We've called in sick and applied for a medical certificate (MC) to get out of work for one day.
However, this one woman was caught red-handed by her boss for faking an MC, and she paid the price.
Not a great plan
The woman, one Nina Farooqi, had reportedly called in sick so that she could attend the Euro 2020 semi-final match between England and Denmark on 7 July.Farooqi told The Telegraph that her friend had won tickets to the match at a work ballot, and she invited her at the last minute.
A die-hard England fan, there was no way Farooqi would miss the match, but there was one problem: Farooqi felt that company would not give her the day off as they were short-staffed.
So, the digital content producer did what we would most probably do if we were in her shoes: she faked an MC and lied to her employers.
The 37-year-old made her way to the match, and she was seated behind the goal post when Denmark's Simon Kjær scored an own goal to bring the game level.
An ecstatic Farooqi couldn't hide her joy as she celebrated manically with her friend, jumping and shouting, as the cameras zoomed in on her - and beamed her face around the world.
That was when Farooqi realised she might be in trouble.
"We were all over the news, my face was on every television screen across the world — I had friends from Australia and America telling me they’d seen me."
"The rational part of me thought, 'Oh no, is this going to come back to haunt me?'," she was quoted as saying.
Breach of contract
Spoiler alert: yes, it did come back and haunt her.
The Telegraph reported that Farooqi was told by her employers at Composite Prime to not bother showing up to work the very next day.
While that may seem harsh, Composite Prime said that by lying and faking an MC, Farooqi was "in breach of her employment contract".
"We had no choice but to take the appropriate action," Charles Taylor, director at Composite Prime, told Yahoo News.
Taylor also said that had Farooqi applied for a day off, they would have encouraged Farooqi's attendance at the "important football match".
"We had no choice but to take the appropriate action."
As for Farooqi, her experience left her with "mixed emotions".
"I didn’t get any sympathy at all and they said that's it. That’s their call and the consequence of what I did. There is a bit of regret, no one wants to get fired, but then also I would have hated the regret of missing out."
"I’d do it all over again," she was quoted as saying.