Being sick excuse #9 - food poisoning
Excuse – Food poisoning
Symptoms - Typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, and diarrhea that come on suddenly (within 48 hours) of consuming a contaminated food or drink. Depending on the contaminant, fever and chills, bloody stools, dehydration, and nervous system damage may follow.
Limitations –The symptoms can develop rapidly, within 30 minutes, or slowly, worsening over days to weeks.
Time – It runs its course in 24 – 48 hours.
Dialogue – If you plan on blaming it on bad chicken or seafood, that specific bacteria causes a moderate illness with nausea, vomiting, crampy diarrhea, and headache. So, make sure you use these symptoms.
Frequency - You really shouldn’t do this more than a couple of times a year. Unless you eat a lot of Chinese 
Action – You can just say you have (insert symptoms here) and you think you got food poisoning from some chicken (or other food) you ate last night and that you need to stay home while it runs its course. To mazimize your time off with minimum resistance, use the holy grail of keywords –> diarrhea
Notes - The great thing about this excuse is that you shouldn’t need a doctor’s note. I mean, who would go to the doctor over some runs? You should be safe as long as you don’t use this excuse too much.
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One Response to “Being sick excuse #9 - food poisoning”
July 8th, 2007 at 1:51 am
I actually did this once. Boy, they sure didn’t want to know the details! ha, ha. In reality, I was spending a lovely day at a hotel. A damn nice hotel that I was too cheap to leave before my reservation was up and checkout time was officially over. So, I faked nausea and ditched work.
And, I’m so pale that I look sick all the time anyway! Not to mention, I’m picky about food and rarely eat the office shit. I even made a boss lady feel bad for ordering Thai and staring at the table in hunger when she made me come in on a weekend. After she found out I “couldn’t” do Thai, she gets nicer shit and at least can vouch for my “food illness.”
I should do it more often. I’ve only taken like 2 sick days off in 4 years of reasonably often employment. I’m too lazy to wake up to call in sick. Yeah, that’s shameful.
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