A woman recently shared on Reddit how she tried to cover up an embarrassing fall at work by pretending to faint — only to end up in the emergency room anyway.
The 24-year-old employee explained that she was at her station, “just mindlessly spinning around in my swivel chair,” when the chair “completely slipped out” from under her, causing her to fall.
“The sound of my fall was loud enough to make the whole department stop what they were doing and look,” she said. Rather than admit what happened, she tried to “save face” by pretending to have fainted — a decision she quickly realized was a “bad move.”
“Within seconds, people were crowding around me asking if I was okay,” she recalled. “The company nurse and my manager were summoned. I kept the act going for a couple of minutes.”
When she “regained consciousness,” she told them she felt better and was ready to return to work. But her manager insisted she go to the ER and wouldn’t let her back into the office without a doctor’s note confirming she was fit to return.
As a result, she ended up in the emergency room and even underwent tests, all because she was “too embarrassed to admit I fell from my chair.”
Some Reddit users found humor in her story. “Do you have cameras in your office?” one asked, adding, “bet money bossmans back at the office laughing his ass off.”
Others approached it more seriously. One noted that spending minutes on the floor, as described, “would indicate a serious medical condition.”
“You should really just admit what happened to the doctor,” the user wrote. “People that pass out because of simple lack of oxygen would still come around in just a few seconds.”
Another commenter said, “Wasting medical resources and worrying coworkers to save face? Yikes.”
Some even used the situation to comment on the American healthcare system. “If it makes you feel better being young and healthy the ER staff likely assume you are faking anyhow,” one person wrote.
“Did they pay for you to go to the ER,” another added, “because that’s like 6 years of paychecks for an aspirin.”
In an update, the woman clarified that she is not from the United States. “I don’t [know] what’s worker’s comp or why y’all have extremely high ER bills,” she wrote, noting that she “didn’t pay a single cent as everything was covered by my medical insurance (which my company pays for).”
The ER tests revealed that she had mild anemia. Fortunately, she said she would “be back to work” the next day, adding, “Wish me luck and hopefully nobody brings up the incident.”
