Calling In Stupid of the Day: A staff member at the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management managed to tack on an extra week to her school-sanctioned spring break by convincing her employer that her daughter had died.
Parent coordinator Joan Barnett fooled the school by having one of her daughters phone an official and claim her sister had died of a heart attack in Costa Rica, requiring Barnett to travel there for the funeral.
Barnett went the extra morbid mile and forwarded the school a forged death certificate — a document which is required prior to the approval of bereavement days.
According to an investigator, a school official raised a red flag after spotting discrepancies in the certificate’s font alignment. A phone call to the Costa Rican government confirmed the certificate was a fake.
However, faced with the fact, Barnett doubled down, insisting her daughter was dead, and providing a second forged certificate as proof.
Unwilling to go as far as actually killing her daughter for the sake of her case — rookie mistake — Barnett had no choice but to plead guilty to misdemeanor forgery and exit stage left.
[nydn.]