You know your least reliable framing contractor — the one that has an unending series of increasingly implausible excuses? Will people still be talking about him in thousands of years? 

It seems unlikely, and yet that is what happened to poor Pennub, who took a single day off work in 1250 BCE Egypt because his mom was sick. He’s being called out on a blog in 2026 CE.

Pennub was listed alongside 40 other Ancient Egyptian construction workers and their various no-show reasons on a workman’s register now in the British Museum. To be fair to Pennub, we have no reason not to believe him. He was probably just being a very good son. 

As was his fellow worker, Hehnekhu, who took two days off to assist in his mother’s mummification — an excuse which really only works once. 

We hear of the wealthiest and most powerful Egyptians being mummified, but the practice was much more widespread. The one-percenters of Ancient Egypt got the full 70-day organ-removing process, but middle-class families like Hehnekhu’s got by with a simpler cedar oil injection embalming. Poorer families used even lower-cost methods. Money has divided the classes since the start.

Beer, on the other hand, has united them. Several of the Egyptian workers took time off to help brew beer, which was then an essential food for the whole family, a form of payment, and a divine gift — all important enough to justify time away from work. Still true today, though the person signing your paycheck may disagree.

We can assume that Huynefer, who was recorded taking repeated days off for “suffering with his eye” was not bleary-eyed on overly-strong beer, but dealing with an infection or injury. Unsurprising given that PPE at the time was probably limited to a safety squint. 

The scribe he reported to, having spent his life honing a very rare skill, must have sometimes expressed a little cynicism: “Ten years of scribal training, Huynefer, and you want me to write down ‘my eye hurts’? Again?” 

Keeping careful track of who was working where, which materials were on hand and which needed sourcing, and reporting back to the guy who would, in some cases, eventually be buried inside the thing you were building, was a vital role only a scribe could complete. Written records let everyone involved understand what was happening and what was next.

3,000 years later

The excuses haven’t changed too much. In Ancient Egypt, one worker reported a scorpion bite keeping him off the tools. Just a decade ago, one Aussie tradie, Jordan, was sent to hospital on two separate occasions by a spider bite to a particularly sensitive area. There’s probably not an existing category in the attendance tracking software for that particular injury.

Maybe writing down those excuses is still one of your jobs today, alongside the hundred other things you do to keep everything running. Hopefully you’re using time clock software instead of flakes of stone, and mummification-leave is rarely a modern concern, but otherwise you’d have plenty in common with Pennub to discuss over an oatmeal beer or three at the end of a shift.

Managing skilled labourers who have demands on their time outside of work, keeping track of complex logistics, handling clients with simultaneously very strong opinions and very unclear ways of expressing them… the work has been fundamentally unchanged by the passing of millennia.

What has changed are the tools. You don’t need to send someone out for more limestone to keep on top of the record keeping, even though many companies still struggle by on creaky punch card systems or manually updated spreadsheets. 

The owner of Brick House Bakery, Vincent Zaba, initially used an honor system and an Excel sheet to keep track of his employees’ hours and leave requests. “I had to print that (schedule) every week and hang it on the board. It was so much work.”

He soon found it became unmanageably time consuming. “One day, I just got tired of it.” Since moving to Buddy Punch, Vincent has regained hours of his working week. 

Just write it down

Writing things down and keeping track of worker hours isn’t about distrust or micromanaging people. Having good, consistent, agreed records is how you make sure the right people get paid the right amount — and that everyone is covered by insurance. Good records let you understand later why the project took the time it did and help you decide what to charge for your next project. 

We know Pennub looked after his mom because someone took the time to write it down. It doesn’t matter whether it’s carved in stone or logged on a phone. You should do the same.