If there is anything good about the home office, it is that the morning has become a lot more relaxed. Should I actually wash my hair today and therefore get up 15 minutes earlier? Sausage. Had I planned a whole outfit mentally, only to find out that the sweater that was absolutely necessary was in my underwear? Don't worry. Is the train super unreliable on my route? Really does not matter.
For people who have no children and who are also at home because of the school and daycare closings, working from home means in doubt: Climb out of bed 20 minutes before the start of work, maybe take a quick shower from your bones, put on sweatpants , Make coffee and put on a laptop.
But even if the close proximity to the workplace minimizes the risk of being late due to a traffic jam or being distracted by a particularly cute puppy on the way to the office, a lot can also happen in the home office. So here are a few well-meaning tips that you can use to argue away minor mishaps, delays caused by snooze, and deadlines missed due to "5 minutes of Netflix" breaks.
Everyone believes these home office excuses
Man's best friend – in all situations
Do you have a very playful dog? Or a particularly attention-grabbing cat? Or maybe a rowdy iguana? Perfect! This gives you a huge range of credible excuses: Did your dog always eat your homework? Today he mangled the charging cable. And of course you had to go to the basement and look for a new one. And, well, that's a little embarrassing for you to say it like that, but the basement isn't that tidy, you know, and that's why the search took a little longer.
And after you finally found one and carried it proudly upstairs, your cat dragged a half-dead mouse from the garden into the living room, which of course had to be reanimated first, that also takes a while. And in all the excitement, you forgot to close the patio door again and Rolf, your iguana, was plucked out into the garden and you had to look for it and he had of all people entrenched in the treehouse next door and then the fire brigade came and, well , then it was actually the end of the day.
As I said, there are many options.
Most accidents happen in the home
According to the Robert Koch Institute, about a third of the accidents that are reported annually in Germany happen in the household. People fall when cleaning, get tangled with their legs in the cable when sucking and burn themselves while cooking pasta. From a statistical point of view, it is not so unlikely that you dropped the pot while you were making coffee this morning and that you scalded your hand a little and maybe even stepped into one or two small pieces of broken glass – without slippers, of course. The injury shouldn't be too bad, otherwise someone will want to see proof in the end. But "Sorry for the delay, boss, I actually smeared the butter churn on my big toe while I was buttering bread. I had to cool it down properly – luckily nothing worse happened!" nobody will contest. As well as?
Let your imagination run wild
Basically, the motto is: Anything goes. It just shouldn't be too sucked and not too crazy. Somewhere between the extremes is the Holy Grail of Excuses. I'm actually only writing this text because I showed up in the team chat five minutes late this morning – because I had exploded my coffee machine ten minutes earlier. A little bit. Actually there was only too much pressure on it and then it opened with a bang while cooking and sprayed a little bit and I had to calm down briefly and then wipe it off and then the spook was over again. In any case, the truth of my story was questioned. But as Jonathan Frakes of "X-Factor – The Incredible" said so nicely: "Could you tell the truth from the lie? Sometimes things happen that the terms are true and not lie. They are simply unimaginable for us humans . "
So. Now, please excuse me for 20 minutes. My canister of disinfectant has toppled over and I don't have enough toilet paper to wipe up the mess. And I haven't seen Rolf den Iguana for a long time.
Source: Robert Koch Institute
This article was originally published on stern.de.