Excuses to Skip Mandatory Training

Mandatory training arrives once a year and always at the worst possible week. Fifty minutes of video about a topic that could be four bullet points, followed by a quiz that asks whether you should share your password with a stranger who has emailed you in a hurry. The deadline is Friday. Everyone completes it on Friday. The important distinction is between skipping the session and skipping the module. The live session is a scheduling problem and can be moved, deferred to the recorded cohort, or taken next Tuesday with the group who also had a clash. The module itself is a compliance record with your name on it, and the only sensible approach is to do it properly rather than click through it while half-listening to another call, because phishing training you didn't absorb is worse than no phishing training at all: it gives everyone a false sense of coverage. Also worth knowing: a surprising share of overdue training is a licensing problem rather than a person problem. The dashboard says incomplete, the platform says complete, and the prerequisite module never unlocked. Say that out loud and someone in IT will fix it. Below are ten excuses to skip mandatory training sessions, plus twenty in the generator.