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Co Workers Are Awesome, Too

At work, the team of which I'm a part asks that you let everyone else know if you're going to be out on a certain day. The idea is that it's easier to figure out when we have schedule conflicts and no one sits around waiting for you if you're not around. We have a group calendar, but often times, people forget about it. Really, the de facto way of doing this is by sending out an email to the group saying, "I'll be out of the office on day X for reason Y. I'll be back on day Z, if you need to reach someone, do Q."

Now, you're under no obligation to tell everyone your business. You can say, "I need to take care of some personal matters" and that's that. However, most of the time the reasons are benign: doctor's appointments, obligations with kids, vacations. That means that people get in the habit of writing emails with the real reason why they're out.

This has led me to laugh out loud on more than one occasion. Some of the best reasons I've heard for people not coming in to the office include:
  • My neighbors were noisy last night, so I couldn't sleep. I overslept and missed the company carpool, so I'm not coming in today.
  • I'm taking a "working" vacation day. Depending on my mood, I'll fluctuate between 0% work/100% vacation and 100% work/0% vacation.
  • I pulled a muscle sneezing, and it hurts to move. I'm not coming in to the office today.
  • I have a doctor's appointment in 15 minutes, not going to make it to the office.
  • I finally got the neighbors to negotiate about this fence. I won't be in today.
  • I was going to work from home today, but I couldn't connect. The laptop wouldn't read my badge, no matter what I tried. A couple of hours later, I realized the badge reader wasn't hooked up to the laptop (to be fair, this wasn't someone who is directly on my team).
Remember, these are adults, and most of them have been with the company for a while. It's not like I'm talking about the brand new intern that doesn't know any better. These people (should) know better.

I will say, though, it makes for an interesting read. Heck, I almost get excited when I see those "my schedule" emails. Hopefully someone will have to miss some time this week ...

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