Worst. Excuse. Ever.

I was never one for mental health days. Or physical health days. Extraordinarily fortunate – knock on wood and formica – when it comes to health, I had few sick days during my full-time career. I did take one mental health day when I worked at Wang – if ever there were an organization that could drive the most mental-health-day-averse employee to call in sick – I ended up feeling so guilty about it that I spent the day in bed feeling miserable.

I did work with some who on occasion abused the system – the every-other-Monday brigade; the Opening Day crew; the I’m sulking about something that happened at work folks. But nothing that can quite compare with the New York City school employee – “a parent coordinator at the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management” – who scammed an extra week off for her vacation to Costa Rica by submitting a fake death certificate for one of her children. (Source: The New York Daily News)

[As an aside here, what are the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management’s sports teams called? The concierges? The bell captains? The wait-persons? No use asking what the school colors are. Gotta be tuxedo black and linen white.]

Needless to say, that parent coordinator, one Joan Bartlett, is no longer doing any $37K/year parent coordinating.

Her con was fairly elaborate and involved one daughter calling the school to report that her sister had had a heart attack in Costa Rica, and another one making a later call to say that her sister had died, and that the grieving mommy dearest was part of a delegation heading to Costa Rica for the funeral. The capper was sending in a forged death certificate, a “document [which] is required if a city school employee asks for bereavement days.”

Unfortunately for Barnett, the death certificate was done pretty sloppily. A school official followed up with the Costa Rican government, which reported that the number on the death certificate corresponded to that of a long-dead man. Further investigation unearthed (exhumed?) the fact that Barnett had gotten her tickets well before her poor, dear daughter was supposed to have slipped the surly bonds of earth.

Barnett tried to tough it out by sending in another, slightly less shoddy, fake death certificate, but ended up pleading guilty “to a misdemeanor over the forgery.”

Maybe it’s just me, but faking up a story about your own kid’s death seems about as low as you can go. (I guess it could have been worse: she could have claimed that the dog ate her daughter’s death certificate.)

Now that Barnett’s lost her job – and, thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, is no longer all that employable – wonder if those piña coladas, palm trees, and lolling on the beach were worth it.