Get Outta Jail Free Card...

Someone sent me an email recently stating that they wanted to attend one of these festivals that occur in New York City every other week, but that it happened to be on a Tuesday when they had an important meeting. She was asking if I had any advice for getting out of work, mainly because she had recently taken off a few times recently faking a cold and felt her boss was on to her. The sad part is I read the email, chuckled at her reason for taking off, and closed my laptop. For some reason I forgot all about the email until this morning, when I realized that I deleted it sometime in the past three weeks. Whoops. Normally that's not my style, I love Mailbag, everyone knows that about me. But sometimes it's difficult to sift through the four emails I get every month.

Hopefully the young lady (I don't remember her name) figured out a way to take off work for the festival (I don't remember what festival it was, and now that it's on my mind, it may not have been a festival at all) without getting in trouble, but if she did it was on her own. What would I have told her, you ask? Well, let's see...

To call off work, there is always one move I use when I am desperate for a day off, but it can only really be used once per job. Calling on the morning of the day in question and faking sick is the tried and true method that has been used for years, but it has its flaws. You have to be a good enough actor to fake a sick voice, you have to answer any questions that your boss may have, and every manager has heard that bit two hundred times.

My method is simple and painless. All you need is a good friend, a phone, and the ability to lie your face off when you go back into work. Here's the situation...

The night before you would like to be free from work have one of your best friends call your managers work phone. This is important because we do not want your friend to actually talk to your boss, so the message needs to be sent via voicemail. Here's an example of what your friend needs to say.

"Hello, I'm hoping this is Steve's managers voicemail, this is his friend Brian. Steve asked me to call you because he is currently in the hospital. He had a shortness of breath and we had to take him in as a precaution. It turns out everything seems to be okay now, but the doctors want to keep him here overnight just to make sure. He says that he'll call you tomorrow when he wakes up to discuss some work stuff. Thanks for understanding."

The key here is to make sure you call in the morning to tell your boss your fine, but that they want to do some tests to see what is wrong. This way the whole office isn't freaking out (I'm not that cruel), and you don't want anyone actually going to the hospital to visit you (considering you won't be there). This call is simple because you don't have to fake sick, and you can get off the phone quickly if you need to.

The genius of this method is its simplicity, but also it's originality. No boss is going to question a call from a friend of an employee that is in the hospital, as the whole ordeal has probably caught them a bit off guard.

So you hang up the phone that morning and continue with whatever cool thing your doing on your new day off. Then you get into work early the next day so you don't have to deal with a huge entrance, as news may have spread to other coworkers about your fake illness. The problem is you're going to have to answer random questions from the curious employees, and if you're not ready with a quick answer, it may look suspicious. Here are a few examples of questions you might hear...

"What hospital did you stay in?"

"What did the doctors say?"

"How come you look hungover this morning?"

"What kind of tests did they do?"

"Where is your cool hospital bracelet?"

"Was your nurse a hottie?"

"Was your doctor a hottie?"

"Did you get any good pain killers?"

"Is it lame if I buy a Segway?"

Honestly, any and every question will be asked. And not because they suspect foul play, but because people feel as though if they don't ask questions and act concerned it makes them seem like they don't care, especially when it comes to health issues.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes, I assure you if it's pulled off correctly it has a zero percent fail rate. If not, blame it on your friend who left the message. Freakin' Brian.