In this week's discussion, I'd like to discuss the issue with excuses. Before I start, let me just say, I'm not one of those individuals who believe that there is no such thing as a "valid" excuse that, everything comes down to a personal choice/act/etc. There are "valid" excuses in life, unplanned accidents, are "valid" excuses, even those that you could have "planned" for.
For example, say that you are headed to work & it takes you 15 minutes with traffic. You leave 25 minutes before your start time. On the way, you get a flat, and then you can't get the lug nuts off because they are too tight, so you have to call AAA and now are waiting for them. You end up being over an hour for work. Could your tardiness have been avoided? Maybe if you left 2 hours prior to your start time. However, that isn't practical, to give up 90 minutes of our time for a just-in-case scenario. What occurred in the above situation was an accident, a random occurrence that while it may occur again, is less likely to occur than occur. This is a "valid" excuse for being late to work (although depending on your work/boss, they may disagree).
What about an "invalid" excuse? A similar same situation as above: you leave 25 minutes before work (typically takes 15 minutes) however you know that you need to get gas. You pull into the gas station and notice there are lines of cars (only 4 pumps) and when it is your turn, the card reader at the pump is broken, so you have to go in and prepay. All this causes you to be 10 minutes late. When you're asked why you're late, instead of saying that the reason is that the night before you "chose" to not get gas before you headed home, you instead blame it on the gas station (not enough pumps, broken reader, slow cashier, etc).
This is perfectly normal because as humans, we don't want to accept blame, admit fault, so when we need an excuse, we find one. In fact, it is actually amazing the excuses we can find and convince ourselves. While this may sound great (not being at fault), it doesn't allow us to learn and hence grow. If a rare occurrence that would be difficult or impractical to plan/prepare for happens, then you are more than justified to explain the situation as your explanation, ie excuse. Just be leary of what is a true excuse and what is simply avoiding blame/punishment/judgment/etc.
