“I Dreaded The Phone Call To My Manager”: 67 Stories Of People Who Had One Job… And Slept Through It

Got called the night before to cover a shift someone called out for. Said yep, I'd be there. Hurry home from being out with a friend, and set an alarm for early the next morning.

Well, my iPad (what I use for alarms) decided to *not* charge overnight, and consequently died before my alarm could go off. Woke up two hours after I was supposed to be there. I got called in specifically because I'm one of their most reliable workers. I sure wasn't that day. Oops.

Woke up 2.5 hours late for work. I had several texts from my boss implying formal discipline and that I would have to close the shop (was scheduled off 2hrs before close). I also had jury duty at noon.

That was a fun day.

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Another time, while on nights at my current job (field service engineer at a semiconductor plant) and was scheduled to come in at 18:00. For whatever reason, my alarm didn't go off and I slept until 22:00, at which point my wife burst into the bedroom panicking, thinking I was dead or something...

*A bit of background, my father-in-law is a manager in the same office as my manager. Wife and kids were spending the night at the inlaws. My manager called FIL due to my absence (unable to get a hold of me), who told my wife, who then booked it the 45 minutes home to see what was going on.*

...Anyway, I was abruptly woken up at 22:00, four hours late for work, with multiple messages and voicemails from my FIL, manager, coworker, and wife. I apologized profusely to everyone, went to work the rest of my shift, and no one has spoken of the incident since. Wasn't even written up. Nothing.

My senior year of high school.

I got home from school around 4 PM and immediately fell asleep.

Woke up about two hours later (I assumed) and went outside to run to the store.

Realized that the sun was setting in the east instead of the west.

Realized that the sun was actually rising, and it was the next day.

I had slept into the next day and had to go right back to school.

I missed a chance to lobby for more funding for my alternative school. The other classmates scheduled to go lobby that day still went. My principal was pretty mad at me.

I overslept and completely missed a flight, had to rebook everything.

When I was in college I had to go home for a doctor's appointment one day and so I had to take the 2 hour bus ride back to Chicago. I stupidly drank the night before and woke up later than I wanted. I didn't have a ride, so I had to walk to the gas station where the bus stop is, which was about 2-3 miles from campus and across a highway. It was really stupid of me, but it was early enough that there weren't any cars.

I'm about 100 feet away from the gas station and I see my bus pulling away. I chased after it but the driver didn't see me and he pulled onto the onramp. I had no choice but to sit at that gas station and wait 2 hours until the next bus came because there was no point walking back to campus.

I tried to pull an all nighter before one of my first finals in college. Exam was at 10am and around 8am I decided to head up to my dorm and take a quick little nap. I had set alarms and everything. Idk what happened but my roommates alarm woke me up at 10:02 (idk why it was set for that) and I leaped off the bunk and sprinted across campus to the exam room. It was only 10:09 and no one had turned their exam in yet so thankfully I was able to take it still all while sweating with an elevated heart rate. Biggest adrenaline rush and last time I ever tried to pull an all nighter.

Getting a phone call at work asking where I was because I wasn't there.

My alarm on my phone never went off.

Lost my job cause of that.

When I was in drama school, I had a long free period so I went back to my room and watched ‘Waiting for Godot’ and fell asleep by accident (I mean, it’s not the most riveting story). Woke up, realised my next class was starting and by the time I got to the studio, I wasn’t allowed in. It affected my perfect attendance and [I] had a meltdown (my drama school was *intense*).

It wasn’t an end of the world situation, but I’m very type-a when it comes to work or education. It was a big thing for me.

My attending had to take the call to see a patient. It did not go down well for me when I, in fact, woke up the next day.

I found five people outside my home waiting for me to open up. Four of them were there for a school group project with me and the last one was waiting for my ex who had promised to fix his computer. We forgot it had been daylights savings that night so we were an hour behind them.

I have a job where I see clients. I had a 2 hour break so I went home to prep my dinner. I sat on the couch and fell asleep. When I woke up, I’d stood up 3 clients. Didn’t even hear my phone when they were calling me. Luckily they were more worried than pissed because that is not like me.

My mom has a minor heart attack. Dad try’s to wake me gave up called an ambulance took her to emergency. She got into surgery. Meanwhile I woke up to an empty house and wondered where everyone was!
I am so ashamed of this phase of my life.

I failed two classes. Missed a flight and had to spend all of NYE alone in an airport on stand by. Significant other almost broke up with me early in our relationship. Missed appointments which cost me hundreds of dollars. I'm pleased to say all of these were over 10 years ago. It's not that I never oversleep now but I've developed some practices that help **and** I'm probably forgetting some.

At my first job, one night I forgot to set my alarm and overslept. I'd never been late to work before and was in tears, convinced I was going to be fired. My mom calmed me down and got me to work. No one even cared, so I panicked for nothing.

I once overslept and missed a job interview.

I had a final for my Ancient Greek History class. I went to bed that night a bit later than I should have, but I wasn't worried about missing it. So I wake up with my alarm, but as I'm pretty tired, I decide to close my eyes for a bit. Of course when I open them again, it's 9:27 (final starts at 9:30). If I miss this I fail, so I get dressed, grab a pencil, and immediately run to campus. I don't live that far, but I'm already late at this point, and I have zero energy to keep running. I end up pushing myself, make it up the stairs and to my class. The professor is super chill and hands me the test with a smile, and I sit down.

Unfortunately, as I rushed to get to the test, I didn't eat or drink anything. Having used up all of my energy, my body was in an awful condition. I need to get to a restroom, but I can't just leave the final, so I find the trash bin and start puking in the middle of a test. I felt awful at this point, and super embarrassed.

I end up being the last person to finish the test, but my professor doesn't make a big deal of it, which I greatly apricated. I ended up passing too, so I felt really good after. But for a solid hour that morning, I felt awful in every possible way.

I overslept for class one day, but plot twist - I was the teacher, at a high school, where we can get in trouble if something happens. Luckily the worst thing that happened is some of the kids texted their friends and so there were three randoms in the class when i walked in.

Once when I was a kid we forgot to change the clocks for daylight savings (pre-iPhone) and were an hour late for church, meaning we were walking in when everyone else was leaving. My mom was so embarrassed she made my sister and I hide in the bushes with her until we could go to that car without passing anyone we knew.

That’s probably not the worst thing; I’ve missed appointments and had to pay a cancellation fee. But that was the most dramatic thing.