'Sorry, I'm running late': 10 of the craziest but strangely real excuses people have given for being late for work and school

Author image for Giuliana Tiscioni
Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer
Oct 29, 2026 6:00 AM EDT

Are you the kind of person obsessed with punctuality, or do you always manage to be late everywhere?

I have to be honest here; I'm usually the second. I really have no idea what happened to me; I used to be pretty on time everywhere. But, on second thought, I actually do know what happened: I became friends with really unpunctual people. Every time we went out somewhere, I knew they were going to be at least 30 minutes late. So I started getting late as well. I didn't want to be left alone in a place I didn't know (we used to visit a lot of different places, like tourists around our own city). So, for security reasons (since I had no idea whether those neighborhoods were dangerous or not), I started waiting for other people to arrive, and left the house at least 20 minutes later than I had planned. And guess what, it stuck with me. 

My boyfriend, on the other hand, is always on time, and he likes to be at least 10 minutes early everywhere. He gets frustrated when I get late, not because he has to wait for me —actually, he prefers it — but because I sometimes forget to let him know that I'm getting late, so he gets paranoid and scared, thinking that I was abducted by aliens or something. I love him, but there's nothing he could do if I were really taken by the mother ship. 

My excuses for being late are usually pretty normal: too much traffic, the bus never showed up, I was trying to find my missing keys, you know, the usual stuff. But in reality, there are actually people out there who have some of the best excuses for being late. 

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  • What's the most unbelievable excuse someone gave for being late, but later turned out to be true?

  • Content-Lychee-3420 My coworker called in dead- serious saying he'd be two hours late because an escaped herd of emus from an illegal local farm had surrounded his Prius and refused to let him reach the driver's side door,
    via Content-Lychee-3420
  • which I naturally assumed was a hungover hallucination until he walked into the breakroom and silently airdropped a forty-second video of an enraged six-foot bird aggressively pecking his side. mirror.
    via Content-Lychee-3420
  • Cheezburger Image 10673440512
    via JD-Photos for Unsplash+

    An Emu. 

    Stock photography for depiction only.

  • Madame_Kitsune98 One of the pharmacy techs I worked with no-called no- showed to work one morning, on a day that the weather was absolute sh. Snow, sleet, so nasty and icy and slick. One of the other girls said, "She better be in a ditch somewhere."
    via Madame_Kitsune98
  • Well...not so funny story, turns out she had slid off the road and landed in a ditch. She even had a nasty concussion, and her phone broke. So, she really WAS in a ditch somewhere. Our pharmacy manager told the other girl to be careful what she wished for.
    via Madame_Kitsune98
  • Cheezburger Image 10673444608
    via Allec Gomes For Unsplash+

    A car in a ditch. 

    Representative only.

  • theburgerbitesback I walked in late to class once and explained to the teacher, quietly and by her desk, so as not to disturb the rest of the class, that my bus had had a collision. Got yelled at for several minutes very loudly, then given a detention.
    via theburgerbitesback
  • Instead of attending said detention, I emailed the teacher a link to a news article about the crash. She was visibly angry during our next class, but didn't say anything about my skipped detention. Never got an apology for all the things she screamed at me, either.
    via theburgerbitesback
  • AQuixoticQuandary I knew someone who kept saying she was late to a play rehearsal because an albino peacock was blocking the road. This was before cell
    via AQuixoticQuandary
  • phones so she couldn't get a picture. No one believed her until she was giving someone a ride near her home and they got blocked on the road by an albino peacock.
    via AQuixoticQuandary
  • ThadisJones "I just got a call from the abandoned hedgehog rescue agency that they have a hedgehog available for adoption and I need to go
    via ThadisJones
  • pick him up today, so I will be late getting to work." They provided sufficient documentation (hedgehog pictures).
    via ThadisJones
  • ixqy One time when I was in high school I drove home for lunch. Turned on the TV and the local news showed an aerial shot of my neighborhood, with the headline "bengal tiger on the loose".
    via ixqy
  • BTEA
    via Rakesh Arora for Unsplash+

    A Bengal tiger. 

    Stock photo unrelated.

  • We lived near a wild animal sanctuary and it had escaped. I loved calling in to tell my physics teacher that I was going to be late because there was an escaped tiger in my neighborhood! He didn't believe me, of course. I had him put on the local news and we both had a good laugh. The tiger was unharmed.
    via ixqy

  • I was really surprised to see how many animal-involved stories people have. I mean, a Bengal tiger doesn't run away from a zoo every day, and not many people can say, 'Sorry, I can't make it; I have to pick up my hedgehog.' But, hey, if you're going to miss school or work anyway, you might as well do it because there's an animal in the middle. I've had friends cancel plans over the silliest of excuses, so an animal adoption, or having dangerous wildlife loose around your neighborhood, sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation to miss anything. And I mean it, the silliest excuses were presented to me. 

    One time, I invited a friend to go to the theater to see a play. I already had the tickets; they were really good seats, and it was in the middle of the afternoon, so there would be no need to get home late. I brought it up to her, and she said she couldn't go because she had to have lunch. I'm serious. You might argue that it was a cheap excuse because she didn't want to go, but I know her. She meant it. She bailed on me for lunch. I ended up going with a different friend, and we had a blast, but I laugh at that every time I remember. 

  • Professional-Web8436 He got hit by a car, after leaving the hospital he got hit by a bicycle and a little later by another car. Dude walked in looking perfectly fine. Lifted his shirt to show some brutal bruising.
    via Professional-Web8436
  • crowjenny Someone canceled lunch plans with me once because they had to go pick up a meteorite.
    via crowjenny
  • Kolipe Fell in a hole. This was in 2005 and the guy didn't have a cellphone. He was walking home one night and cut through a construction site and fell into an open pit with way of getting out. So he had to wait
    via Kolipe
  • there all night until the workers got there the next morning. He called out manager to come get him and take him home. Nobody believed him until the manager got back and was like "yea he wasn't lying"
    via Kolipe
  • Cheezburger Image 10673451264
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Construction site.

    Photo is a representation of scenes.

  • ConsciousEnergy4346 Had a staff member call me to say they weren't sure they could come into work because someone had stolen their front door. I lived around the corner from them so on the way to work I drove past their house and sure enough they were there with the police filing a report on a missing door.
    via ConsciousEnergy4346

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