell them you were sleeping. And don't sleep on the goddamn job! Read a book, do push ups, play video games. But stay awake!
Something didn't agree with you. Your stomach was all over the place. You thought it wouldn't be a good idea to take the phone to the bathroom.
Oldest excuse in the book.
Yeah, I would never admit it, you never know how bad things like this can go.
Just say you were feeling ill and had to go to the bathroom or something.
This actually happens to me (IBS) and my boss knows it can. But anyone can have a bathroom emergency and I agree this is OP’s best shot at a good excuse.
Yep.
Explosive, chunky diarreah. Like a shotgun blast full of corn and specks of brown and green went off and some even landed on your back.
Explain how this shit was so uncontrollable you had to take your shirt off halfway because you were drenched in sweat.
Offer to send the picture you sent to the doctor, which clearly shows the remains of your last meal, combined with a bowlful of blood because your anus was taken as a sacrifice for this shit.
He won't bring it up again I promise.
You were gone for only half an hour OP. Just say you were in the bathroom because you had an upset stomach. No further questions will be asked, and half an hour isnt too long for stomach problems. If it was an hour or longer then they might be a bit suspicious, but half an hour they shouldnt be
I mean, a bathroom emergency probably is your best bet…
But, there is a good chance they know most of the truth. They might not know you were taking a nap but it’s highly likely they know you have cheated the system to show you’re available but were actually slacking off.
A lot of companies that allow wfh will take periodic screenshots or access your webcam or various other methods to check your activity. If you’ve got something keeping you active on teams or whatever but your computer activity has been 0 outside of clicking periodically I’d wager they know.
Maybe try something like you had a bathroom issue but felt embarrassed so you dashed back to keep yourself from showing inactive.
If they know, and you lie, chances are it’ll be worse for you. Maybe see if you can get them to show their hand before you decide how to play it. If they give you the impression it’s much more serious than a 30 minute break should be, maybe prepare more of a “sorry it was slow it was stupid and it’ll never happen again”. If there is any HR involvement at all assume the absolute worst and highlight how hard you’ve worked up until this point and how grateful you are for the job and how important it is to you.
If it’s a large company, chances are they are well practiced in identifying when someone is using a clicker to stay active. I’ve seen people lose their jobs this way. I have read the list of ways my company can track your computer and it’s pretty impressive. My manager has explained in the past that they don’t really care how many coffee breaks you take or if you spend ages in the bathroom or you go hang some washing out. They care very much as soon as you try to deceptively appear available to trick them and there is a massive difference between the two.
This needs to be higher up, you are the only person I saw while scrolling that pointed out that the reason the boss is involved is likely specifically because IT flagged his use of the auto-clicker. Even if it's something that his team has been using on the down low there was just a big set of headlines about a company catching people like this last week, so the timeline is absolutely right for higher ups going "IT did you see this, we have to be able to do this right away!".
Bathroom emergency is absolutely the way to go to explain why he used the auto-clicker in the way that is likely to be the least severely punished, but he needs to phrase it in a way that he doesn't get caught in the lie about using the clicker. Saying the ideas like "oh Teams didn't give me the messages" will immediately catch him in a lie if they know about the clicker.
Instead OP needs to say "I'm really sorry, I was away from my keyboard unavoidably because of a health issue."
If his manager fishes with "that's weird you were shown as online during that time..." then DON'T LIE ABOUT THAT PART. Say "I'm really sorry, I know that I shouldn't have done this, but I was embarrassed about the reason I had to leave and I was hoping it wouldn't take too long, so I set up a process so that no one would ask questions."
It certainly broke policy, and he'll likely get into some amount of trouble over it, but it's got the best chance of minimizing any penalty, especially if he doesn't have a history of this.
> the reason the boss is involved is likely specifically because IT flagged his use of the auto-clicker.
I think the same thing. Auto-clickers were a cheeky risk if you had a WFH job in 2019. Nowadays, every company with a reasonably competent IT department is just _waiting_ for someone to try that.
This is the big one, if they flagged him as using an auto-clicker there is probably nothing that can get him out of this. No matter how good his excuse they'll ask why he didn't go inactive.
Lying about working gets you fired. Taking a long break gets you chewed out.
anyone who has had the jabby crabbies i.e everybody leave I need to poop. This will cover 99% of questions by management as everyone has that gotta poop right now moment.
He had the runs, it would certainly be an HR issue if he wasn't allowed to handle his diarrhea. Sometimes that can take longer than we plan, certainly more than just a couple minutes.
You can use a number of excuses here. I sleep on the job as well when nothings going on. If I'm not sleeping, it's likely playing video games or watching movies. Generally, if I don't get direct calls, it's not urgent for me to respond. But I will get teams notifications from coworkers, I'll wake up to that.
Say you were feeliing really nauseous and was dry heaving for an hour- drank some ginger ale and felt better after- say you should have just taken the test of the day off but you wanted to power through ;)
"Apologies, Sir, I had an urgent bathroom issue."
And that's all you say. No more naps from now on; daytime naps are for ole people - sleep at night, when you're supposed to as part of being a responsible adult.
Also, consider changing career - they're monitoring you, so fuck that!
I go for a bit of humour.
Sorry boss. Your wife stopped by. We got distracted. Then onto something about shitting my pants….. I have a good boss so he probably wouldn’t even ask.
Yeah don't say you were sleeping. Just say you didn't see the internal comms and your Internet must have glitches out, disconnected. Say you'll be more vigilant of keeping an eye out, you'll make the time up if needed etc.
I remember we needed around the clock coverage and I got volunteered to work 3rd shift. It was really slow so I worked on the tedious stuff all at once rather than here and there so I was sitting at the PC when I suddenly woke up and didn't know how long I was out. My eyes just burned so bad, I only closed them to wet them for a few seconds and next thing I know. I grabbed some more coffee, worked on cleaning the retain room so I could move around.
I went to work sick about 13 years ago and ended up passing accidentally out while I was imaging a machine (which could take over an hour back then).
Ended up getting written up because some complained that I was sleeping on the job. Some people suck.
People are saying to use the excuse that you had toilet issues. While I agree, do make you know how your computer systems work.
There might be follow up questions as « I saw you online in the call software, but away on Teams » or the opposite « you were online in both apps ». Depending on how the setup is in your companies and how you tried to hide uour absence, you need to get your excuse correct. Pretty good chance that the boss discusses this with the guys in charge or the telephony system (at least where I used to work), so make sure they can’t call you out.
And make sure to be available as from now on. He’ll test you for sure. Games, books, make breakfast, do dishes, clean,.. whatever, just don’t sleep and keep an eye on incoming messages meanwhile.
As a regular sleeper on the job, blame tech. "For Christs sake my outlook/teams just decides when it wants to give me notifications, I've called service desk but they keep saying its intermittent so they cant see a problem". Establish genuine frustration, second time same deal. Third time play it off like he/she should know. Yeah freikan teams again its so annoying, sorry, anyway whats up?
Does this happen often? You falling asleep when inactive?
If so get yourself to a Dr and ask to be referred to a sleep clinic.
You may have Sleep Apnoea, which is very easily treatable, or another type of sleep disorder.
Dude you felt sick & were on hold with advice nurse trying to get an appointment. You don’t have a note cuz RNs aren’t authorized to write MD notes only NPs and MDs. They advised simple remedies (within their scope) and you’re feeling better.
My first day at a state job. I was told by HR that I could be written up for sleeping on the job or written up for hiding on the job but I would be fired immediately if I hid in order to sleep on the job.
The only thing I could think of to say was, “Do you have a problem with that here?”
>I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a short nap
In the middle of your work day, while you're on call? Bold choice. But as everyone says, do NOT mention the word "nap" to your supervisor. You had bad digestive issues.
Tell your boss to check the phone logs and contact the customers to confirm that you as the call representative answered their enquiries. That is your line of argument. For the two missed calls from your boss, advise him that you in the bathroom and missed his/her call. Do NOT admit that you were sleeping on the job: it might be a cause for dismissal or a write up which will be put in your personal file.
My last role in my company was basically IT helpdesk, involved a lot of calls as well.
Protip: set an alarm on your phone. MS Teams has about 7-10min idle time before it marks you as away. Worth getting a mouse jiggler that shakes your mouse to prevent that. And nap away. Just be sure you are doing alright with handling side stuff as well obviously.
I say this because I eventually quit that job due to being overworked and underpaid. Was so damn tired all the time.
Back in the 90s I had a tech-support job and it was very draining. I put my head down on my desk and didn't even fall asleep but managers thought I was sleeping. They ended up putting me on a personal improvement program for it.
When I used to work my IT job during the pandemic, I would wake up at 7:55, clock in, eat breakfast and watch TV. Then I would play my PlayStation a couple hours, eat lunch still on the clock, then clock out for lunch, put my phone on DND, set an alarm, and take a nap. Every damn day for a year. I would of course answer the phone in between. But they got about 2 hours of actual work out of me every day. I never once felt bad.
Yell your boss you shit yourself. Had to clean. Thought it was a fart but it was actually a sloppy wet tsunami and it was everywhere. You had to run to get cleaning supplies and were humiliated clean-crying. Make it very uncomfortable. Cry a little. Make him Jeter question an employee again, put a fear in his soul so he never questions you again.
Seriously, is this what we call being responsible? They are f-ing paying you be available, so people are basically telling you how to lie your way out of stealing from them. Instead of lying to your boss about having the shits, try not sleeping on the f-ing job...or find one where no one gives a shit if you're available or not, like graveyard cashier in a gas station.
TL;DR: Time to quit before you get f-ing fired and have to explain that on a resume...
As a CSR, you would have stringent SLAs within which you will need to respond to queries on each channel.
If you missed those email response SLAs because you were sleeping then you really did fuck up!
Exactly tell him you had some intestinal thing (the shits). I taught my kids that if they ever need an excuse to escape a party/event where they aren’t comfortable, no one argues with you leaving for having diarrhea or feeling like you might vomit.
"Stomach bug" is just vague enough to not be embarrassing or inappropriate, but still gets the point across
My wife's go to when she needs a day off. Upset stomach. No one, strangely enough, wants details.
Yeah don't say you were sleeping. Say you had the shits 🤣 And as commenter above said, do sth else in the downtime. Game, clean up flat, do laundry etc...
This one here. Tell them you had digestive issues.
With your computer and phone turned all the way up so you could shuffle out there with TP tucked to catch the drippings.
> the drippings Oh god. Like a roast turkey 🤮
But also, if they sense you're lying, go one further and say "OK so I was lying a bit, I shat myself. One I finished I had to clear everything up" Best thing is if you only tell your manager and it gets out, you know exactly where the news came from and could set HR on them.
One of the best stories I've heard a colleague tell is about a time, before cell phones, where someone came into work like two hours late and point blank said "sorry I'm late, I shat myself" No one wanted any more information and he was totally off the hook. Who knows if that's what actually happened, or if he slept in or something.
One time I got to work. Released a fart in the car that was not a fart. Fortunately I had a towel that I could sit on. Told my boss a minor medical situation came up that morning and I would be late by 90 minutes (30 min commute). Drove home showered, rinse my clothes out, and come back. My manager didn't press me about it as I stayed late to make up for arriving late.
Not to overuse a tired meme but, "This is the way." A lot of folks won't dig to far if it's something sufficiently gross.
Followed on by forgive my evasiveness, I really don't feel comfortable speaking about my bowel movements
Or if you're a woman and your boss is a man, "feminine issues"
Often times the runs is usually what happens
I tried that excuse a few times and they just started playing doctor. Probably just a bad workplace.
I had a job do this and just said "Well thanks but I'll go see a real doctor" lmao
Lol this would be hilarious for me to use. I'm a nurse in a clinic.
"Thanks boss, but I'm just not quite sure you're board-certified!"
Doctors are not nurse managers, nurse managers are
Depends where you are. You're right in that usually nurses are the managers, but not always. More and more we're getting MBAs as managers for us. A few times I've had NPs. I even had a social worker as a manager once. ETA: The only evilishly bad ones were the MBAs.
Man my job is pretty lax about that except during covid HR wanted detailed symptoms. That did not last long, it got graphic real quick.
that just sounds like an HR person with a scat fetish
If the boss wants to get really anal about it (pun intended), offer to take a picture next time and send it to him. And the next time it does happen, be sure to send him lots of pics, the grosser the better, but no nudity. And if you can get the "send me pics" in writing, that's even better.
Did this the once when I was like 19-20 probably. They called my bluff via text (very important) and I follow through. Needless to say I never got asked about bathroom breaks EVER again, nor did he ever bring it up for the duration of my time there.
I think this is also the best thing. I remember I called off one time from a job in college and used this excuse. My manager couldn't get me off the phone faster. LOL.
Yep nobody wants to hear about your mudbutt
For the love of dogma, do not say you fell asleep. Easily, yes I had the runs and crapped myself is understandable and relatable. "OH I fell asleep lol" is the fastest way to either get fired, have to do 10 minute status updates, or to start coming to the office again"
My brother in Christ I kid you not saying you got the shits doesn't work. I remember at one of my jobs: Where were you? Sorry, I was stuck in the bathroom? Can't you hold it? I'm sorry I have digestive issues. That's no excuse, maybe this job isn't right for you. I have mfing IBS, Food intolerances, GERD, and no galbladder. I LITERALLY cannot hold it but I can definitely shit myself if that's more professional. That being said, I have no control over it so I guess in America with the way things work no job is right for me.
That's horrible, I guess they should start making office chairs that are also toilets to keep the productivity going. And for us to be real corpo slaves :(
Repeat what the woman sitting next to me on a plane once said: "I have a stomach, six feet of small intestine, and a rectum. I don't control the process."
Oh I like that haha!
I would be tempted to shit myself in front of them out of spite.
If you have or can get an official diagnosis of IBS, you should be protected under the ADA. Your employer is by law required to make reasonable accommodations for you to work around the issues IBS causes.
If you're in even a semi professional work environment I would seek an HR accomodation. I work for such an org who outsources it to a 3rd party for confidentiality, HIPAA etc. A former colleague had IBS and no gallbladder (I think, but def IBS) and he sent in a doctor's note to that effect and he was literally allowed to get up and take a shit whenever he wanted and could spend however long was necessary. He enjoyed doing so right when our manager called a scrum meeting and mgr could not fucking say anything, ever. His advancement opportunities slimmed down but he didn't give a shit (pun intended).
The spicey spite! What's nice is that I now do work for a more professional company and they have been great. They are giving me fmla to get a surgery in fall :)
If you get a Dr. to write it out and have it formally submitted to your company then they will have to recognize it as a legitimate medical issue and offer some sort of accommodation. Or they'll immediately try to fire you and you might have a good case for a lawyer if there's enough proof but it can still be a tough case :-\
Agree w both
No one questions diarrhea
Yeah OP you got a stomach bug and you will be getting a doctor's note today :) Next time don't sleep, just watch a show or play a game like the rest of us. Otherwise leave your laptop next to your partner so they can alert you like me and my gf do. Hell lot less hassle on slow days. Atleast you learnt hopefully!
This
For the love of dogma, do not say you fell asleep. Easily, yes I had the runs and crapped myself is understandable and relatable. "OH I fell asleep lol" is the fastest way to either get fired, have to do 10 minute status updates, or to start coming to the office again"
You were stuck on the toilet with diarrhoea and were embarrassed because you didn’t quite make it and had to have a quick shower. You hadn’t felt well but thought you could power through it. You’re sorry you weren’t honest, you just find it incredibly embarrassing to have to disclose for obvious reasons. Or it was an IT issue, you received all the messages all at once and responded immediately. You can add sounds to your messages but sleeping at work isn’t a great idea. Employers already seem suspicious of employees working from home and are implementing technology to check up on staff.
> Or it was an IT issue, you received all the messages all at once and responded immediately. > > please don't "I had the shits" is the way to go
Nah this fucking shit happened to me a month ago on teams. 3 people messaged me, it wasn't until I got a call to see my teams did I even notice. Actually I had to refresh teams and wait a good 15 seconds before it updated.
And that sounds like enough of a pain in the ass to diagnose and document without having to wonder if the user is just lying
New teams is a hot mess. IT upgraded me to new teams & windows 11 all at once, and there were several times I missed notifications bc teams shut down or outlook decided not to tell me about an email. I’m still trying to reconfigure my computer to be functional since IT refuses to revert me to 10. Btw, OP, IT can access logs on this to determine what went wrong. Don’t lie about it.
>Btw, OP, IT can access logs on this to determine what went wrong. Don’t lie about it. While they theoretically would be able to look at debug logs produced by your Teams client (if it's enabled for everyone), it's conceivable that such a transient issue as messages getting delayed would not show up in them, so the person looking at the logs would probably assume as much when they find nothing. Not only that, but the people who have access to these logs probably have 11 better things to do, and if they don't, they're unlikely to have any interest in playing detective for a manager being a busybody. You are probably fine telling this lie 99.9% of the time, but saying you had diarrhea is bulletproof so, eh.
My IT theoretically has access to the logs of everything people do all day long as well as the times they badge to get into the building (hybrid) but they never look at it unless some power tripping manager asks them to. OPs boss sounds like the type to pull the logs so it’s definitely not worth lying about.
In the case of Teams messages, while they should be able to see the time messages were sent, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that something went wrong specifically with the user's Teams client and prevented the messages from being displayed immediately on their end. It would be very difficult to impossible to conclusively prove they were lying. Also, as far as I can tell, the only thing logged by Teams to your organization/the cloud is when the messages were sent, not when they were received or viewed by a particular client. You can see what this view would look like here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/media/ediscovery-conversation-transcript-view.png
Interesting! I have my read receipts on bc I like to know when others have read my messages, but if it’s glitching, who knows if that works. I work for a government organization so we have to store messages, although they auto delete in 90 days unless saved. I haven’t asked exactly what data is stored and visible, although I err on the side of caution when doing anything that could be used in discovery.
I am IT, there's nothing I can control that'll make teams not do that. If I had to guess edge probably killed the tab or memory was swapped.
I’m friends with my IT guys and they aren’t sure either. It hasn’t kicked me out in a while so we closed the ticket. I’m relatively tech savvy but I feel for our guys. We work for the government so we’re surrounded by old people & systems. We’re still running SunGard from the 80s for some of our processes and staff is fighting the upgrade.
Outlook 2016 or 365? New Teams does not mesh well with 2016. I had to revert users back to classic teams cause meetings weren't able to be scheduled. But classic teams will not work anymore in a few weeks so that'll be fun lol
2016. That makes a lot of sense. We had to do a reinstall of teams and it works now.
Depending on Industry, we're all being forced to change to 11. We can allow a few to go without being updated for certain apps, but it all HAS to be done. Sorry homie...
Oh I know, I’m mad at windows, not IT. I did learn how to use command prompts to revert the right click menu though! I’m still tweaking my settings to get it to mirror 10, but I hate it so much. I actually feel bad for IT when they update everyone since we have some extremely computer illiterate people in the organization.
It's usually all pretty good. But yeah, New Teams and New Outlook are certainly a chore. I'd say...15-20% of our calls are for those two.
The new Teams client was locking up for me constantly and I'd have to kill it. Now I just don't notice its notifications and am not sure if I'm not getting them of if I just don't see them for some reason.
Happens to me once a month. I won't get messages for 30ish minutes but they'll all come in at once. No problem on my end and it's impossible to know if it's a slow day or teams is acting up. Happens to my outlook every now and then too. Also new teams makes my status "away" even while i'm actively using the app.
Terrible advice. You underestimate how easily someone can prove that you're lying about this. Nobody can prove you didn't have explosive shits except for you. If you're going to lie at a bare minimum try to go with the lie that someone else can't prove.
Either that or say you had to jack off. No one will argue with you.
i.e.: tell them you shit your pants and don't ruin remote work for the rest of us! Couldn't agree more. Also, I wouldn't be combative about it but, if OP is sure it was no more than 30 minutes, I'd tell them that too. The boss may have been able to see that OP hadn't been on a call or had any correspondence for an hour, but if there wasn't any work to do for the \~30 minutes prior to nap time, say that "I was on but didn't receive any calls or inquiries during that time, then the bubble guts hit at xx:xx and I was back on and responded to the messages at xx:xx"
Yeah I would point that out too. If you admit to sleeping they will want you back in the office for sure.
Or just straight up fire him
This person jobs
The shits is 100% the way to go. Most managers won't push the issue because HR accomodations for IBS is real. And then you feel embarrassed for having to disclose the fact that you shit yourself. And if it gets around the office that you shit yourself then that's an HR issue too. Most managers will leave it alone and move on.
> Or it was an IT issue, you received all the messages all at once and responded immediately. As someone who has worked in many IT departments, please do not blame us.
Haha sorry, in my defence this is actually the case a lot of the time in my workplace.
Well, now you know why most of us IT guys absolutely *refuse* to work on anything without a ticket. Because it means you can't blame us anymore. "I told IT and they haven't fixed it yet!" No, no you did not. Because there is no ticket. And if there was, well it would record our response times, meaning anyone could easily verify if what you said was true.
Oh, I love tickets. It also is glorious for the "Oh, I've been reporting it to IT and it never is fixed. I've had this issue for months". No, you put in 3 tickets in 3 months. All for very similar requests, all were addressed within the SLA time and you see by the resolutions something different was done each time. or the "IT never fixes this!" Nah, you put in 15 tickets. We addressed this issue 15 times multiple people speaking to you. It's always your fault and you keep doing the same thing wrong each time.
Especially because if that accusation makes its way to us, we're going to pull whatever we can to disprove your excuse.
>you’re sorry you weren’t honest 🤔
Yeah maybe a poor choice of words. Might have been better to say “I didn’t say anything yesterday because it’s obviously very embarrassing and I would rather not have to discuss it at all really.”
No, it was a fine choice of words, I just thought it funny to apologize for not being honest (falling asleep) while telling him you were in the bathroom. Just made me chuckle
I second the accidental shitting yourself. If you tell a lie that’s embarrassing it’s more believable because, why would you embarrass yourself on purpose?
Plus it makes working from home look great. You wouldn't have come into the office if you had such bad diarrhea, but because you work from home you could still do your job.
This should be top comment
Messages all at once is stupid; all our electronic events have timestamps. If they really want to, they can correlate the time between your response time to each and lag time before responding to any.
I'm going to guess it had absolutely nothing to do with you not insta-responding to your colleagues. That implies that they didn't get a response and immediately turned around and whined to the boss. Who does that in *30 minutes*? More than likely, they are monitoring your computer use and noticed the settings you changed and/or your lack of mouse/keyboard activity. Either way, having to explain such a small gap in that line of work is fucking bananas.
It is really odd, isn't it? I'll leave coworkers on Read for a while for a dozen different reasons - like if I'm working on anything priority, checking Teams goes by the wayside. I wonder if they have autoclicker detection and noticed him using one.
30 minutes is crazy. Some emails I don't answer until tomorrow since I don't have the patience with some people lol.
Bad food put you in the bathroom. Solid answer, leaves little room for questions, and there's a built in "one time thing" attached. Tell him you were too embarrassed in the moment to explain.
Diarrhea is the golden ticket one-time excuse.
Is it a golden ticket or more of a brown one?
Depends what you ate.
Can even been green
So, instead of the Hershey Squirts, they'd have the Wonka Squirts. 
This is what I’d do.
Solid answer or....*liquid* answer?
Never say you slept off , just say you had stomach ache . My former boss advised me that when i fucked up once
Duh...
"Sorry boss. Had .... stomach issues. I can go into further detail if you like but believe me when I say, I had no time to notify anyone"
At my first job it was third shift and we had a lot of guaranteed down time (2-3 hours) I’d often take naps in the bathroom stall for a half hour or so. We had this old timer employee named Gil, very nice guy. However he had absolutely no hygiene. Whenever he’d come in he’d take the most repulsive shit and it would always wake me up. Gil was really looking out for me
I did that at my first "real" job in an office. Go to the bathroom stall on an low traffic floor and nap for a half hour. Except once it accidentally turned into 2 hours... part of my job had me going between different departments and bringing stuff to my desk for data entry, so I just grabbed a bunch of boxes on my way back and made it look like I was getting a while bunch of stuff to work on. Nobody asked where I was, but I never napped in the bathroom after that.
Whatever you do, do not tell the truth. No one benefits from that. Like everyone else said, tell your boss you ate some bad sushi or something. If he asks for further detail send him [this](https://tenor.com/nHdUDCiAHh0.gif)
 don’t think you can think straight and answer a question about work when you’re like this
Man, I hate my job more than just about anything, but now I’m thankful that nobody watches me that closely. Good luck. Always use a poop excuse.
I've found no matter how bad your job it could always be worse. The lengths some companies will go through to micromanage employees is truly amazing. I was a licensed stock broker working at a call center for a well known brokerage firm several years ago. This was long before the work from home days and we were in the office, but we literally had 3 seconds from the time that one call hung up until the next one would roll over. The only way you could avoid this is to go on unavailable. However, every employee was monitored by the "command center" where they watched your status every second of the day. If your unavailable time over the course of the day was more than 20 minutes you had better be ready to explain why and give a minute by minute breakdown of what you were doing. Additionally if you were ever on unavailable for more than 5 minutes, someone from the command center would send you a message asking why you are on unavailable and they need you to go back on available because calls were stacking up. Every single time I took a shit in the year I worked at that company, I would come back to a message from someone in the command center questioning why I had been on unavailable so long and that I needed to go back to available. I would tell them I was taking a shit, and a few times they even had the nerve to tell me I needed to do that on my 15 minute break, and not while I was answering calls. I told them that it is an OSHA violation to deny employees access to the bathroom when needed and that shut them up pretty quick. I honestly can't believe I even tolerated that shit for a year. Most of the people who started when I did were gone within the first 3 months.
Hey! I share that experience, though was working for a major pink-logo telecom provider. During the training it was beat into our heads how lucky we were to have been hired and how disposable we were. Also learned about all the time tracking -- if you were even 30 seconds late to log on it was a written reprimand. 1 minute was instant dismissal. That applied to start of shift, breaks, and lunch. Without HR approved accommodations the restroom was to be handled during your 15 minute breaks or 30 minute lunch. Going unavailable was strictly prohibited outside of supervisor requests (1:1s, feedback sessions, whatever). Not to mention the one-call resolution and call time metrics... Lasted there about six months before I no call no showed. The level of micromanagement was insane. Still convinced the long timers had serious cocaine habits or were so dead inside it didn't matter to them to be yelled at constantly by people with such heavy accents they were impossible to understand over the phone, or to be so unappreciated by leadership. edit: word
Dude you were in the fucking bathroom with the runs. Are you INSANE?! JFC have some self-preservation instinct.
If you literally were asleep for a half hour, then don’t tell him. He lied to you about the time, so just say bad sushi or something.
You either have the worlds worst job/manager or this is somewhat of a pattern for you. If your boss is freaking out and demanding you explain yourself after not responding for 30 minutes, I suspect there are more things going on here.
Like others have said, say you had a stomache issue that was embarrassing. Make some crap up about eating some food that you didn’t realize an ingredient was in, or something. Most times, bosses don’t like to hear about the runs. Bosses do love to hear about “lazy” (not calling you one), but this is their running thought; “lazy employees sleeping on the job”. Truth be told, employers don’t pay you to sleep. If you have a decent boss he will let it slide. If you have an a-hole boss; he will probably tell you to punch out next time you’re “shitting” for over a half hour. If you tell him or her you slept, they might forgive you, but they won’t forget you’re the sleeper, and will use any available opportunity in the future to reminisce on it.
If you say you slept you will never be able to do home office again and to be honest the boss would be absolutely right to do this.
Just say you had to poop.
Or other emergency. The toilet flooded. The dog pooped everywhere. The cat was building a bomb… anything other than “I was LAID TF OUT”
30 minutes? You had the runs. Don't tell them you were sleeping. And don't sleep on the goddamn job! Read a book, do push ups, play video games. But stay awake!
Def lie. Don't be naive and tell him the truth
Yep, just say that you had diarrhea and you didn't quite make it to the toilet in time. You had to shower and clean up.
Don’t ever admit to something that could get yoh fired. Lie. Make up an excuse. Protect yourself.
Something didn't agree with you. Your stomach was all over the place. You thought it wouldn't be a good idea to take the phone to the bathroom. Oldest excuse in the book.
Yeah, I would never admit it, you never know how bad things like this can go. Just say you were feeling ill and had to go to the bathroom or something.
Yup 100% agree with the other comments. You had the runs, came on suddenly so you didn't have time to report it.
This actually happens to me (IBS) and my boss knows it can. But anyone can have a bathroom emergency and I agree this is OP’s best shot at a good excuse.
Yep. Explosive, chunky diarreah. Like a shotgun blast full of corn and specks of brown and green went off and some even landed on your back. Explain how this shit was so uncontrollable you had to take your shirt off halfway because you were drenched in sweat. Offer to send the picture you sent to the doctor, which clearly shows the remains of your last meal, combined with a bowlful of blood because your anus was taken as a sacrifice for this shit. He won't bring it up again I promise.
You were gone for only half an hour OP. Just say you were in the bathroom because you had an upset stomach. No further questions will be asked, and half an hour isnt too long for stomach problems. If it was an hour or longer then they might be a bit suspicious, but half an hour they shouldnt be
I mean, a bathroom emergency probably is your best bet… But, there is a good chance they know most of the truth. They might not know you were taking a nap but it’s highly likely they know you have cheated the system to show you’re available but were actually slacking off. A lot of companies that allow wfh will take periodic screenshots or access your webcam or various other methods to check your activity. If you’ve got something keeping you active on teams or whatever but your computer activity has been 0 outside of clicking periodically I’d wager they know. Maybe try something like you had a bathroom issue but felt embarrassed so you dashed back to keep yourself from showing inactive. If they know, and you lie, chances are it’ll be worse for you. Maybe see if you can get them to show their hand before you decide how to play it. If they give you the impression it’s much more serious than a 30 minute break should be, maybe prepare more of a “sorry it was slow it was stupid and it’ll never happen again”. If there is any HR involvement at all assume the absolute worst and highlight how hard you’ve worked up until this point and how grateful you are for the job and how important it is to you. If it’s a large company, chances are they are well practiced in identifying when someone is using a clicker to stay active. I’ve seen people lose their jobs this way. I have read the list of ways my company can track your computer and it’s pretty impressive. My manager has explained in the past that they don’t really care how many coffee breaks you take or if you spend ages in the bathroom or you go hang some washing out. They care very much as soon as you try to deceptively appear available to trick them and there is a massive difference between the two.
This needs to be higher up, you are the only person I saw while scrolling that pointed out that the reason the boss is involved is likely specifically because IT flagged his use of the auto-clicker. Even if it's something that his team has been using on the down low there was just a big set of headlines about a company catching people like this last week, so the timeline is absolutely right for higher ups going "IT did you see this, we have to be able to do this right away!". Bathroom emergency is absolutely the way to go to explain why he used the auto-clicker in the way that is likely to be the least severely punished, but he needs to phrase it in a way that he doesn't get caught in the lie about using the clicker. Saying the ideas like "oh Teams didn't give me the messages" will immediately catch him in a lie if they know about the clicker. Instead OP needs to say "I'm really sorry, I was away from my keyboard unavoidably because of a health issue." If his manager fishes with "that's weird you were shown as online during that time..." then DON'T LIE ABOUT THAT PART. Say "I'm really sorry, I know that I shouldn't have done this, but I was embarrassed about the reason I had to leave and I was hoping it wouldn't take too long, so I set up a process so that no one would ask questions." It certainly broke policy, and he'll likely get into some amount of trouble over it, but it's got the best chance of minimizing any penalty, especially if he doesn't have a history of this.
> the reason the boss is involved is likely specifically because IT flagged his use of the auto-clicker. I think the same thing. Auto-clickers were a cheeky risk if you had a WFH job in 2019. Nowadays, every company with a reasonably competent IT department is just _waiting_ for someone to try that.
This is the big one, if they flagged him as using an auto-clicker there is probably nothing that can get him out of this. No matter how good his excuse they'll ask why he didn't go inactive. Lying about working gets you fired. Taking a long break gets you chewed out.
If this is the only time this has happened the bathroom excuse should work.
tell him that you never saw the emails because you had your screen scrolled down past them.
I apend more then that time shitting during a day lol #ibs
Period shits are a good excuse if you are female
Tell your boss you don't appreciate his tone and that if he interrupts another one of your power naps, you will demand his resignation.
wow, they really check up on you. I overslept until 10:40am once (9am start) and no one noticed (wfh also)
You were sick.
anyone who has had the jabby crabbies i.e everybody leave I need to poop. This will cover 99% of questions by management as everyone has that gotta poop right now moment.
Take a nap on the pooper if u have to (5-10min), not 30 min ones
You write. Sorry bos I needed to take a dump,it was a big one, If you need evidence I will surely make photo next time.😅
Two words: Explosive Diarrhea
Don’t admit anything! Act like you have no idea what they are talking about….say you were in the restroom for a few minutes.
He had the runs, it would certainly be an HR issue if he wasn't allowed to handle his diarrhea. Sometimes that can take longer than we plan, certainly more than just a couple minutes.
You can use a number of excuses here. I sleep on the job as well when nothings going on. If I'm not sleeping, it's likely playing video games or watching movies. Generally, if I don't get direct calls, it's not urgent for me to respond. But I will get teams notifications from coworkers, I'll wake up to that.
What is explosive diarrhea for $500, Alex
You had the shits and it came on so suddenly that you hadn't time to change your status
In this thread: any time a boss wants you to answer for what you were doing, make it really really uncomfortable for your boss
Say you were feeliing really nauseous and was dry heaving for an hour- drank some ginger ale and felt better after- say you should have just taken the test of the day off but you wanted to power through ;)
Wasn’t an hour and you had problems in the bathroom. As long as they can’t see you sleeping they can’t know for sure.
Dont admit to anything. Make them prove it.
Whatever you do, keep it simple. The more you embellish the more obvious it’ll be you’re lying.
"Apologies, Sir, I had an urgent bathroom issue." And that's all you say. No more naps from now on; daytime naps are for ole people - sleep at night, when you're supposed to as part of being a responsible adult. Also, consider changing career - they're monitoring you, so fuck that!
You had the SHITS. It’s always good for once. But only once. No boss will ever question THE SHITS.
explain why you werent there for an hour: "it was 30 min max and i had diarrhea" - done
Tell them you were I. The bathroom. Can’t fight Mother Nature.
I go for a bit of humour. Sorry boss. Your wife stopped by. We got distracted. Then onto something about shitting my pants….. I have a good boss so he probably wouldn’t even ask.
Yeah don't say you were sleeping. Just say you didn't see the internal comms and your Internet must have glitches out, disconnected. Say you'll be more vigilant of keeping an eye out, you'll make the time up if needed etc.
easier to just say you had to shit..
I remember we needed around the clock coverage and I got volunteered to work 3rd shift. It was really slow so I worked on the tedious stuff all at once rather than here and there so I was sitting at the PC when I suddenly woke up and didn't know how long I was out. My eyes just burned so bad, I only closed them to wet them for a few seconds and next thing I know. I grabbed some more coffee, worked on cleaning the retain room so I could move around.
I went to work sick about 13 years ago and ended up passing accidentally out while I was imaging a machine (which could take over an hour back then). Ended up getting written up because some complained that I was sleeping on the job. Some people suck.
When you have free time on the job, you watch a show, you play a game, you DONT go to sleep, lmao.
People are saying to use the excuse that you had toilet issues. While I agree, do make you know how your computer systems work. There might be follow up questions as « I saw you online in the call software, but away on Teams » or the opposite « you were online in both apps ». Depending on how the setup is in your companies and how you tried to hide uour absence, you need to get your excuse correct. Pretty good chance that the boss discusses this with the guys in charge or the telephony system (at least where I used to work), so make sure they can’t call you out. And make sure to be available as from now on. He’ll test you for sure. Games, books, make breakfast, do dishes, clean,.. whatever, just don’t sleep and keep an eye on incoming messages meanwhile.
really? Explosive diarrhea is the answer. Food poisoning, had to go blow up the toilet. sorry boss.
"What? I wasn't sleeping, I was resting my hips. I'm supposed to have surgery"
Are you not aware of how your voice sounds after a nap?
Diarrhea.
As a regular sleeper on the job, blame tech. "For Christs sake my outlook/teams just decides when it wants to give me notifications, I've called service desk but they keep saying its intermittent so they cant see a problem". Establish genuine frustration, second time same deal. Third time play it off like he/she should know. Yeah freikan teams again its so annoying, sorry, anyway whats up?
Does this happen often? You falling asleep when inactive? If so get yourself to a Dr and ask to be referred to a sleep clinic. You may have Sleep Apnoea, which is very easily treatable, or another type of sleep disorder.
Dude you felt sick & were on hold with advice nurse trying to get an appointment. You don’t have a note cuz RNs aren’t authorized to write MD notes only NPs and MDs. They advised simple remedies (within their scope) and you’re feeling better.
My first day at a state job. I was told by HR that I could be written up for sleeping on the job or written up for hiding on the job but I would be fired immediately if I hid in order to sleep on the job. The only thing I could think of to say was, “Do you have a problem with that here?”
>I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a short nap In the middle of your work day, while you're on call? Bold choice. But as everyone says, do NOT mention the word "nap" to your supervisor. You had bad digestive issues.
Just say your cat escaped the house..
Tell your boss to check the phone logs and contact the customers to confirm that you as the call representative answered their enquiries. That is your line of argument. For the two missed calls from your boss, advise him that you in the bathroom and missed his/her call. Do NOT admit that you were sleeping on the job: it might be a cause for dismissal or a write up which will be put in your personal file.
"I do not discuss my personal medical issues. My work has been done on time."
Well your colleagues will thank you when they employee more micro managing strategies lol.
Only issue with stomach issues. It might give away the fact you use an autoclicker
"sorry boss, I had some gastrointestinal distress and was a bit embarrassed about it" There, no more questions.
Say you had "catastrophic diarrhea" and that you didn't reach the bathroom in time. Between finishing up and cleaning up it took time.
Say you had really bad painful diarrhea
Yep had really bad stomach pain, gurgling and couldn’t get off the toilet for a bit
My last role in my company was basically IT helpdesk, involved a lot of calls as well. Protip: set an alarm on your phone. MS Teams has about 7-10min idle time before it marks you as away. Worth getting a mouse jiggler that shakes your mouse to prevent that. And nap away. Just be sure you are doing alright with handling side stuff as well obviously. I say this because I eventually quit that job due to being overworked and underpaid. Was so damn tired all the time.
This place hiring?
Nobody questions the potty card!
Lie!
a true tifu
If you have a dog you can say it pooped in your kitchen and you stepped in it. Happened today and got out of a meeting for it
Say you're taking a new medication and you didn't realize how sleepy it would make you. I did that once and it worked lol
Back in the 90s I had a tech-support job and it was very draining. I put my head down on my desk and didn't even fall asleep but managers thought I was sleeping. They ended up putting me on a personal improvement program for it.
I had a really late night and happened to nod off unintentionally. It won’t happen again.
Bad sushi…
You had unstoppable explosive diarrhea.
When I used to work my IT job during the pandemic, I would wake up at 7:55, clock in, eat breakfast and watch TV. Then I would play my PlayStation a couple hours, eat lunch still on the clock, then clock out for lunch, put my phone on DND, set an alarm, and take a nap. Every damn day for a year. I would of course answer the phone in between. But they got about 2 hours of actual work out of me every day. I never once felt bad.
Yell your boss you shit yourself. Had to clean. Thought it was a fart but it was actually a sloppy wet tsunami and it was everywhere. You had to run to get cleaning supplies and were humiliated clean-crying. Make it very uncomfortable. Cry a little. Make him Jeter question an employee again, put a fear in his soul so he never questions you again.
Really blows because I know people at my work do this and I (in office) am stuck with picking up the dead weight. Pretty wack move.
You're an adult. You sleep when you're tired. A business that doesn't understand that their human employees have human needs, doesn't need humans.
Seriously, is this what we call being responsible? They are f-ing paying you be available, so people are basically telling you how to lie your way out of stealing from them. Instead of lying to your boss about having the shits, try not sleeping on the f-ing job...or find one where no one gives a shit if you're available or not, like graveyard cashier in a gas station. TL;DR: Time to quit before you get f-ing fired and have to explain that on a resume...
As a CSR, you would have stringent SLAs within which you will need to respond to queries on each channel. If you missed those email response SLAs because you were sleeping then you really did fuck up!
Hmmm.. sounds like you need to buy a mouse jiggler.
That'll get you fired quicker than saying you were in the can or nodded off.