Your grandma? Really?

I've heard a lot of reasons for why someone didn't show up for work. Whatever you can dream up, I feel I can say, with relative confidence, that I've heard it. Most common: illness, no transportation, no childcare, death in the family. Generally pretty straightforward and easy to believe because it has, at some point or another, happened to all of us.

Well, we're going to dive into the 'death in the family' reason today.

This kid—probably about 22, but that's close enough to 'kid' for me—was working at one of our most prominent medical assembly client companies, and he was a super solid worker. There for several months, never missed a day, never late.

(Hey, it’s a low bar over here.)

Supervisor was extremely impressed with him. Good feedback, looking to convert him to a permanent employee as soon as he passed the conversion hour threshold.

With several months of quality work history under his belt, the supervisor was understandably concerned when this kid stated his grandma had died and he needed a couple of days off. Being a reasonable human being, the supervisor granted the leave.

 …then he just never came back to work.

The supervisor waited a couple of days before reaching out to us to see if we'd heard from him. There was nothing in his file that indicated he had reached out to us to let us know he needed time off for a death in the family, nor that he had reached out to let anyone know he wasn't going to be back to work. I called the emergency contact listed in his file just to make sure everything was ok since it was weird for such a solid worker to...disappear.

The emergency contact was the kid's father, and this was how our conversation went:

Me: I'm calling regarding your son. His supervisor is concerned because XX took a couple of days off for a funeral last week, but he hasn't come back to work, and nobody's heard from him. We just wanted to check in and make sure everything was ok.

Father of the kid (FK): Who died?

Me: XX let us know his grandma passed, and he needed time off for the funeral. He hasn't been back since.

FK: His grandma isn't dead!

Me: Oh. Well...that's what he told his supervisor.

FK: Yeah, no. His grandma isn't dead. There wasn't any funeral. When did you say he quit showing up?

I let his father know the day the kid told his supervisor, and his dad said he was going to track his kid down. He sounded...miffed...that his kid lied about grandma dying to get time off from work. I did ask him to have the kid call us to let us know if he was planning on ever returning to work, and the father said he would keep us informed.

Your grandma? Really? Just to get some time off? That's a bit low. The father did call in with an update a few days later to let us know his kid had run off with his girlfriend. The father apologized profusely for his son's actions and any issues/worry that the sudden absence had caused.

I thanked the father for following up with us (really was a nice guy), decided the kid wasn't going to be back to work, and ended the assignment.