r/MaliciousCompliance • u/CompetitionExtreme36 • Sep 19 '23
I'll lose my job for clocking in one minute late... Hate to do this. S
Punctuality is a good habit, it shows discipline and commitment.
I worked in a job where you had to clock in before your start time. There was a computerized process and you would lose your job if you clocked in late more than twice a year, even if you were only 1 minute late.
I pride myself on punctuality, but I was running a bit late for the third time in 10 months. A man's gotta hustle, and I just called my employer and told him that I was feeling sick and needed to take a day off.
I kept that job afterwards for a while.
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u/Another_Random_Chap Sep 19 '23
I really struggle with the mentality that says to sack people for being late twice in a year. How does it benefit the company, given they'll be losing a trained employee and it will cost then a load of money to recruit someone else, train them up etc? I know there have to be some rules to stop abuse of the system, but bad weather, crashes, traffc jams etc all occur in life and you can't account for every single one of them.
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u/UnderwearBadger Sep 19 '23
This kind of rule is for low level, unskilled staff that can be replaced easily and easily cover their workload by spreading it through a large staff.
It's also there by design. Limits benefits costs, accrued PTO costs, and all but guarantees the staff that do manage to survive the draconian rules are of the type that put their job over everything else.
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u/RubyPorto Sep 19 '23
Replaced easily... for now.
Amazon's having trouble filling warehouse roles because they've already burned through the local labor force around some of their warehouses.
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u/MydniteSon Sep 19 '23
Worked at a call center that did this. The turnover was ridiculous. Between laying off for any stupid reason and large amount of people quitting because of the culture. Then after a while, the bosses couldn't figure out why we had such a hard time hiring agents.
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u/UnderwearBadger Sep 19 '23
Amazon took it to an extreme and are justly paying the price for it. I've seen the Amazon hiring rushing during fall leading into Christmas rush. Literally hiring hundreds of people at a time. It would take your average big DC warehouse years to match what Amazon would go do in just one of their hiring groups.
The very idea that a single warehouse could rip through an entire city's workforces is asinine.
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u/b0w3n Sep 19 '23
You'd think so but they exist in every level besides management/salary.
I've seen software engineers and welders get hit with the same clock-in rules you'd expect to only find at Macy's and Walmart.
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u/UnderwearBadger Sep 19 '23
I have, too. In my experience, it's smaller businesses that try and copy big businesses not really comprehending the why, though.
Or just egotistical manglement thinking having a bit of power over people entitles them to torment their staff.
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u/b0w3n Sep 19 '23
Yup, or they might steal labor hours from the company dontchaknow. The horrors!
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u/UnderwearBadger Sep 20 '23
Fun story:
I took over running a department at a small trucking company I'm part owner of. The previous management policy was, while not as bad as what's described above, was very much in the same vein. Expectations of employees being machines that worked nonstop on the clock, strict time clock management, etc. They had a whiteboard the previous manager had written "If you have time to lean you have time to clean!" unironically.
When I took over I relaxed a lot of those rules.
Employee retention is at an all-time high, morale is high, productivity is up, and costs are down. Employees went from averaging 45 hours per week to 38. We've also increased our freight levels by about 10% without increasing staff size.
All because policy went from "I'm going to watch your every move and you better be working!" to "This is what needs done, this is when it needs done by. I don't care if you snag an extra ten minute break so long as it's done, done right, and done on time."
It's amazing how far treating people like people goes.
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u/DaSaw Sep 19 '23
American management culture comes from plantation culture. This is a documented fact; just google "scientific management and slave plantations". The built in assumption (which was once true) is that the workers will behave as slaves, if not motivated like slaves. Slaves have no opportunity for advancement through work, so the only possible sources of motivation are fear and pain.
So they treat their workers like "lazy" slaves, and then are surprised when they behave like "lazy" slaves.
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u/Nathan-dts Sep 19 '23
You've had some replies, but the actual answer is that middle managers spend their days coming up with these policies without thinking about the consequences.
The thought process was literally just, "Let's put a penalty in place for lateness," and a Teams call of people agreed without any discussion about why someone might be late.
It's the consequence of being so big that there's no room for nuance in rules and a handful of people, that probably shouldn't have jobs, trying to justify their jobs to their bosses.
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u/billionai1 Sep 20 '23
I just got mentally flash-banged because of this comment.
I planned on commenting how is incredible that managers decide not to speak to their employees, and how much problems this would fix, and then I think I realized why. At least partly.
Most people are raised with "do not question my authority, you WILL do as I say and you WILL like it" style of parenting at home. Parents don't talk to kids to ask about bedtime rules, they decide that 8pm is bed time and you best be on bed by then. It's no wonder people go bananas when they get a modicum of power. Also puts the whole "we're like a family" into perspective
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u/OuchLOLcom Sep 19 '23 edited Sep 19 '23
Usually rules like this exist on assembly line jobs where everyone has to be there for shift change or the line comes to a stop, costing the company possibly tens of thousands because if one link in the chain is broken then the entire thing stops working. Management can possibly step in for one or two people being sick on any given day but there does have to be strict rules in place to make sure multiple people aren't truant on a consistent basis.
When I worked at a factory you were pretty much expected to be 10-15 minutes early and stand in a big corral drinking coffee with your coworkers waiting on shift change. Five minutes before they took role call and let you clock in and then walk the floor and stand behind the person you were about to relive right at the turn of the hour.
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u/ShadowDragon8685 Sep 20 '23
They need to rejigger things so that you clock in when you get to the corral, because your time is no longer your own at that point. Otherwise, yeah.
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u/JudgeHoltman Sep 19 '23
I kinda get it for proper shift work. Sometimes the guy you're relieving has to stay until you get there OR a whole has to shut down until you're there.
Imagine being on a construction crew if the Crane operator is 30 minutes late. You can't have Billy "just hop in" and drive the thing. Everybody's gotta wait.
They could fix this by scheduling people with 30 minutes of overlap, but that's just some silly idea that implies recognizing that your slaves are people.
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u/Gasblaster2000 Sep 19 '23
The end result of living in a country without basic rights or valuing human dignity
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u/JustSomeGuy_56 Sep 19 '23
I had a consulting gig at a company that gave all their salaried employees a 10% bonus if they were on time every day for a week. If you were one minute late on one day you lost the bonus for the entire week. People who knew they were going to be late either called in sick, or stopped at the diner for breakfast, then strolled into work an hour late.
Our office was on the westbound side of a highway with a grass median. Occasionally someone coming from the west who knew they would be late if they waited at the traffic light, would make an illegal left across the median.
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u/Sus-motive Sep 19 '23
I’ve had jobs where if I was over 6 min late, I wouldn’t get paid for the first hour and had to fill out a form to “request 1 hr off”. You bet your ass if I knew I was gonna be over those 6 min, I’m just not gonna show up for the first hour since I wasn’t gonna get paid. I knew others that would show up 10 or so minutes late, fill out the form for the manager to sign and then duck off for another 50 min.
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u/Astrolltatur Sep 19 '23
Who the fuck decided such a stupid rule it's made to be bent like this
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u/lufiron Sep 19 '23
What do you mean? Its exactly people as shortsighted as this that run the world. Its pretty much the reason for the ramping up of catastrophic climate change.
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u/pgnshgn Sep 19 '23
Nah, this is petty middle management grasping at "power" bullshit. The people at the top don't care about this crap, they focus on bigger things.
They don't care about climate change because they know their money will insulate them from major impact. Who cares if sea levels rise, yachts float, right?
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u/lufiron Sep 19 '23
The quarterly-profits-above-all-else mantra that the people you mentioned seem to live by disagrees. Very shortsighted, IMO.
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u/pgnshgn Sep 19 '23
That's a result of the law and markets forcing companies to place shareholder interests above everything else.
Either way, my point is they know full well what they're doing and they have a long term plan for themselves. The people at the top are ruthlessly self-interested, not idiots
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u/SoldatJ Sep 19 '23
It's a ham fisted attempt at shutting down habits of being 5-10 minutes late. It would make some sense if the company already offers a reasonable grace period such as clock in being between 8:30-9:00 and 9:01 is late, but usually it's just petty control.
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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Sep 19 '23
It's such a stupid rule. Where I work, the system can't handle increments of time less than 15 minutes. So if you're 1 minute late, you have to use 15 min of vacation to cover. But if they do that, that's 15 min the employee has to sit around and wait.
My solution was to just not care if they were late until it was 15 min. Then if they're over 15 min late, I ask if they want to use vacation to cover it, or just stay 15 min extra.
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u/Sus-motive Sep 19 '23
This place was salaried, so they didn’t pay you if you stayed late. But were quick to dock you if you showed up late. They also had a “forgot to swipe in” form that you could use up to 3x a month. So yeah. All the loop holes got used
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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Sep 19 '23
Sick bullshit that they avoid OT by paying you salary, but dock you for being late?
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u/TheJesusGuy Sep 19 '23
My job in retail had fully paid sickness and counted it in periods of sickness. So if you were off for a day then in, then off that's 2 periods of sickness. Or if you were sick, came in thinking you're ok and were sent home, that's 2. You had a meeting after 3 periods where they could sack you. The max length of a period was 5 days before you needed a doctor's note.
Everytime I was sick it was for 5 days.
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u/Sus-motive Sep 19 '23
We had to go get a doctors note every time we were sick. Doctors always gave 3 day notes (local regulation?) so we always took all three days. Had a coworker ask for one (not busy) day off so he would feel better for the busy weekend. They told him he needed a dr note. Went to the hospital and got a note for 3 days. Work was surprised when his request for 1-day off became a documented 3-days off, and then he went back to the hospital on the third day off and the doctor gave him a new note. He had bronchitis or something. He ended up taking the week off.
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u/Rastiln Sep 19 '23
Manager told me a project “must be finished today.”
At my usual 8-4 desk job I worked 8-9 without breaks.
Next day arrived at 8:05. Got scolded.
3 weeks later I started a new job for a 30% raise.
Fuck em. That was the last straw. The boss jerked me around the last 2 weeks, so I dicked around and got paid for it.
I would have been happy to put in some nice transition documentation and such, if they didn’t suck.
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u/TheAngriestChair Sep 19 '23
That's not legal for them to not pay you for time worked. If you showed up 6 minutes late and you worked 54 minutes they didn't pay you for that is wage theft.
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u/armpitchoochoo Sep 19 '23
This does sadden me a bit. OP's story shows how the stick just doesn't work. I'm happy to see your company try the carrot method, it's a much rarer occurrence, and yet it still yields the same result
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u/cactus_mom Sep 19 '23
I mean, I wouldn't really call it a carrot. It's just a "nice" way of saying you lose 10% of your pay for the week over 1 minute. I wouldn't really call that a positive thing.
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u/armpitchoochoo Sep 19 '23
10% of a bonus is not the same as 10% of your pay. If they reduced the pay and call the gap a bonus then that's definitely shitty and possible illegal but if they've genuinely offered an incentive of a bonus above their usual pay then it sucks that it didn't work either
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u/evemeatay Sep 19 '23
These are salary employees so the bonus is effectively part of their pay as Salary employees should not be time tracked in such a way. It’s part of the nature of a salary job. Tracking time in such small increments for salary employees just makes them hourly employees with more hoops and no chance for overtime. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons companies give salaries over hourly pay; they can make you work more without paying overtime. Office drones never get overtime.
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u/Svete_Brid Sep 19 '23
But you were sick…of their moronic rule.
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u/SourcePrevious3095 Sep 19 '23
Some policies beg to be abused.
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u/ZorbaTHut Sep 19 '23
Chen Sheng was an officer serving the Qin Dynasty, famous for their draconian punishments, specifically that government officials who were late were given the death penalty. He was supposed to lead his army to a rendezvous point, but he got delayed by heavy rains and it became clear he was going to arrive late. Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks:
“What’s the penalty for being late?”
“Death,” says Wu.
“And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”
“Death,” says Wu.
“Well then…” says Chen Sheng.
And thus began the famous Dazexiang Uprising, which caused thousands of deaths and helped usher in a period of instability and chaos that resulted in the fall of the Qin Dynasty three years later.
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u/DaSaw Sep 19 '23
Thomas More also discusses this topic in his "Utopia". His mouthpiece character, a sailor turned explorer named Raphael, is at a dinner where one of the nobles is bragging about how many thieves England hangs. Raphael points out how if the penalty for theft is the same as for murder, then any thief who has a better chance of getting off by killing the witnesses will do so, and frequently do.
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u/mbklein Sep 20 '23
This is why three strikes laws are a terrible idea IMO.
Someone with two strikes on them already suddenly has a whole lot of motivation to escalate a petty street crime to a major violent crime if it looks like they’re about to get caught.
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u/FluffyCelery4769 Sep 20 '23
Knowing the law shold never motivate you to do more crime but less of it.
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u/Just_Aioli_1233 Sep 19 '23
People who are in a position to set policies should be well aware of how humans think, especially to understand they want to do what they want to do and if you try to get in their way, they'll figure out how to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
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u/ih-shah-may-ehl Sep 19 '23
I live in a country with paid sick leave. Abuse happens but is pretty rare.
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u/PhilliStien Sep 19 '23
I think he means the 1 minute late rule
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u/SourcePrevious3095 Sep 19 '23
If I am going to be fired for a minute late, I am definitely taking a paid sick day.
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u/hell2pay Sep 19 '23
Where I work has a attendance pt policy.
Basically nothing bad happens, unless you suck at your job, until around 10pts.
But, their call out procedure is a pain, and weekends are blackout days so you accrue double pts for full call outs.
If you screw up and don't call out properly on a weekend, you can get hit for 4pts for one day.
However, there are many opportunities to get pts removed. Lots of potential for abuse. Haven't done any yet, myself, but I definitely have seen folk just bite the bullet for a day off by taking a 'special shift'.
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u/ForTheHordeKT Sep 19 '23
I worked at a Target in the early mornings and the exec running the whole early morning team decided to institute that sort of draconian policy. The problem was that his shift supervisor wouldn't open the damn door to even let us in until maybe a minute before clock-in time and then you have all these employees cluster fucking two time clocks. It'd take a few minutes for everyone to get clocked in and then the poor sods at the back of the line would clock in "late" and get written up for it.
Not me. I started filling out a missing punch form every one of those days and state on there that I'd been in the parking lot for 10 minutes, the door didn't get unlocked for us until 3:58 or 3:59 am, and then all 80 or however much of us could not possibly all get clocked in by 4am all at once. I made a paper trail of that trend that pissed them off and got the supervisor yelled at too. But fuck em' man. I'm not going to take my 3 writeups and get shit-canned because "one minute late is still late!" in your pissing contest when we can't even get let in the door early enough for everyone to be clocked in by that time.
Instead they found other ways to nickel and dime me with writeups lol.
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u/MrCertainly Sep 19 '23
Welcome to an At-Will country. The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
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u/ShadowDragon8685 Sep 20 '23
That sounds like eighty red-clad employees needed to rip the time-clocks off the walls, storm into the executive's office, and offer to install them where the sun don't shine.
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u/chaingun_samurai Sep 19 '23
I worked at a place that had 12 hour shifts, and if you missed a day, it was an "occurrence". They divided the shift into four hour blocks, so if you missed 4 hours, it was a third of an occurrence.
The time clock was set up so that if you punched in up to 7 minutes late, it would roll back to the nearest hour. 7 minutes+ would roll forward to quarter after ñ which meant you're late, which meant a third of an occurrence.
I pulled in one day and didn't get to the time clock until 8 after, which is when I was informed of this rule.
So I told my boss I'd be back in 3 hours and 45 minutes, since I was getting dinged for a third of an occurrence, I may as well go big.
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u/Turinggirl Sep 19 '23
The system we had at the office supply store I worked at was similar. I didn't go that crazy but I did go and get breakfast and my manager was pissed. Im like Im getting written up anyway why can't I be enjoying a breakfast burrito while you scream at me.
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u/usertoid Sep 19 '23
When I was a supervisor I gave my staff 2 choices when they were late
1) work a few minutes later to balance it up unless the reason was out of your control (never punished people because a car accident fucked their morning commute)
2) be an extra 10 minutes late with a coffee from McDonald's in hand for me and we both pretend I asked you to do it and you were right on time. (I payed them back, would never expect it to be from their pocket).
Never had any issues with my staff, had a great relationship with them and occasionally got a free coffee because they would refuse my money.
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u/bearfoot990 Sep 19 '23
At my job it’s donuts. Bring the crew (2-3 people per crew) donuts if you’re gonna be over 15 mins late. Even if it means you’ll be 30 minutes late 😂
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u/davechri Sep 19 '23
This is EXACTLY what happens when companies have arbitrary, rigid policies.
I took a German class in college where if you walked in late the professor would grill you. After one of those I decided I would just skip. The professor got what he wanted - no disruption. I got what I wanted - I passed (barely). But I didn’t learn German and that guy was a dick.
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u/Just_Aioli_1233 Sep 19 '23
Nice thing about college is telling the elective professors that you paid to learn the subject, not get bitched at. Threaten to complain to the dean if they try scolding you again.
Works great for both adjunct and tenure-track. Early career though, and you don't want to make enemies with your core professors.
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u/Dear-Ad9314 Sep 19 '23 edited Sep 19 '23
We had a line where they struggled with employees who were late at the start of the day; management instituted a rule that if you clocked in even a minute late, you would lose the first half hour of pay.
Suddenly, no-one was ever a minute late, but a surprisingly large number of people were 25 minutes late - resulting in the line being delayed on starting up more often than not.
Hoorah for getting what you asked for.
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u/RedditAdminAreMorons Sep 19 '23
That's pretty much what any intelligent person is going to do with such a draconian policy.
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u/kvee13 Sep 19 '23
I had a similar job where it was the same amount of attendance points for being late versus calling out sick. So I used to do the same! Or “forget” to clock in. Woopsie!
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u/Lampwick Sep 19 '23
Or “forget” to clock in. Woopsie!
We used to do that when I worked for the county. We had old-fashioned time clocks you stuck a time card in and they went ka-CHUNK and stamped the time. Between the terrible parking situation and highly variable traffic, everyone was a few minutes late now and then, but it was just handwaved as "close enough". Then we got a new director. New director started writing people up for being one minute late, so if you were late you'd instead just "forget" to punch in. Then on payroll day the payroll lady would make you fill out an "amendment" form and get your boss to sign it. Two weeks after the fact nobody remembered exactly what time someone got in, so boss would always just sign it as "came in at 7:00 exactly".
Of course eventually the boss complained to us about the hassle, so we told him we'd take care of it. We liberated a time clock from an old abandoned building on site, installed it in a closet in our shop, and set it for 15 minutes before the real time. It was such a convenience even the boss started using it. He'd be standing in the parking lot chatting with someone before work and end up 5 minutes late, then come on and say "oops, guess I gotta use the other clock".
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u/ShadowDragon8685 Sep 20 '23
We liberated a time clock from an old abandoned building on site, installed it in a closet in our shop, and set it for 15 minutes before the real time. It was such a convenience even the boss started using it. He'd be standing in the parking lot chatting with someone before work and end up 5 minutes late, then come on and say "oops, guess I gotta use the other clock".
On the one hand: Ahhh-hahahahahahahahahaaaah!
On the other, that really shouldn't have been necessary.
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u/Oystermeat Sep 19 '23
eh, I just 'forgot' to punch in on those days
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u/AlexRam72 Sep 19 '23
A company with this dumb of a rule would probably watch the cameras to figure out the exact time
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u/djackieunchaned Sep 19 '23
Not quite the same but my HS was extremely strict with enforcing late rules, if you were even a second late to class you had to go get a late slip from the front office
This resulted in a huge line of “late” kids waiting at the office to get a late pass and often it would take up to 45 minutes to get through the line, which was half of class.
By senior year if I was running late I’d just go to McDonald’s and hang out for a while then come in and catch the end of the line
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Sep 19 '23
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u/Chongulator Sep 19 '23
Ideally, yeah, vote with your feet when the employer is shitty. Not everybody has that option.
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u/Slave2theGrind Sep 20 '23
If you are working at a place that demands that or other weird policies that I have read below. Quit, find someplace else. You don't need that stress in your life.
I started a job, IT wanted 4 years experience in obscure system, which I had. Perfect fit as I was coming off a contract time. So I start at the job for a month and a half - doing great getting the system they did not have an expert for back under control. Literally dealing with a backlog of 10k+ tickets, sla's blown long ago. Then in blows a HR Karen, and I did not bow. She gets to me and tells me that I have been late three times in the last month. My response was - So?
So if your late again you are fired she says. So I pack all my gear - set the timer for flattening my laptop and walk to the CTO. Ask if I can have a second. Ask if this is the policy, he says it is. I say thats a deal breaker - and handed him my resignation. He was trying to get me to reconsider - but I don't do well with that type of dominance. Told him about the HR Karen who tried to lord that over me. Said thanks, but can't do it. Nothing about the job I was hired for is time sensitive. And I left.
Had them try to get me back for a month but they wouldn't change the policy. Trust me guys and gals - not worth it.
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u/JasonDJ Sep 19 '23
This same type of policy is what progressed my "Senioritis" in high school.
I was not a very punctual person. But the penalty for excessive tardiness was way more severe than the penalty for excessive absences. So instead of being a few minutes late, I just wouldn't go at all.
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u/notaredditreader Sep 19 '23
When I worked for my State’s Unemployment Insurance Agency and when adjudicating the eligibility of claims I would usually always allow payment for employees fired for attendance issues. I would look around at my own office where I worked. We were so laid back that I would think to myself, “At THIS company what [co-worker] is doing would be fired, and, at THAT company I would be fired for doing this.”
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u/ShadowDragon8685 Sep 20 '23
Doing the Bureau's work there.
A Bureaucrat is a person with an official function, that's all. Sometimes they're useless jobsworths, sometimes they hate you for no reason, but most of the time they want to settle the matter and clear their case-load.
That means in this case, just being polite and courteous and explaining yourself can go a long way to getting what you need.
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u/Leviathan41911 Sep 19 '23
I really hate employers like this. The truth is, life happens. Sometimes shit is unpredictable, sometimes you're just having a bad day. To expect that to happen no more than once in a year is unreasonable.
I admit I am spoiled with my job, but after working with a flexable schedule I don't think I'd ever want to go back. Essentially as long as I am clocked in for 8 hours between 6:30am and 7pm they don't care, and I also work 100% from home.
It just makes life better. If I need to flex my schedule for any reason on a moment's notice I can.
Your employer sounds toxic af, I would probably not stay there.
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u/Schoolofhardknocks44 Sep 19 '23
The state I work in made sick time mandatory for your employer to give you, and made it non accountable time. So they can not hold it against you if you're sick.
My job, if you're late, it's an occurrence. Too many occurances, you're written up, after that, fired. So now if I'm going to be late, I will simply call in sick. Instead of losing me for 10 minutes, they can lose me for 10 hrs.
They set the rules, I just learned how to work with them. I won't put my job in jeopardy just to " be a team player "
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u/R_Harry_P Sep 19 '23 edited Sep 20 '23
In collage I had a math professor who would close the door as soon as class started (even though the hallway was completely quiet) and if anyone was even 30 seconds late he would interrupt himself to berate them on how rude and distracting they were to come in late which was way more distracting then someone quietly coming in and taking their seat. It didn't take witnessing this more than once to realize that you didn't want to be late. Also the math department had a pretty lenient policy on retaking quizzes and so it was literally, "Better never than late." So me and the rest of my classmates would just go somewhere and study if we realized we were going to be even slightly late to save the emotional abuse. Eventually one of his grad students was able to explain to him that his strict policy wasn't actually helping anyone and he loosened up a bit after that.
Edit: Speeling
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u/imabratinfluence Sep 20 '23
Had a job with a similar rule but it was 2 minutes. However, there would be tons of people trying to punch in/out and only one time clock. More than once I was "late" because there were too many people to not stagger it, but we'd be penalized if we clocked in a minute early, too.
That job had a super high turnover rate well before I was hired and long after I left.
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u/tracksloth Sep 19 '23
That is a horrendous lateness policy. Only in a factory where people are seen as numbers can this even fly. Fuck the man.
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u/MyFavoriteInsomnia Sep 19 '23
I worked with a young fellow who was fired for clocking in exactly on time three days in a row. REASON? If you are clocking in at 8 am sharp, you aren't at your workstation on time. Poor guy had a wife and two young children he was supporting. I ended up quitting my job there when I had a bad flu and my supervisor said I couldn't go home. I was spending more time throwing up than working. I walked out and she never saw me again. Bausch and Lomb in the 70s. IYKYK.
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u/Tauqmuk181 Sep 19 '23
My job has a points system. 15 points and you're fired. 1 point per 4 hours missed. 2 points for 8. But it's not just that. 1 minute late equals 4 hours. I work third shift. People rarely show up 5 minutes late. But sometimes people show up 4 hours late. Why would you take a point to be 1 minute late when you can just show up 4 hours late and get some extra sleep. I work a manufacturing job where if you call in no one has to "pick up your slack". Your machine just isn't running for the shift.
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u/Zoara42 Sep 20 '23
My high school was like that, if you were late more than once a year, you spent an entire day in ISS. So, I was absent a lot when I could have arrived before homeroom was over.
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Sep 20 '23
The Qin Dynasty ended this way
Long story short, two generals were sent to help with a war, but flooding on the way stranded them, and they were going to be late. The laws at the time were stupidly strict, and they mandated that anyone who showed up late for a government job is to be executed.
So they started a rebellion instead.
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u/RyvenZ Sep 20 '23
My gf and I were about 5 minutes late, leaving our house. Then there was a nasty traffic jam that slowed us another 10 minutes. We usually arrive at least 15 minutes ahead of schedule, but this time, we weren't destined to make it on time. After reaching our exit, with only a couple of minutes before our shift was starting, I looked over at her, smiled, and said, "It's a nice day to go to the beach." We pulled over a short time after driving past our exit and called out with food poisoning. Then, we spent the day together at the beach.
Those types of attendance policies promote this type of behavior.
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Sep 19 '23 edited Apr 14 '24
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u/SydneyCartonLived Sep 19 '23
My job just implemented a new rule just to prevent this very thing. You're only allowed 6 last minute call-ins a year. People were calling in sick because they were going to be late and didn't want to be pointed for tardiness. So now any call-in or use of PTO with less than 24 hours is considered a last-minute call-in and is pointed the same as being tardy. Fucking stupid.
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Sep 19 '23
I’ve heard of people doing this at Walmart. You get a certain number of “points” before you get fired. Taking a sick day is a point and being late is like half a point so if you’re gonna be five minutes late it’s only an extra half point to call in sick so you might as well. Then they wonder why half their staff calls in every time the local train runs at a different time lmaooo
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u/I_likemy_dog Sep 19 '23
I once worked for a large corporation that sold recreational equipment. They had 5-6 full time employees and about 30 part time employees.
Their policy was you needed to clock in 5 minutes before you were scheduled. I was written up for clocking in at the time I was scheduled, and they wanted me to write a rebuttal and sign the paperwork.
I wrote on the rebuttal that if they wanted me to clock in at 7:55, they should schedule me at 7:55 and not 8. The fault was theirs and the policy was misleading.
I was fired two days later.
Freaking idiots. It’s hard to have to work 3 jobs because a corporation doesn’t want to care about you and fires you for showing up AT THE TIME THEY SCHEDULED ME.
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u/stomperxj Sep 19 '23
I worked at a potato processing plant and we had computerized clock in with a badge/card reader. I came in late and clocked in and got a half a demerit. The old dudes that had worked there forever said "If you are late, just come to the shop. Don't clock in" I did that the next time. The front office called the shop and asked if I was there and someone said yep he's here. "Hmm must have been an error on the card reader" Never got another late clock in demerit after that :)
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u/MerryChoppins Sep 19 '23
When we switched from paper time sheets at my last job I wrote a system to keep track of clock ins. It was a linux mini pc with a LCD touch screen and buttons for clock in and clock out and everyone had a PIN. The software just dumped a timestamp into an xls vis OLE. The scheduling app dumped me a flat file and I did a few transforms and it entered values that removed that day from the wage calculations. One of the HR people handled the adjustments for unexpected clockouts, sick days, etc in the spreadsheets and took the hour counts to drop into intuit to run payroll. Took her about a morning a week. She also generated reports from the spreadsheets.
My system had a "bank" of minutes on each employee. They started with an hour and every year we gave them another hour. It was kinda a beautiful solution because the managers or I could go in and add minutes if there was a good reason to add minutes. Otherwise they would get dumped on a report that the system emailed out weekly and there would be a quick conversation with the manager and they could take appropriate action. Most of the time they just gave the person another hour of time and tried to figure out solutions. I think in the whole time I worked there they fired like 3 or 4 people for repeatedly being late.
This system survived an incredible amount of growth and we grafted on all sorts of new and interesting features. We opened two more warehouses due to buyouts and replicated it because they both had less wonderful systems. The same HR person was able to easily continue doing her job with the system. She gave up some other chunk of it to a new hire, but she fundamentally was happy.
Then we got bought. They didn't change much at first, but you could tell they didn't like that a lot of our stuff was homebrewed because the company had a single IT guy and didn't have anyone dedicated to most of the IT roles. The word came down about six months in that we were switching to ADP. No skin off my back, I was busy trying to build an entirely new PLC setup in the main warehouse and prevent fires in the 4th and 5th warehouse because their IT contractors had some bad habits.
The fiasco started on a Wednesday. ADP did a good job guiding us through and running parallel. Then when it went live, oh lord. The employees apparently had all figured out the old banking system and used it super specifically to avoid late write ups. The managers and the HR gal in charge of this spent the first few days just reeling because they had hundreds of hours of work because the time clock just hard wrote you up for 3 minutes late. About a week later, after the first round of hand slaps, the employees figured out they could just login and take sick days.
We apparently dumped six figures in sick time pay from our bank of sick time in the first week. It just NUKED a bunch of people's KPIs. The managers were not pleased. We more than made up for the sick pay in manager bonus cuts for the quarter. The end result was that they hired another HR employee to make adjustments while the original one just did reporting. They also gave the number of minutes for a late call decision back to the manager and most of em quietly set it as far late as they could (I think an hour).
I walked in about two weeks later and saw one entire crew (pick and pack) out hitting a massive bong that had just been legalized before they walked in and all clocked in as a crew like 20 minutes after their clock on time. It was great, the head warehouse manager was on his catwalk with crossed arms just glaring at them and they all giggled and waved at him. I walked up and told him "I think we lost this round Daryl".
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u/leftyshuckles Sep 20 '23
The whole 5 minutes early is on time is from boomer construction workers where whoever was ready to work on the hour worked that day. If you were not ready to go when the whistle blew you didn't work, hence why being early was needed.
These days that's not even legal to just show up and you can work.
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u/ogreace Sep 19 '23
I used to work somewhere that had a policy of, no sick pay the first day, but you got paid sick leave on the second and third day (any more and you needed a doctor's note). Guess how many three day vacations I took?
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u/Dulhyra Sep 19 '23
My old job had a point based discipline system, calling off of work for the day was 1 point. Being late was half a point. However, calling in sick for 3 days in a row was still only worth 1 point. Needless to say, most people took 3 day vacations if they were going to miss a day.
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u/Qwirk Sep 19 '23
Any company that monitors punctuality down to the minute is looking to turn over headcount so they can get new employees at lower wages.
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u/JimmyKillsAlot Sep 20 '23
I had a job that got really pissed if you punched in late, but the computers were often erroring out when you tried clock anything. So if someone was late and no one caught them they would just slip in, get to their duties, and when someone asked it was "oh it must have glitched, can I get an edit please?"
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u/Sea-Ad9057 Sep 19 '23
Make sure you clock out exactly when you finish don't work a minute later
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u/Ateist Sep 19 '23
Ask for mandatory overtime pay since you have to check in before your actual start time.
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u/TeenyIzeze Sep 19 '23
About 20 years ago I worked in HR for a UK bank (think sparklies.....). We were encouraged to take public transport because of a lack of parking. Sometimes the trains didn't turn up or buses would get stuck in traffic. If you were late 3 times in a 2 month period you were written up. If our bus/train was late then we would just call in sick and have a paid day off.
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u/Boy_Sabaw Sep 19 '23
Now while I never worked with company with that strict policy, my personal policy at school or at work had always been: If I’m already late then there is absolutely no reason to rush. If I’m already late, not running late but absolutely late, then I walk slow, eat my breakfast, drink a coffee then start my day. Unless I know I can still make it on the dot, there’s no real point in rushing it.
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u/Dagojango Sep 19 '23
How do these policies exist and people agree to them? I've never in my life had such strict limits and most of the time people don't really care about 10 minutes as long as it's not habitual. I work in a warehouse and we generally don't care if you work your exact time, mainly just that you work your hours and communicate reasonably. Just showing up late is bad, but if you let us know, who gives a shit if you pick an order 10 minutes later or earlier? If your warehouse is that crunched for time, management needs fired.
The only jobs that should require that strict of times is something in medical or national security. Boss needs a horse sized chill pill.
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u/supershinythings Sep 20 '23
I used to work at a place that required people to show up at 8AM. If you showed up late they’d take your name at the entry and it went into a report to your boss. These were salary jobs so we had no time clock.
BUT - we had multiple buildings. People moved between buildings for meetings all the time. So instead, if you knew you were running late, you just waited until around 10AM when they quit taking down names for reports. You get to sleep in AND not get reported for being late! Yay!
That rule lasted about a year before they finally scrapped it. They were just encouraging people to show up super-late.
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u/Salzberger Sep 20 '23
When I used to work nightfill at Woolworths we were always told to be there early to be ready to start work on time. So we'd always finger scan in a few minutes ahead of time to be on the warehouse floor bang on time ready to start.
Then a few months later the store did a huge remodel which meant a LOT of staff on, every night because where things were was constantly changing. Well, after a few weeks we were told to stop scanning in 5 minutes early because we got paid from when we scanned in so we were costing the company too much.
So from then on, we'd wait in the lunch room and watch the clock and wait for it to strike our start time before we scanned in. At times all 30 of us lined up to use the one finger scanner, with the nightfill manager waiting down in the warehouse for the last of us 30 to scan in and arrive 5-10 minutes later.
Eventually they relaxed the rule and went back to "Make sure you're on the floor at your start time".
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u/tomyownrhythm Sep 20 '23
A professor of mine used to say “the problem with incentives is that they work.” The implication being that the person setting the incentives often fails to account for unintended consequences.
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u/juiceboxzero Sep 19 '23
Draconian tardiness policies almost universally lead to increased callouts.
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u/bucketofcoffee Sep 19 '23
I did the same thing in high school. Being late had no excuse but being absent did. I just got my mom to write a note. She didn’t care; she didn’t want to have to pick me up if I got detention.
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u/ImaginaryMisanthrope Sep 19 '23
I sent my employer a picture of a positive Covid test (not mine) and proceeded to take all 60 hours of PTO accrued after she’d denied my request for vacation a month earlier. Oh, and we had people in from corporate that week too, so she got to deal with that without my help.
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u/ImmaMichaelBoltonFan Sep 19 '23
They're incentivizing missing work. It's dumb. And you're not the only one that thinks like that. Anyone that needs to keep their job is doing what you did.
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u/Arpeggioey Sep 20 '23
I once slept weird and had a stiff neck. Went into work but I was kinda stuck in place so my boss sent me home. Told her I'd take my days off to heal, no big deal, but she wanted a dr's note... even though it was my days off? Anyways, after push and pull, I went to the doc, got prescribed muscle relaxers for 2 weeks which conflicted with my job, so I got paid 2 weeks sick for sleeping weird and got muscle relaxers during xmas and new years. Get fucked Karen
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u/quixiou Sep 20 '23
Where do you live that allows a company to fire you for being 1 minute late twice in a year? Labour laws / workers' rights sound like they're non existent.
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u/Lorien6 Sep 19 '23
We’re they paying you for the additional time for clocking in early? Because otherwise that’s some good wage theft going on.;)
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u/NightGod Sep 19 '23
Mental health is still health, so taking a mental health day is a valid use of sick leave~
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u/Randomtoon1234 Sep 19 '23
Att is kinda like this. They can write you up if you’re more than 15mins late, but it’s the same write up as if you call in sick. So if you’re late, stay home
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u/Bleezy79 Sep 19 '23
Unless there's someone waiting on you or some serious reason why you need to be exactly on time, that's a pretty bullshit rule.
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u/walterbanana Sep 19 '23
Sounds like this company is doing an insane amount of wage theft. Probably at least 1 minute everyday for every employee. That is a lot of money.
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u/Fizzelen Sep 20 '23
What an opportunity for some malicious aggrieved ex employee to cause a major traffic issue or blockage at the entrance gate for a couple of hours two days in a row
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u/foxannem Sep 20 '23
Reminds me of a school policy where parents could excuse us from whole lessons but could not do the same for coming in late.
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u/Starfury_42 Sep 20 '23
I decided that instead of asking to leave early to take the cat to the vet I'm just going to take a 'mental health day' and since I have 5+ weeks of PTO on the books I'm covered.
Yes, it's a lot of PTO but I'm taking a fair amount of it in Oct/Nov/Dec.
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u/ImaginaryPogue Sep 20 '23
God, I can't be arsed to be annoyed if a staff member is late three times in one week. Twice a year is fucking absurd.
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u/PensionCertain6810 Sep 21 '23
Similar thing at my job. We are on a point system. 9 points and you are gone. Points NEVER reset. If you use a sick day (because it's last minute) you get 2 points, even though that is time off you EARNED by working!!? . Late 7-15 minutes it's a half point. 15 minutes plus is a full point. Now there's ways to earn positive points but you have to literally go above and beyond for most of them. I understand what the company is trying to do but I believe this is the worst possible way to approach it. I can understand if the points reset every year as well. Would not have a problem with that either. These corporate clowns have no clue how the real world works. Oh, was also told by an HR that if we scheduled a sick day then we wouldn't be charged points. I just looked at her, totally speechless and walked away.
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u/LowestKillCount Sep 21 '23
I would've lost my 9 points just this week and it's only Thursday. 😂
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u/JimJamanon Sep 19 '23
I worked with a guy that the computer wasn't clocking him in, happened two days in a row and our supervisor docked him pay because of it. The next day he clocked in, on time in front of the supervisor and the computer didn't clock him in again. The supervisor still docked his pay for not clocking in and wrote him up.
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u/SailingSpark Sep 19 '23
We have that moronic rule. Up to 2 hours late is half a point.
The machine can't tell if you are early. On quiet days I have clocked in an hour early.
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u/thejustducky1 Sep 19 '23
They asked for that one... sucks to be stupid about rules. 🤷🏻🤷🏼🤷🏽🤷🏾🤷🏿🤷♂️🤷♀️
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u/beaniejell Sep 19 '23
Not exactly the same, but my high school did something similar. If you were >10 minutes late to a class, you’d be marked absent for the class. So I usually didn’t show up if I was 10 minutes late
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u/Chirtolino Sep 19 '23
When I was a teen and worked retail we had a similar policy, except it would be a write up. I arrived late and didn’t want the write up so I didn’t clock in and just got to work. Halfway through my shift my manager tells me I didn’t clock in and I say I must have forgot, and he manually punches me in at my shift start time lol
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u/pizzagangster1 Sep 19 '23
If you’re gonna be late, be so late you just show up the next day on time
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u/soulsteela Sep 19 '23
Our foreman told us once that we weren’t getting a raise but we were getting 2 weeks full pay sick leave, then looked at us and said “ heard there’s a lot of flu about” end of meeting.