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Last year, an account executive dozed off during a training session at Strategis LLC, a small marketing-communications company in Stoughton, Mass. Co-owner George Irish says the employee explained the bizarre incident by claiming to suffer from narcolepsy.<\/p>\n
“What he had was a case of partying too hard the night before,” says Mr. Irish, noting that the salesman smelled of alcohol when offering up the excuse. He later fired the man, a poor performer who never provided proof of a medical problem despite having previously been caught napping on the job. “I just don’t have time for games,” says Mr. Irish.<\/p>\n
When it comes to excuses for poor employee behavior, small-business owners have heard it all\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom bad hair days for rationalizing absenteeism to faulty alarm clocks for explaining tardiness. Sometimes the excuses are part of a chronic problem, and business owners say it’s best to dish out a stern warning, punishment or even walking papers to the offending employee. Other times, the excuses come from top-notch staff, making it a more delicate situation to handle.<\/p>\n
That was the case for Mitch McLeod, owner of Arcos Inc., a small software company in Columbus, Ohio, whose top-performing software engineer repeatedly called in late, with a litany of bizarre excuses. The strangest? The engineer claimed his cat hid his car keys, according to Mr. McLeod. Instead of disciplining the employee, Mr. McLeod decided to simply switch the engineer’s schedule to a later shift. Now, the employee is mostly on time for work.<\/p>\n
It’s possible some employees are legitimately late or performing poorly because of an exceptionally unusual circumstance. But more often, workers offer up bogus or plain dumb excuses to protect their careers. “It’s a natural reaction to play defense because there could be consequences, like getting fired,” says James Balassone, executive-in-residence at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. To take responsibility for misconduct requires a lot of courage, he adds, and “most people would not take that approach.”<\/p>\n
Another reason why workers resort to excuses to explain bad behavior is to justify actions they feel they’re entitled to perform but that defy company policies, says Patricia Harned, president of Ethics Resource Center in Arlington, Va. For instance, last year the nonprofit-research organization surveyed 2,852 workers and found that roughly 15% approved of workers calling out sick from their jobs when not really ill. Ms. Harden says many respondents rationalized that workers deserve more time off than they’re allotted.<\/p>\n
While employee excuses for bad behavior may oftentimes seem harmless, they can lead to bigger headaches down the road if ignored, warns Ms. Harned.<\/p>\n
“One of the implications is you to start to build a culture where it’s acceptable to take care of No. 1, and over time that starts to erode how productive an organization is,” she says. “If it becomes OK to skirt the rules in little ways, it eventually becomes acceptable to skirt the rules in big ways, too.”<\/p>\n
At K Hotels Sales & Marketing LLC in Los Angeles, owner Michael Palmer tries to deter repeat performances by jotting down employees’ excuses anonymously on a dry-erase board for everyone to see. Phrases such as “I thought Columbus Day was a holiday” and “I dyed my hair blonde and it looks terrible” help dissuade the perpetrators from using them a second time, he says.<\/p>\n
Still, the strategy doesn’t always work. Two years ago, one of Mr. Palmer’s employees called out from work, citing a painful break-up with a boyfriend as a reason. While he says he approved of her taking the day off, the employee didn’t show up for work the next day, explaining that she needed to spend some time vacationing with her new boyfriend in Santa Barbara to get over the old one. The woman no longer works for K Hotels due to a mutual parting, Mr. Palmer says.<\/p>\n
Another time, Mr. Palmer had to deal with a midlevel associate who didn’t show up for work. Her excuse was that she lost her car keys while out the night before\u00e2\u20ac\u201da good explanation, until Mr. Palmer pointed out she could easily take a cab to work. “It’s a good idea to talk about the excuses,” he says. “If it starts to disrupt your business, you have to do something.”<\/p>\n
Management experts agree. “It’s important that they see you as someone who’s fair,” says Nancy Rothbard, associate professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. Letting workers get away with bad excuses “sets a bad precedence.”<\/p>\n