Taking holiday / pulling sickies specifically to play games

[Spaff]

Who is guilty of this?

I have done both. I took holiday for the launch of WoW, and will be doing so again. I also booked holiday to play Children of mana and then cried from it's crapness.

Sickie's I'm sure I have pulled some on a few random launch days in the past, I can't remember them though.

Anyone been caught out?

At work there is this office admin kid who spends 90% of his work time on the Evo soccer forums. He was mysteriously missing from the thursday when the game broke store dates, for almost a week.

[Wrestlevania]

I was suddenly struck down by a mysterious illness mid-morning on "Quake Twosday". Seemed to coincide with my finding said sequel on the shelves of the local Dixons in unusually timely fashion, during morning break at the local college I was attending. Raced home in the car and then completed the game in one continuous 7-hour sitting.

That was a very good day... And I know I'll never have another like it ever again.

Nice pole by the way.

[Spaff]

oh yeah, i remember meeting my friend on the way to college only to find a shiny new copy of Star Craft on his doorstep, suffice to say we didnt go in to college ¬

When Quake 4 came out, i thought it might actually be good (I was wrong but... i didnt know that then). I got a copy by going to a virgin megastore near closing... the store clerks were putting the stock for the morning out on the shelf. /me spies a box of quake 4, grabs one and manages to buy it.

I get home, install it, oh man so eager to do some ass whippin. It's all ready to go, sitting there - i decide to make dinner first.

What happened next was a classic fuck up: i threw boiling hot goose fat onto my right hand, scorching my index and middle fingers, plus my thumb.

You may have noticed that those are the precise parts of a right hand required to play quake.

There was no quake for me, i had to watch Nick play it, and drink half a bottle of bourbon to numb the pain (ben i'm sorry for the 2am phone call that night). Come to think of it, i think nick and bob completed Battle Raper 2 that night, whilst i cried in drunken pain in a corner watching and all the time laughing between the sobs.

Aaanyways, sick day for me, but no games

[SiN]

I made it a couple of hours late to work on the preorder day for the Wii. Told my boss the truth and he didn't seem to mind. The perks of working at a tech company.

Although I've contemplated not getting off at my subway stop to continue playing Phoenix Wright ... does that count?

SiN

[Spaff]

oh yeah i did that for wii also. I mean book a half day holiday to get one.

Man I am so guilty of these things.

One time i remember rushing my coursework to get it finished, running to college, handing it in 3 seconds before the deadline and then running outside, and grabbing a lift with my pc to a LAN somewhere up north. I failed that subject ¬¬ I failed them all. We all did.

Fuck you Quake you failed me. Luckily for me, A-levels are useless.

[miffy495]

Squeaky clean here. Although I've postponed many a paper or whatnot in order to play games, I've always simply not slept that night in order to get whatever it was done at a later hour. When the Wii came out, I wasn't working Sundays anyway. If I was, I think I would've taken it off, but there you have it.

[Marek]

I took a day off for Wii (which ended up becoming a day off for 360). But that's not so exciting.

In fact I don't think I have any exciting war stories on this topic. I guess I did get in "trouble" once for wanting to play a game though. Way back in high school I got bored during physics class and started writing "I want Monkey Island 3" over and over again in my notes. My teacher, thinking I was furiously taking notes, came up to me smiling but was then super dissapointed by my psychotic writing, so he sent me to the principal's office. The principal began by threatening to show it to my parents, so I started laughing. Then the principal started laughing too, because he was a cool guy. Then I explained what Monkey Island 3 was and afterwards I could spend the rest of that hour in the common area, which was exactly the sort of punishment I was hoping for.

Okay, now that I'm writing about this...

A month later Monkey Island 3 came out and I completely stopped doing any homework because I was too busy updating my fan site. I got really bad scores for English tests that only involved learning vocabulary (and no reading comprehension) because I just couldn't be bothered. I showed a classmate a printout of something from my site and he didn't believe I'd actually made an internet website in English because everyone thought I was utterly shit at the language. I also remember my teacher being completely amazed by the fact that I knew words like "feather duster" and "scurvy" but didn't know many of the more pedestrian words required by the class (thank you, Ron Gilbert).

One time we were dealing with the American civil war in history class and the teacher was describing this guy and asked if anyone knew who he was so I was like "ooh! yes! Abe Lincoln!". I knew this because in Civilization there's a guy named Abe Lincoln, and he had a similar description in the Civopedia. The teacher then went like "Abe? Aaaayyyyybbbb? Are you trying to be funny, Marek? His correct name is, of course, Abraham Lincoln."

I've gone way off topic.

[Roderick]

I don't do it often, but when I do I usually don't make a secret out of it. And in that respect, I just take a holiday on those days, which is to say, I just don't show up. But at the same itme, I'm not pretending to be ill or something

[Kolzig]

During the second year at Polytechnic university some years ago, I did take several sickdays on my own decision just to play games and not think about that place and the studies.

Those were fun times.