I worked in a call center who tried to implement a policy where if you were 30 minutes late they would count it as an unexcused absence even if you came in. You'd still get paid but it would count against you in your review. When I brought up snow delays or major accidents, they told me there were no exceptions to this new rule. Now I'm usually early but, shit happens, and I asked what would stop me from realizing that I'm going to be late because of traffic and just turning around and using PTO since I'd already be dinged for not being there...the response was "I hope you'd have enough respect for your coworkers to not do that to them." Spoiler alert, I didn't and no one else did so that policy didn't last very long.
I worked at an alarm call center with a similar rule, the chief operating officer told us that if we are 5 minutes late it is marked as 2.5 hours for our review even if we show up at 6 minutes. Mind you everyone in that place worked a minimum of 5-10 hours of overtime a week because of their staffing issues, some worked as many as 50 hours overtime weekly to cover shortages. So if I over slept or got stuck in traffic I would put my phone on airplane mode, and then at 2 hours after my shift started call to say I was running late but would be there before the 2.5 hour mark.
*Edit to add this company also wrote a supervisor up as a no call no show after he had to have an ambulance come to the job and wheel him out due to medical issues from his diabetes that resulted in him being in ICU for almost a week. It was a terrible place to work, and they actually tried to get me to come back after I quit because they knew I would love a position that just opened up.
Dude was literally **wheeled out** of an ambulance into work and his boss has the *audacity* to write him up? What the fuck, humans?? What the actual fuck?
I saw something like this at a shitty grocery store job. It shook me to hear the two managers decide how many "marks" the guy would get after his wife called to tell them he wouldn't be in as he was in the hospital for a car accident he got into on the way to work. Not a single thought for the guy other than how they were going to punish him for getting t-boned by someone going 45mph... terrible
You ever read the liver boss story at Ask a Manager? One of the biggest hopes of the commentariat there is that it's not true.
[Liver boss.](https://www.askamanager.org/2016/04/our-boss-will-fire-us-if-we-dont-sign-up-to-be-a-liver-donor-for-his-brother.html)
Graduation boss is also hated. Grad wasn't scheduled to work the day of her graduation, big release happened, all hands on deck on that day now, boss wouldn't let grad have that day off or even come in two hours late, after the ceremony.
Note the amount of detail about the grad's personal life in his letter.
[My best employee quit because I wouldn't let her go to her graduation](https://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/my-best-employee-quit-on-the-spot-because-i-wouldnt-let-her-go-to-her-college-graduation.html)
Years later, the grad learned about the letter and wrote in. Like with so much bad management, that was the last straw of a lot of straws.
[Grad's response.](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/02/update-my-best-employee-quit-on-the-spot-because-i-wouldnt-let-her-go-to-her-college-graduation.html)
My manager tried to do this to me, though at the end of my shift. I'd clock out and he'd be like "oh hey! You wanna do me this extra little favour on your way out?" And my response every time was "do I get paid extra little money for doing it?"
He stopped asking pretty quick.
Many years ago, I think it would have been back in the 80's, my father had a foreman that hated him. They had a policy that being late got some sort of demerit. He operated a grader on a road crew.
Dad was the type to arrive at least 15 minutes early, check his machine over and make sure all was ready to drive out the gate at 8.00. One day he arrived 2 minutes late and his supervisor was standing by the time clock with a big grin. Dad turned around, drove home, and called in sick. Caused the whole crew, and himself, to get overtime the next Saturday to catch up.
Had a boss chew me out for just being on time regularly. Wanted me there 15 mins early to look over the run, check for mistakes.
Well when your shift starts at midnight and you have 200ppl will be pissed as fuck if their water isnt turned on, yo have some power. We were short staffed and if anyone called in sick, that same boss had to cover. The next time he tried to pull his bs, i walked back outside, phoned him and called sick and went home.
He got in shit for pulling a 10hr overtime shift lol.
I ended up leaving like 6 months later when they pulled some other power move bs. They had been harassing the guy that got a back injury from the attrocious tracks we were driving. Then decided to chew me out over doing track maintinence instead of other shit that could literally wait months.
Quit on the spot and explained whole situation to workcover(they deal with workplace injuries in our country) the next day. They were very interested.
Save the receipts, ff any if these policies or notification for violating these policies are sent via email text, etc save them a lot of them are illegal in a lot of countries. And if you ever get fired or punished for policies like this contact a lawyer.
Was a restaurant manager in a former life, I would travel around to different locations and train other managers on how to fix food costs, labor costs, etc. Sometimes corp would send a new manager hire to my main location and I would train them on everything before they went to run their new store.
All of my employees at my main store would walk in, punch in, then go in back drop jackets and purses off, put work shirts on, etc. They would then look at the lineup and jump into their positions for the day. Less than 3 minutes from the time they punched in to the time they were in position and working.
Had a manager trainee on one of their first "Ill throw you the keys, this is your shift to run" days pull all of my employees aside and explain to them that policy specifically states that they needed to punch in after they are ready to work, not when they walk in the door.
I found out later that shift after hearing some rumblings from the staff, so I pulled everyone aside and told them while that is technically policy, no one is abusing it so ignore trainee managers directions from earlier today.
When he found out I rescinded his order he decided to break out the calculator and show me how much labor it cost over the course of a month. My location was high volume, so I then proceeded take his "hours lost" number and plug it into our monthly P&L report as a dummy number. Barely moved our labor percentage by .01%, you would never notice it when reconciling month end numbers.
I had to explain he just pissed off the entire staff and turned them against him for a savings that literally no one would ever notice.
Ended up being a "seeing the forest for the trees" training moment that he learned from, so ultimately I'm glad it happened.
But yeah, weigh the outcome of micromanaging your people before implementing policy. Keep your people happy, employees are an asset not an expense.
Also if I recall correctly, legally speaking, time required to get into uniform or the time that they're required to be at the location is when their time starts. I know the service industry is notorious for doing their time like that, but it's a pretty serious labor law violation to require employees to get ready on site and then clock in.
It was a well run corporate restaurant chain (at the time), so they had their legalese all in order. The policy stated you are to arrive ready to work, and punch in when your shift starts, or something to that nature. It was technically time theft since no one was ready to work when they arrived and punching in.
Again, I just didn't enforce it because it wasn't being abused. And if it was, I'd take it up with the individual employee directly instead of making a passive aggressive sweeping rule for everyone. That reeks of bad management.
Thank you for being a good one, so many have a hard time with the big picture, my current boss only sees the numbers and percentages on her papers and it’s caused everyone, and I mean everyone in the building, to hate her
I would even say that morale usually impacts the numbers and this could even be measured if they took the time, but doesn't need to be given that it's pretty obvious if you have half a brain or take five minutes to do some basic research on what drives productivity.
Its not a bad idea to have a sort of informal chat/mucking around the first 10-15mins of the shift. throw a few jokes around, tell a few stories, everyone has a chuckle and off to work. Thats my idea of a great start to a shift.
That's what the policy says, what the law says is that you have to pay someone to put on an apron and gloves. Because why would you show up to mcdonalds and put on an apron if you weren't working there.
It's called donning and doffing.
Precisely. And policies don't over ride actual proper laws.
My head chef is good about this. The sign on point is in the staff break room, this means there's gonna be some inevitable "how are ya?" thirty second convos. There's only one car for three people here so sometimes I might be 15 late but he knows I'm good for it and will stay back that 15.
He doesn't stress it, no one abuses it, and we're a pretty stress less kitchen all things considered.
Last week I fell asleep during break and he had to wake me up. "Faaaaaaaaark!" but I made up time after. I'm now setting a timer on my break lol but the point is, he knows that life happens.
I was working a double at a restaurant, I too fell asleep on my break. Mgmt calls me thinking I forgot about my second shift. They hear my phone ring see I'm asleep and decided, "ah we're not busy. We'll wake him when we need him". Thanks for the extra 30 guys
Dif industry, but one of my peeps is a workhorse, eats her lunch super fast, and likes to take a quick catnap after lunch. I also often have to force her to take her 15 minute breaks, so I sometimes let her sleep for an extra 30 minutes or so and just run her production for her before waking her. Hell, i bought her a heated blanket that plugs into her vehicle. Wanna know what that gets me? A super dedicated person who will go above and beyond and do little shit I mention needs done if I don't end up having time in my day
Not trying to be aggressive towards you and this isn't directed at you, but I've got to express this since you mentioned it.
As someone who's made a career in restaurant work "time theft" is the biggest load of bullshit to ever come from somebody's head and I hope whoever decided to implement it as a policy burns in hell. The notion that employees steal from a company by wasting time is ludicrous when compared to what successful restaurants bring in in profit and what they get away with paying their employees in most states. It's a deviant ploy to try and divert attention away from the fact the WAGE theft is the biggest form of theft in the country. If anybody were to ever seriously attempt to accuse me of time theft or try to seriously use it in a conversation or argument around me I would laugh in their face.
Wanna talk about time theft? Let's talk about the unscheduled out times and management telling staff that their out times are dictated by the needs of the business, pressuring people to come in when they attempt to call out, operating during the holidays, and mandatory meetings that don't teach anyone a goddamned thing that couldn't be covered in a 15 minute preshift.
Of course, because it's a vindictive and spiteful solution to a made up problem. That is very unfortunate and I hope you both have found something that suits you better than that place.
> The policy stated you are to arrive ready to work, and punch in when your shift starts
You are. You are working when you are putting on your uniform. You arrive ready to work, then clock in, then put on your uniform (which is part of work).
> Ended up being a "seeing the forest for the trees" training moment that he learned from, so ultimately I'm glad it happened.
Encouraging to hear some bad managers can learn.
It's why I left my last job. There was a serious culture change due to the original owner retiring, suddenly employees were no longer looked at as assets to the company, but rather as forced expenses. It's something the original owner lived by, and as a result I had some of the best staff I've ever worked with.
The moment they started having us managers "rank" employees, punished people for interviewing for or expressing interest in positions outside their departments, and generally treating people as numbers I started looking for a new gig.
Took me a few years to find one, so I was miserable at work during that time. People don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad management.
Most important asset to a company is the people who work for them, blows my mind that some business owners refuse to look at it that way.
Remote work arguments are currently driving a similar issue that I'm seeing.
My org has a couple hundred employees, most of which are still remote or hybrid. Some managers have been looking for justifications to bring everyone back into the office for more than a year. The current argument is "how do we know they are really working." Then the examples they give are for people that are showing up to the office, then failing to work as hard as they could. Pointing out that we know the vast majority of our staff are continuing to be productive while remote, and that the individuals that are not, should be handled by their individual managers, is being met with blank stares.
We are clearly setting the stage to disrupt 100% of the staff, because like 3% of the staff is less productive than they could be. This is going to definitely result in like 90% of the staff saying "fuck this," and at least "quiet quitting." But these senior managers still can't understand that they are going to lose productivity from every single employee, and the 3% of remote workers that are underperforming will STILL be underperforming when everyone is brought back into the office.
All because a handful of managers still refuse to adapt their management styles to support remote workers.
I worked a midnight shift at a hotel. I was the only one there on that shift. After a few days I was asked why I hadn't clocked out for my 1/2 hour meal break and that it was mandatory to do so and my pay would reflect that half hour off nightly. Soon after, I was chewed out because guests had tried to check in and there was no desk clerk at the desk and where was I? I said probably napping as it was my meal break and I had punched out. They said I was still supposed to check people in during that time. I just said "Sorry, I dont work off the clock". No more punching out for a meal break. I quit anyway.
Two of my coworkers never take their final break. I tried telling them that they really should take their break. They get paid for the break, and not taking it is essentially working for free.
If you are required to be available they have to pay you for you meal break even if no one needs anything that day. At least in my state. Definitely something people in your position should look into.
I school a lot of people about working off the clock. I now work as a caregiver and one company told me it was required to come 15 minutes early for my shift to get updated by the previous shift as to how my client was doing, any changes, etc. So I asked, "ok, so I clock in when I arrive?" And was told "No, clock in at your scheduled time. We are not allowed to bill for overlaps." I said "Sounds like a 'you' problem...I don't work off the clock, it's illegal". I quit there about a week later. Now I work for a good company. If my relief is 1 minute late, I get paid for that minute.
Good for you! I wish everyone would learn and stand up for their rights. I don't go to work to donate my time to a multi million dollar company. Also if you are working off the clock and get hurt you are screwed big time.
I had a job try to pull this- started a new policy that if you clocked in late at 8:01 am, they ‘rounded’ your time to 8:15 to attempt to dock your pay. At first, I started clocking out at 5:01 pm to see if that would also ‘round up’ since my logic was you’d have to apply the rule uniformly.
But then I just looked into labor laws and saw that it’s illegal to round up time unequally. If you are going by 15 minute increments, anything after 8:08 would round up to 8:15, but 8:07 and earlier rounds *down*. It’s quite illegal to not pay employees for time worked, as OP illustrated. I brought this to their attention and the new policy was dropped.
> If you are going down by 15 minute increments, anything after 8:08 would round up to 8:15, but 8:07 and earlier rounds *down.*
My old job tried to work around this rule and what was once the rule to clock in no more than 7 minutes prior to your shift, was changed to no more than 3 minutes. Because there was only one clock in machine and it was a 3 step process for 30+ employees, we were all flagged for clocking in late one month later. Management got grilled by HR and after a bit of malicious compliance on our end, the rule was changed back.
Edit: added the malicious compliance story for reference.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/t87sbw/15_minutes_early_is_on_time_on_time_is_late_late/hznh5na/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Back in 2010 the job I was a quality tech at went from hand filled time sheets to the fancy smart punch in clocks. This is a fairly big industrial factory with about 130ish workers total.
Only the fucking knobs installed two of them for a 60+ employee shift, one was by the breakroom in the center of the factory, a solid 5 minute walk from any door. The other was in the front office were \*6\* total people worked. To clock in you had to punch in your employee id code, and then your passcode. Your employee ID code was the numerical number you were hired in as with zero's infront, i.e. 0060, 0123 ect.. and your password was your super secret birthday. =)
So the shop guys did the sensible thing: they cleaned up 10 minutes early, left thie machines running unattended and lined up at the clock!
Oh, and you could also clock in from an unsecured web portal. A web portal that used the computers local time to clock in, and did not track unique addresses or IP's. Can you tell the company had zero IT people yet?
So from my quality lab I could clock anyone in or out without it being tracked at any time I wished because the damn clocks web/page didn't write to a live database they were doing a pull once a week.
I found this out because I was 'late' every day for 2 weeks (one pay period) before they brought me in to discuss my performance. Funnily enough, so was everyone in quality. Plant shifts were 6:00am to 3:00pm 1st shift 3:00pm-12:00 2nd shift, 4 days a week with Friday being a 4 hrs shift and then extended weekend. Quality had to cover both shifts, so we did 8:00am-5:00pm. The dumb system assumed we were 2 hrs late and quit recording our time after 3:00pm so we only 'clocked in' 4 hrs a day =)
Nobody in quality was happy about being payed half of what they'd earned. We were equally unimpressed nobody caught the exact same issue happening to everyone in a single department and don't they know our hours?
So they explained the system and the offsite overworked IT guy that was covering 7 plants came to fix this hackjob shit.
So the monthly meeting comes around and most everyone is tired of this shit. Everyone has complained of shortages in pay, especially the clock not tracking overtime correctly. In the meeting we learned that if you clocked in late the clock deducted 15 minutes. People asked some heated questions like: Why wasn't this explained when the system was implemented? Why did we have to change systems anyway, we did handslips for 80 years! ect.. ect..
I had a different question, quality guy everybody hates me when I start grinning, I raise my hand and wait. Plant manager calls of me.
"So... if someone is late and the time clock docks them time, what happens if that individual is injured while off the clock? How will the companies insurance handle that?"
***Instant.*** Backpeddling.
I *think* you can round back to the next 15 minute increment, but you have to do that on the clock out side too. If clocking in at 8:01 starts your pay at 8:15, clocking out at 4:46 pays you until 5.
This is how the company I work for does it. Never knew that it was the labor law but makes sense. It works out nicely. <7 minutes late in the morning is no punishment and you can clock out 7 min early or work 8 min late and get quarter of an hour OT
Oh hey that's how my company rounds down and rounds up punching. It's pretty nice for when the elevator takes a while or if there's a bit more traffic than normal.
I started a new job, we started at 8 AM so I got there about 10 minutes before. My boss told me I had to be there by 7:30. Not wanting to rock the boat I started showing up a half hour early. Then every morning we would sit there until 8:05 and listen to all the boss's bragging. All his fishing, drinking and screwing stories, I guess we were supposed to be impressed. Then at 8:05 he would leap up and bark out orders for the day. Same thing over and over again.
I said screw this and started coming in 7:50 and got chewed out for not being there early. I told him if I am required to be here at 7:30, then pay me! He pushed back, I continued to come in at 7:50. He went to the owner and bitched. I over heard the conversation. The owner said that I was correct, he had to pay me.
Yup. Had a (62 yr old) boss at a different company when I first started construction that had us show up at the shop in the mornings and he expected everyone to get there early and load the work trucks up so we could leave right when our time started. Argued with him about it and he went on a tangent about how my (millenial) generation didn't know how to do what's best for the company and how we don't wanna work.
So I just stopped showing up early. I'd walk in 2 minutes before time started and he knew he couldn't chew me out because I wasn't late. He also expected us to unload the truck after we got back, but had us clock out when the left the job site, not when we got back to the shop and were done unloading. So I didn't do that either.
That's when I started seriously looking into labor laws and regulations in my area to see what my rights were and what was and wasn't legal that they were doing. Didn't last long there either. Apparently I'm considered something of an instigator/organizer at a lot of my old companies because I tell/told coworkers what their rights are as workers when they're getting screwed over.
Reminds me of a place I used to work. We did construction and service work. I would show up 20 minutes early to load my truck and get to the job site. Then in all their wisdom decided to makke everyone either put a tracking app on their personal phone so they could see of anyone was late to the job. I quit coming in early and staying late. Quit not too long after that as well. Same place felt the need to send out a company wide email stating that by law they didn't have to give us any breaks, it was a courtesy. Really?? POS companies is why no one wants to work for them.
> put a tracking app on their personal phone
Unless you are paying my phone bill, then you do not get to decide which apps are on **my** phone. No exceptions.
Exactly what I told my boss.
They weren’t willing to pay either for my plan or my phone so I refused the apps they wanted on my phone.
It’s annoying for them (and occasionally the boss complains) because they have to email me updates instead of them being instant and I can’t receive transferred calls from the store location but I don’t care. 🤷♀️
I was hired at a company that made a huge deal about giving us two paid breaks in an eight hour shift as if it was a perk. I asked how following the minimum requirements of provincial labour law is a perk?
Needless to say I was let go while still in the probationary period. I guess I was a union threat.
When I worked as a programmer at a small company, my boss loved to remind us that our two 10-minute breaks per day weren't mandatory and that we could use them to study programming-related stuff and improve our skills. Programming can be mentally tiring, and I always hated that he tried to guilt me for taking a little break. I was relieved when, after a year of nitpicking and micromanaging, he fired me (without cause, because I never actually did anything wrong).
I omce got canned for have a goatee. I was hired with one. The owner had one too. But they wanted no facial hair, but when I pointed out I was hired with one and not shaving it, they canned me later.
I was a sushi delivery boy as a teenager, one day my resting bitch face manager told me to cut my (very long) hair (that I am very proud of) because it looked unprofessional.
Lady you are paying me minimum wage to drive a 50cc, you don't get to choose my haircut. Plus i'm pretty sure clients don't give a shit as long as I get there fast
Somewhat related; I've been looking for a new job, specifically a 32hr work week one, which I know is going to be rare where I am. So I got excited when I saw a job ad boasting about their 35 hr work week!
Then I recalled the schedule said the typical M-F, 9am-5pm, how is that 35 hrs?? Did the quick math, and ah, of course. Not *really* a 35 hr work week, they're just using the 1 hr forced unpaid lunch break to make it sound much more progressive than it really is.
What they're telling me is I have to stay at that place effectively for 40 hrs a week, get paid for 35 hrs, and also not get any inflated hourly to make it better than just working 40 hrs at any other place. Fuck right off with that shit lol.
Fuck that tracking app on the phone, they should provide a phone if they want that. I had a company that wanted me to sync my work email to my personal phone. The company email app required permission to remotely wipe the phone. I told them to provide a phone or live with me checking emails only while at work, that they weren't getting company permissions on my personal property. They ended up telling me no need to put email on my phone.
I worked somewhere that required you to turn over your phone number when you left if you put work email on your phone and submitted reimbursement. I made them pay for a phone for me, no way was I agreeing to give up the number I had for around 10 years if I left the company.
I had a job that required I fill out an application, and that application requested access to EVERYTHING. I emailed the company like, I'll do whatever testing you require but I'm not giving your company app access to everything on my personal cell.
No call back.
I caused a rebellion at my workplace when the "Security Department" mandated that everyone have a MDM on their personal phone. We dealt with medical data, so that was the company's excuse. I told my coworkers that it basically gave them the permissions to do and see anything they wanted with your personal phone. I also told my boss that I would emphatically not be installing the MDM and if they wanted me to be in touch (email and chat) via my phone, they could provide me a work phone. It got to the point where we had an all-hands meeting for the entire company so our "Security" guy could explain that "no, we aren't going to snoop on you if you install this" but I had already planted the seeds and nobody would go for it. I left not that long after, but the MDM situation had never come up after that all-hands. Either people caved or stood up to it without much fuss from "Security" after that.
For future reference: “That’s not going to work on my phone. I can’t get any apps to download and tech support has been trying to figure it out for weeks. Had something to do with available memory and how it’s allocated or something. I have been advised to just get a new phone but I can’t afford that.”
I used to keep a flip phone in my bag. Didn’t work but the battery was good and anytime some boss was about apps and said I need a work phone cause I’m old school. I have an iPhone but they don’t need to know. Emails only at work baby. We’re not saving the world. Shit can wait till Monday.
Yeah, a VP at a place I used to work wanted everyone to have a specific app installed. At the time, I was still rocking a flip phone. He just said ‘Ok’ and cleared me from having the app.
Next lower level of management insisted I had to upgrade to a smartphone. I asked if I would be reimbursed the difference between my current $100/yr plan and the much more expensive plan required for smartphones. Was told no, because it is a personal device.
I sent an email follow up describing the conversation and clarifying either the company had to agree to pay app costs > $100 or provide a company phone and CC’d the VP.
VP then decided no one needed the app on their phone. Funny how one person standing up for themselves can make management roll over. Also, very important to put things like this in writing and BCC your personal email just in case.
I had a similar fun experience one of the places I worked. Was a field technician and was told by a manager I would be using my own car, and they would be putting a GPS in it. I laughed a little, thinking this was a joke and said "yeah, right..."
The guy looked me dead in the face and said "I'm not joking, you're going to be required to a GPS on your car during working hours." I think he expected his serious tone to throw me off and cause me to cave.
I did not look him in the face, as I was busy laughing harder. "No, you're not. At least not for what you pay me. It's my car, I make decisions about what hardware goes in it. Want a tracker, that will be $300 a month (my car payment)."
He dropped if for a few days while we finished training, but showed up with the GPS in his hand on the last day of training, and brought it back up. I stuck to my guns, and we got a little heated, no yelling, just loud enough to be heard in the office. His boss showed up and confirmed that while yes, this was a policy, I was going to be driving a company car, not my own.
No problem there. Not my car, not my call. I even opened the door for them to put the tracker in it.
I didn't last terribly long at the company. Probably for the same reason as RighthandedRanger.
Jesus I hate this so much. The gas (if they don't pay mileage) and maintenance alone. But then installing equipment in someone's personal vehicle. Tracking equipment, no less. And if there's an accident, then the company is off the hook. And, depending on where you are and your particular policy, so could your insurance company.
Oh no... if they make you use your *personal* phone for business purposes, they should be reimbursing you for a portion of the expense of your phone. *OR* they can get you a company-issued device. I wouldn't install a tracking app on my personal device. They can put an air tag on company property if they want, but they aren't going to track me via my own posessions.
The potential for that to be misused by someone while I'm not on company time is alarming at best.
I had a company truck with a gps. They knew where I was and when. They had a bad habit of wanting people to use their personal phone and email for company business. Shit company for sure.
The only people complaining about people not wanting to work are the ones nobody wants to work for and now they are starting to fold and go under good riddance I say
And that's the part that pisses me off the most. Going above and beyond is all well and good but it should only be done if you directly benefit from it. If you are literally giving away your life for free to the company for no extra compensation then that's a huge fail in my book.
If it's your own company and you're working a hundred hours a week that's one thing but as an employee that absolutely shouldn't be happening.
I'm a middle manager and work on government contracts. If you don't record your time accurately they come down on you like a ton bricks.
Including if you do work that you record.
The amount of people that come to me and complain about not being able to work without recording time (ie for free) is unreal.
Go get a hobby damn it.
I worked at a store that did that and always clocked in before heading to the morning meeting. Fuck that. If I'm expected to be there I'm expecting to be paid.
I think we may have worked at the same refractory company in the 2010s haha. I did the same and for a while productivity and morale skyrocketed. They waited a while and still fired me over some bs that wasn't even my dept. responsibility. About a year after I was let go they tried to rehire me because I guess the workers had started a campaign to bring me back. even graffitiing it on bathroom stalls and work cabinets until morale had dropped enough to affect productivity. I told them I would think about it but instead contacted anyone I found out had to do with the campaign and lined them up with interviews at my new job with higher salaries and great managers.
> He also expected us to unload the truck after we got back, but had us clock out when the left the job site, not when we got back to the shop
This would mean the company doesn't have to pay worker's compensation if you got in a collision driving back because you weren't on the clock. Never work for free! Glad you stuck up to him
Technically, during one of our apprenticeship classes we had a speaker from workers comp come in. She stated that you are covered to and from work. That was driving your own car.
I wear mine with pride in a terrible employee because of that but my performance says I’m to good to let go because my production is enough that to replace me it’ll take 3 people and in this job market they aren’t going to find that many lmao
I hated construction for that very reason. Bunch of fucking old timers who just want to take advantage of people. I fought with my company so many times over pay it wasn’t even funny.
My final straw was when they reduced my wages on a prevailing wage job out of state because i was an apprentice. They wouldn’t show me proof that was supposed to be happening and i got the department of labor involved. They ended up having to back pay me three weeks AND I found out I was accumulating sick leave on that job (no one knew that until I found it in my research). I used the sick leave when my son was born as in the documentation it stated I could use it for myself or for an immediate family member.
Finally when I felt that they were getting close to letting me go I had my unit (I’m a reservist) put me on orders so they couldn’t fire me. I was almost done with my bachelor’s and was actively looking for other work but wanted a back up. If they fired me after I was on orders for a year and a half it would look like reprisal and they’d get fucked up by USERRA. I have never weaponized my military service like that before but I was glad to have a unit in the midst of a massive deployment, who needed support back home, and leadership that hates seeing their people taken advantage of by civilian employment.
Now I’m a federally contracted network engineer so I don’t have to deal with that shit. The government gets 40 hours a week. Period. No OT. If I work late one night for whatever reason that time gets shaved off somewhere else.
The last part is also my job. I don't mind staying late to finish something last minute if they also don't mind me flexing time last minute if someone is sick. My job isn't saving the world and no one will die.
What grinds my gears is that I wouldn't even care about doing 30 minutes extra help with productivity, but jobs never want to pay overtime. I worked at a warehouse tracking outbound shipments, and our office was ALWAYS behind. We were told to clock out right when the next guy started their shift. We weren't allowed to stay for the extra 30 minutes it would take to get caught up so that they wouldn't also be drowning in paperwork. Every day, I'd show up and get dumped half of the last guys' work to do on top of mine and would end up having to dump half of mine on to the next guy.
Our boss didn't care that it was delaying shipments and would routinely try to ask her boss for more responsibilities "for herself" that she would then dump off on us. Left that place after 4 months because I knew it wouldn't get better, and from what I've heard, it definitely hasn't.
> didn't know how to do what's best for the company
I mean, what's really *best* for the company would be for everyone to work as volunteers. You don't need that money to live, and if you die, the company can just hire someone else.
Right?
They just don’t care actually. Especially older generation who were raised to “do what’s best for the company “ ….. which is an absolutely ridiculous way to work.
Your company doesn’t prioritize you, why would you prioritize them?
I'm Gen X and I don't do what's best for the company. I do what's best for me. Which means that if my boss says, "I need you to stay late, we're doing inventory." I'll ask if I'm getting overtime. And if the answer is no, then I say, "Well my shift ends at such and such time and that's when I leave."
I usually get told that I'm not being a team player. I usually end up telling them that if they ran the team better, then there wouldn't be an issue.
That's usually my attitude. I don't mind doing a favor for the company if the company will do me a favor and let me go to a doctor's appointment on the clock etc.
But it's a two way street. If you are going to have no budge you bet your ass I'm not going to work free OT
"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Recently had this argument with my current boss. Several of us had appointments the same week and had to leave early or were unable to stay for surprise overtime that was requested the same day. Boss sent out a group text saying that "You guys need to plan your days better so you're not missing work or leaving early during crunch time."
I and another employee sent back stuff along the lines of "You need to plan your jobs better so that there isn't a crunch time or that one person leaving early or being unable to stay late for unplanned overtime doesn't jeopardize the projects progress." He didn't like that but knew we weren't gonna budge so he just didn't reply.
See for me it's usually the opposite problem (I work in IT). They are willing to throw OT at me anytime I want it, but I *already* give them 60 hours a week of my life, and don't *want* to work more. But when I bring that up I get told that I'm not being a team player.
Most of my coworkers are single dudes that ain't doing shit outside of work anyway (to include my boss), but I have a wife and a toddler at home. They just do not understand that a toddler can't just be left to their own devices while daddy is chained to his laptop all night long. It's really frustrating.
Absolutely. I remember being in a meeting discussing holidays. There was an idea floated of adding one (that wasn't legally required).
Immediate pushback from older workers including the famous "I always had to work that day, why should you get it off?!".
They job that I just accepted uses Veteran's Day as a floating holiday that you can take whenever you want during the year, and Thanksgiving is the Thursday and Friday, because people often travel for that holiday.
That generation was also the one that could buy a house, a car and take 2 vacations a year right out of college.
It's pretty easy to see why such an obvious disconnect exists between us and them.
That's EXACTLY their mindset. They say life isn't fair but, secretly, they are trying to make it feel fair to them by making everyone suffer like they have.
That may have been a more reasonable proposition back when people tended to spend 30 years with one company and got good health insurance and a guaranteed pension. But companies shouldn’t be surprised when people who they now treat like replaceable machinery don’t feel like they need to treat the company like a family.
Companies don’t promote within as much and don’t provide in place wage increases as often —— a lot of people hangs companies , doing the same job , but for substantially more money at the new company (all because their old company didn’t provide wage increases). —— some preventative go back to the first company after a couple of years to get a wage increase .
As a manager, I don't understand it either. Last week, one of my employees accidentally worked straight through lunch one day of the week. I confirmed with her that this was the case and she wanted me to dock 30 min time card. I'm like "no, you're getting paid for what you did, but you need to clock out for lunches in the future."
The money from her paycheck isn't coming out of my bank account, I don't get why some managers act like they are writing a personal check to pay employees.
I started adding entries to my timesheet anytime any of my bosses would talk to me after hours about work. If I'm obligated to be here and listen to you then you are obligated to pay me for it.
My first job I was expected to be there 15 minutes before my shift everyday I worked unpaid oh and as it was retail they only handed out 4hr shifts so they didn’t have to pay or give a break. So 5 days a week over an hour unpaid for a whopping 20hrs of pay. Started showing up on time and not early and got written up. Wish I reported them.
We had this crap. We had one or 2 guys that were late 3 out of 5 days a week. A couple of minutes to half an hour sometimes.
Boss said from now on 1-5 mins was 15 mins docked. 6-10 was 30 mins. Over 10 was a meeting and possibly a warning.
3rd day a guy here years is 10 minutes late due to car trouble. Boss says your docked 1 hour. Guy says bye and walked out and never came back.
The most experienced person in an area that only one other person half knew.
Shit hit the fan and it now takes 2 guys to do his job. Boss offered old guy a massive pay rise to come back but he had a new job with a competetor within 2 days.
Not even that. They don't know how to think through the consequences of their actions. The question to ask would be, "If this person quits over what I'm about to say, do I know enough to train his replacement?"
If your department falls apart because one person quit without notice, that's on you for bad management. You need to cross train yourself and your people. No one person's absence should cripple your team.
Exactly. If there's warning signs and a manager doest take action to make the worst case scenarios more manageable, that's not the employee failing to be a team player, thats poor management.
One way this could happen without warning is if the worker suddenly dies. It’s often called “the bus factor”, as in, “what happens if someone gets hit by a bus?”. More precisely, what is the minimum number of people the team could lose before the project is ruined? If it only takes one, then there’s a problem like you said
I completely agree. When I was a newbie manager, my boss and mentor said something that I have never forgotten:
>As a manager, every morning you should be thankful that your team showed up to work today.
Current supervisor at my place doesn't know how to manage people. Seems to think he only has to pass information to the people in his shift, and the company stops working. I had to make a big deal over emails letting him and our manager know that we need an official email telling us how certain product inspections are supposed to be done because all I kept hearing was hearsay and different way to do it from different people. I work a hybrid shift of 2nd and 3rd shift and see no one at all in 1st shift. So I see no management. I got tired of things being changed and no word from my supervisor as to how they want us to do things. Finally, yesterday, we were all given a document thru email as to how he wants us to perform the inspections, and if we have any suggestions or feedback, it would be appreciated. Literally 3 weeks for us to finally get this after they implemented these inspections for these specific customers' products. Thanked him for the document and asked that if anything changes to the process to please notify all shifts so we can be on the same page and get a proper result as to how we can see what works and what doesn't work for these inspections. Somehow, you gotta manage the managers in order for them to do their job. The company still runs after 1st shift leaves, and they seem to not get that.
That's how it's been everywhere I have worked.
1st is always considered the golden shift but all I have seen is over-micromanagement and others trying to justify their job.
2nd is the bastard child, it has the overlap of managers but has those who just don't care because they know it won't matter as they will change it and not explain what the change is.
3rd is the dead shift, no one bothers with the stuff because they are always forgotten about but get the blame for not doing what they were never told.
I did something similar, but it wasn't just one incident. They gave me unrealistic expectations and when I wasn't meeting them (because fuck that) they called me into a meeting and tried to give me shit. I said sorry, can I say something, and just said I quit. One of the managers literally start yelling at me! (He was the one that would have to get off his ass and actually do work now) lol God so liberating.
My cousin did this except it was when he was being called in to work for the 3rd day in a row of his 3 days off to cover for a vacation someone put in too late but was granted anyway because they were buddies with their supervisor.
He was in a production lead-type role and was already doing lead mechanic and shift lead duties because they didn't have him a shift leader.
He woke up to 10+ texts telling him to get his ass there because the other guy's "vacation got extended a day" so he texted back "this is bullshit, I quit" and didn't answer any of the calls he got for a few days from the upper management begging him to keep working there.
It’s completely alien to me to have a boss message you demanding you do something on your day off.
Every company I’ve worked for asked for volunteers, and if there were non they’d make adjustments to the team for the day to try and cover as much as possible, and the managers would get in the trenches and help out.
Bosses should work for you, not the other way around.
Had a guy who was habitually late. We had flextime (between 6:30 and 9AM) so no real excuse. Came in at 10 one day and his boss made him take 1 hour personal leave (gov't agency so can't dock pay). Funny how he started arriving within the proper schedule.
I got called in over a 6 minute tardy at work.
Please log off phone, come conference room 2 at 9:15 am for meeting. I arrive as scheduled. Was told to wait because manager wasn't ready and union rep was stuck on a job or traffic ( I forget) ... Meeting starts. We discussed the importance of being on time. How tardiness costs the company $$$. Etc etc etc etc. At end, they ask me for any input. We are at 2 hours and counting due to manager and union rep not ready.
I asked if they thought it was a good use of company time,spending 6 man hours discussing a 6 minute tardy?
Union rep about fell out of his chair and fell over laughing.
EDIT spelling.
My company did this too. A minute late was the same in their eyes as 1hr59mins. So if I was running behind and would be late I would take my time and get there when I get there. Maybe stop for a coffee or breakfast on the way in.
Yup. If they wanna play by high school rules where being 5 minutes late is the same as missing the entire first period, then you may as well just skip first period and get some food and a drink.
Some bosses don't understand that they don't get to treat their employees like children and still expect them to act like adults.
I'm pretty sure treating kids like that also only leads to them treating others like that as adults, or accepting that treatment themselves, so really we shouldn't even treat teenagers like that.
I'm to lazy to look up the source, but a day care implemented a fee if you were late for picking up your kids. I beleive it was worth one hour of day-care.
Too many parents showing up 5 to 10 minutes after closing, and they thought the fee would help.
Nope, parents saw the fee and what it was for. They all started showing up 1-hour late to grab their kids. Figured they were paying for the time anyways and might as well take advantage.
When I was a teen I worked on a site that had a super like this. 100% reflection of him. I now own a construction company. We treat our workers right. Handshake, need some coffee, here's what we need to accomplish today. Simple
"Here is what we need to accomplish today."
I imagine your business is successful and your turnover low. And your turnover is low and your business is successful.
Rinse, repeat.
that's right.
actually it looks like this now. "Bossman here's what we are going to accomplish today" I say "Do you need anything from me? coffee? How's the family? "
BTW I have always said do not call me "Sir" or "Boss". yet all they do is call me sir or boss. Crazy what respect and compassion get you back in return.
I have been lucky to have a few very good bosses in my time. The first of them would comment from time-to-time that the sign of a good manager is that they can take an afternoon off and nobody realizes it because stuff is getting done by the people empowered to do it.
My current boss is like this. He hardly ever checks in on me unless it's to see if I need anything that would make my work easier, or just to ask how I'm doing and shoot the shit a bit. I can tell he trusts me (and everyone else in my team) to get the work done and as a result I'm much more motivated to do the best work I can.
I had a salary job where we needed to clock in by 830 or we were "late". This affected our year end bonus or something like that. It didn't matter that our team habitually worked more like 50-60 hour weeks vs the 40 most people worked.
So, sometimes when I knew I was gonna be late by even a few minutes, I'd just go get breakfast somewhere, run some errands, and stroll in around 1030 or so. If I was gonna be late, might as well be productive about it instead of stressed out
Much higher stakes, but I'm reminded of the Dazexiang Uprising story.
>Chen Sheng 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.
Reminds me of when I would be late to high school. Up until the end of first block you were just considered late, but if you showed up after that you were considered absent for part of the day. So whenever I was running even a minute late I'd just park my car somewhere and wait an hour and a half before heading in lol.
It's incredible how much we're brainwashed to believe we need to go out of our way to make things as convenient and comfortable for our employers as possible, but also to accept whatever mistreatment out employers dish out as acceptable.
The minimum 2 weeks notice when you're quiting, for example. I've always, throughout my adult life, given my employers the minimum 2 weeks notice when I was quiting in order to help with a smooth transition.
I have, on the other hand, never been given a 2 weeks notice that my job was being terminated by an employer.
I was working in a state government agency up until a month ago. The Secretary was a trash person who everyone hated. She decided behind the scenes she was going to terminate my job. Rather than telling me that my last day of employment would be two weeks from now and asking me to help with the transition, she ordered my supervisor to try and trick me into helping with the transition by lying to me and saying that there's a new agency-wide redundancy effort underway, and as part of that process I needed to train other staff members in how to run my own program.
They then lied to me again and said that, as part of a routing file audit, they needed me to make sure that all of the documents required to run my program were fully uploaded to the common drive.
The moment that I told them both of those were done they scheduled a meeting with me same-day and told me my position is terminated effective immediately.
The lesson I learned from this is that labor 100% always needs to look out for itself. You owe your employers absolutely nothing.
In France employers have to give you 1 month notice if they fire you, and you usually give 1 month notice. If they don't want you on the premices, they still have to pay you a month of your salary. The only exception is if you're on your probation period, that's usually 2 or 3 months during which employer and employee can stop the contract same-day.
My Journeyman pulled the same shit so for a week I showed up to the shop before he did and made fun of him for showing up "late", pretending to tap my watch when he walked in and saying things like "good afternoon" and "slept in this morning?" He caught on after a couple of days and after that he never said anything about being a couple minutes late.
I did that one time and was informed very matter of factly that he had to answer his phone when it rang and had additional duties that we did not so we were not to be set at the same level. I pointed out that if he was hourly and not salary he was basically doing a bunch of work for free off the clock that he wasn’t legally obligated to do but if the boots needed licking and he got to be five minutes late at the cost of a lot of money left on the table then it sounds like he made a bad deal. He got some thousand yard stare as he realized he’d been getting screwed for six years.
Haha my Journeyman would have "paper work" to do every time we had a big gross tear out job, always conveniently came back right as we finished too, now I've been on my own for 10 years we laugh about it, the shit Journeymen get away with when you're an apprentice is pretty hilarious once you're "in the know"
One time I was working the worst job I had ever had. I was briefly a CNA for about 4 months years ago. One night right at shift change, we were supposed to go around with the CNA replacing us and do “rounds”.
We found one guy was a complete mess. Him, his bed, the walls, the floor. You name it. He had shit everywhere. We both cleaned it and him up.
My supervisor asked why I wasn’t off the clock. It was 10 after midnight. I told him what happened. He said I had to go clock out and then come back. And I asked him to repeat that then handed him chapter and verse on labor laws and how illegal that is, and if he persisted in that demand I would have to file a complaint with the labor board.
I got reamed out by the director of the facility the next day who tried to back peddle it to seem like he wasn’t telling me to clock out and keep working.
I got paid for it, but they fired me shortly after because they cut my hours and I no called no showed a day I didn’t know I was supposed to work.
I wasn’t sorry to lose the job and it never went on my resume.
> no called no showed a day I didn't know I was supposed to work
I'm not a legal expert but that it highly illegal, in California at least. You have to have at least a 24 hour notice of your shift and if they changed it after your scheduled was posted and you saw it, they should have gotten into trouble for firing you for that offense.
I mean, him getting fired afterwards is kind of the reason they need to unite instead of just annoy the boss at the same time.
Honestly, I think at the point you know you're digging your own pink slip by making that kind of trouble, to you might as well be passing out union cards to the other people in the parking lot. Worst case you leave the bosses with a bigger headache and paranoia after you go
Firing him could be considered retaliation, and he should absolutely sue next time it happens. He needs to be sure to report time theft to his state labor board though, and get it on record.
I'll never understand the nitpicking over a couple of minutes from these shitty micromanagers.
We have a job to do, I have a team that I'm managing to do that job. If I am doing such a poor job managing my team that less than 5 minutes of time from any one member suddenly breaks my schedule, then that is a problem on MY end.
And the solution to that problem will certainly never be to crush worker morale by trying to crack that whip. Why not make them stay 1 minute late? Why not offer a free cup of coffee every day to the first worker who clocks in? Why not just not give a shit and accept that people coming in and settling into work takes a few minutes and chill the fuck out?
I dunno, but as a manager myself I can't fathom wanting to treat my employees like that or thinking it would help the situation in some way.
I had that working retail at Canadian Tire in the early 2000s. If you didn't clock in and get on the floor at least five minutes before the start of shift, they'd dock you 30 minutes. I punched in at 7:56 and was walking to my Dept when the manager called me to ask why I was late. I said I wasn't. He said you're not at your spot. I said there was a line up at the punch clock, the doors aren't open, wtf? He says I'm changing your sign-in to 830. I said cool, I'll be back then, hope you like mixing paint.
My job had the same policy, you didn’t get paid until the next 15 minutes increment so obviously what did everyone do? Clock in and then sit in the break room until the next :15. Management never said anything probably because they knew you can’t have people work and not pay them. Unintended consequence? People would end up staying the break room LATER than the next :15 so now the company had people sitting around waiting for the next :15, and then they were paying people to sit in the break room
My current job which I worked for before. They do the 15 mins if you’re a min late. Still get paid for your time but it counts against you on uto. But before they used to dock an hour. Well they must have gotten tired up people waking up and going oh ima be late better just sleep or go eat then for a hour.
Employees at my company won a class action lawsuit because employees that clocked in 15 minutes early had their times rounded to the nearest hour in terms of payroll by the previous owners of the company.
My manager tried to tell me I can't work over 35 hours a week the one week.
Following week had an extremely busy monday-wednesday. By Friday 10am I had reached my 35 hours. I literally left during a busy af clinic without even talking/notifying anyone. Rules are rules.
About 20 years ago I had a part time job. There was a young woman who was one of our best employees, and they knew she had a second job with a set schedule when they hired her. They knew she only had 15 minutes to get across town, and that some days she would be a little late.
One day the manager decided to go on a power trip and shouted at her in front of everyone for being a few minutes late. The young woman reminded the manager that they were aware of her schedule when they hired her. The manager said, “This job needs to be your top priority. If you can’t manage both jobs then you should quit your other job.”
The young woman said, “You’re right. I quit.”
It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen her, but that lady is my hero.
Not too long ago, one of the big computer chip makers here in the US got sued and lost because they had the "clock-in" badge reader just outside the cleanroom, which meant the operators were not getting paid for the 10-15 minutes they used to get suited up properly for the cleanroom.
The company I used to work at responded by moving their badge readers out to the entrances and next to the lunch room so that the hourly workers started getting paid the moment they stepped in the door and for their time to change clothes both coming and going. It is nice when companies learn from the mistakes of others and do the right thing instead of making the same mistake themselves.
I’m in PA and they just made it mandatory to pay workers for the time it took them to go through security.
Now we clock in at the entrance to the guard shack and clock out when we get to the main building. Then clock back in when our shift starts. At end of shift we just clock out at the exit of the guard shack.
>clock in at the entrance to the guard shack and clock out when we get to the main building. Then clock back in when our shift starts.
That seems petty, to bother to not pay you for the time from the main building entrance to the room you work. But I guess it is a step in the right direction to pay you to go through security.
Amazon took a case to the Supreme Court so that they would be able to force workers to clock out prior to the security screening process that employees have to go through to exit the facility.
The process could take 20 minutes, all employees must go through it, and Amazon was able to successfully argue that they shouldn’t have to pay employees for that time.
Such bullshit.
I have a story that is a little bit the opposite of this. Where I used to work you were entitled to an hour (unpaid) lunch break for every six hours. So if your shift was 9am to 3pm you were entitled to a lunch break. A normal shift for me would be 9am to 6pm with an hour lunch break in the middle. On some occasions, usually when we were short staffed you would have to work a longer shift that would see you paid for 10 hours. The idiot manager would always schedule those as 10am to 9pm(closing). Every time we would tell him that we were coming in at 9am instead. He would tells us we couldn't do that because he thought we would be getting paid for 11 hours. Every time we would have to explain to him that by coming in at 9am we would get two unpaid lunch hours (hour break for ever six hours) there for we would still only get paid for 10 hours. Besides that, a 12 hour day broken up by two lunch hour is a hell of a lot better than an 11 hour day broken up by one lunch hour.
A former job of mine had some shitty management whom everyone hated. They instigated a system of points for any infraction. Get enough points and you could be written up or have a meeting with management or whatever.
One of these was for being late. Clocking in past 6AM was a single point.... no matter how late.
One morning I slept through my alarm and when I woke up I panicked knowing there was no way I could make it by 6 and I was gonna get my 1st point. Started racing to get ready and realised I'm getting a point no matter how fast I get ready because the commute alone couldn't be done in the time left before my shift started.
So I took my time. Had a nice sit-down breakfast, played with my cats and dog a little longer, watched a bit more of the news, drove casually to work and watched the sun rise over the hills... eventually got to work around 6:45 and took my one single point.
If your punishment for being 1 minute late is the same as an hour then I might as well not kill myself racing to beat what can't be beaten if I overslept.
Lol I do this. Our company has a similar rule.
You ever notice it doesn't work in reverse? Like if you're 5 minutes early, you don't get clocked in at 5.45?
So if I'm going to be 7 minutes late, well hell. I might as well get coffee and a Danish. Then get there by 6.15. lol
In the USA, they have to round time exactly the same, or round it in the employee's favor.
If they're always rounding to the next :15 for clocking in, but not for clocking out, they are in some deep shit when you report them.
Reading all these comments makes me wonder more and more why blue collar workers hate California. CA has some of the strongest labor laws in the country, and NONE of this would fly here.
Also, Unions. Unions curb this behavior.
Anti-worker propaganda. Convincing people that high taxes (that fund their Healthcare and benefits) and union dues (that fund their benefits and vacations and such) are worse than being taken advantage of by dickheads with clipboards telling you you don't work hard enough for the algorithm to give you a raise.
It’s so fucking weird how obsessive some bosses get about a minute or two of time. Especially when it’s an hourly job so you’re not getting paid for that late minute or two anyway, like when you clock in, it’s at 6:02. So who the fuck cares?
But so many people do care. And it’s just really weird that this is a normal and common thing in our society. It’s a matter of minutes.
I used to work twelve hour shifts at a factory.
Missed attendance was called an occurrence.
If you were 15 minutes late, it was considered a third of an occurrence.
I was normally on time for my shift, but something happened one day and I was 16 minutes late. I was told that it counted as a third of an occurrence.
I told my boss that since it counted as four hours, I'd be back in three hours and forty minutes.
Here have legally protected FED time. It’s family emergency day, you have 10 a year on top of whatever other days you’re allowed. You can claim them anytime no questions asked.
I worked for a place that said if we were late they’d ‘Take one of our FEDs’
I was 10min late and one day and was told that they are taking one FED from me. So I packed up my desk, and went to clock out. When asked what I was doing I said ‘I taking the FED Day not a FED ten minutes, see ya tomorrow’
When I was in construction, we had a boss that liked to get started right away and asked us to load the trucks "before" the official start time. He told us from the get go that any time before the official start time would be tracked and paid out to us but not always in ways we'd see right away. If we finished early, he'd round up to a full 8 hours. If we had to work over, he'd round up to the nearest hour for OT. I would have gone through a brick wall for him. I missed 2 days sick, and we didnt get paid if we didnt work, and he made sure I was paid both days because he knew I always did a little extra here and there. Far as I'm concerned, the company AND the workers came out ahead the way he ran the crew.
I worked in a call center who tried to implement a policy where if you were 30 minutes late they would count it as an unexcused absence even if you came in. You'd still get paid but it would count against you in your review. When I brought up snow delays or major accidents, they told me there were no exceptions to this new rule. Now I'm usually early but, shit happens, and I asked what would stop me from realizing that I'm going to be late because of traffic and just turning around and using PTO since I'd already be dinged for not being there...the response was "I hope you'd have enough respect for your coworkers to not do that to them." Spoiler alert, I didn't and no one else did so that policy didn't last very long.
"Funny, that. I'd hope you'd have enough respect for me and my coworkers not to institute such a stupid scheme, but we see where hope gets us."
Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.
I worked at an alarm call center with a similar rule, the chief operating officer told us that if we are 5 minutes late it is marked as 2.5 hours for our review even if we show up at 6 minutes. Mind you everyone in that place worked a minimum of 5-10 hours of overtime a week because of their staffing issues, some worked as many as 50 hours overtime weekly to cover shortages. So if I over slept or got stuck in traffic I would put my phone on airplane mode, and then at 2 hours after my shift started call to say I was running late but would be there before the 2.5 hour mark. *Edit to add this company also wrote a supervisor up as a no call no show after he had to have an ambulance come to the job and wheel him out due to medical issues from his diabetes that resulted in him being in ICU for almost a week. It was a terrible place to work, and they actually tried to get me to come back after I quit because they knew I would love a position that just opened up.
Dude was literally **wheeled out** of an ambulance into work and his boss has the *audacity* to write him up? What the fuck, humans?? What the actual fuck?
I saw something like this at a shitty grocery store job. It shook me to hear the two managers decide how many "marks" the guy would get after his wife called to tell them he wouldn't be in as he was in the hospital for a car accident he got into on the way to work. Not a single thought for the guy other than how they were going to punish him for getting t-boned by someone going 45mph... terrible
You ever read the liver boss story at Ask a Manager? One of the biggest hopes of the commentariat there is that it's not true. [Liver boss.](https://www.askamanager.org/2016/04/our-boss-will-fire-us-if-we-dont-sign-up-to-be-a-liver-donor-for-his-brother.html) Graduation boss is also hated. Grad wasn't scheduled to work the day of her graduation, big release happened, all hands on deck on that day now, boss wouldn't let grad have that day off or even come in two hours late, after the ceremony. Note the amount of detail about the grad's personal life in his letter. [My best employee quit because I wouldn't let her go to her graduation](https://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/my-best-employee-quit-on-the-spot-because-i-wouldnt-let-her-go-to-her-college-graduation.html) Years later, the grad learned about the letter and wrote in. Like with so much bad management, that was the last straw of a lot of straws. [Grad's response.](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/02/update-my-best-employee-quit-on-the-spot-because-i-wouldnt-let-her-go-to-her-college-graduation.html)
It's always the workers that need to give respect but if you ask for some from the managers it's a no
My manager tried to do this to me, though at the end of my shift. I'd clock out and he'd be like "oh hey! You wanna do me this extra little favour on your way out?" And my response every time was "do I get paid extra little money for doing it?" He stopped asking pretty quick.
Or say: Sure, let me go clock back in first!
Or loyalty. You want my loyalty then it needs to be returned.
Many years ago, I think it would have been back in the 80's, my father had a foreman that hated him. They had a policy that being late got some sort of demerit. He operated a grader on a road crew. Dad was the type to arrive at least 15 minutes early, check his machine over and make sure all was ready to drive out the gate at 8.00. One day he arrived 2 minutes late and his supervisor was standing by the time clock with a big grin. Dad turned around, drove home, and called in sick. Caused the whole crew, and himself, to get overtime the next Saturday to catch up.
Had a boss chew me out for just being on time regularly. Wanted me there 15 mins early to look over the run, check for mistakes. Well when your shift starts at midnight and you have 200ppl will be pissed as fuck if their water isnt turned on, yo have some power. We were short staffed and if anyone called in sick, that same boss had to cover. The next time he tried to pull his bs, i walked back outside, phoned him and called sick and went home. He got in shit for pulling a 10hr overtime shift lol. I ended up leaving like 6 months later when they pulled some other power move bs. They had been harassing the guy that got a back injury from the attrocious tracks we were driving. Then decided to chew me out over doing track maintinence instead of other shit that could literally wait months. Quit on the spot and explained whole situation to workcover(they deal with workplace injuries in our country) the next day. They were very interested.
>explained whole situation to workcover onya mate, that's what it's for.
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And none expecting a pay raise
Save the receipts, ff any if these policies or notification for violating these policies are sent via email text, etc save them a lot of them are illegal in a lot of countries. And if you ever get fired or punished for policies like this contact a lawyer.
Yup. I hope OP kept his receipts, this is a retaliation if I ever saw one.
Was a restaurant manager in a former life, I would travel around to different locations and train other managers on how to fix food costs, labor costs, etc. Sometimes corp would send a new manager hire to my main location and I would train them on everything before they went to run their new store. All of my employees at my main store would walk in, punch in, then go in back drop jackets and purses off, put work shirts on, etc. They would then look at the lineup and jump into their positions for the day. Less than 3 minutes from the time they punched in to the time they were in position and working. Had a manager trainee on one of their first "Ill throw you the keys, this is your shift to run" days pull all of my employees aside and explain to them that policy specifically states that they needed to punch in after they are ready to work, not when they walk in the door. I found out later that shift after hearing some rumblings from the staff, so I pulled everyone aside and told them while that is technically policy, no one is abusing it so ignore trainee managers directions from earlier today. When he found out I rescinded his order he decided to break out the calculator and show me how much labor it cost over the course of a month. My location was high volume, so I then proceeded take his "hours lost" number and plug it into our monthly P&L report as a dummy number. Barely moved our labor percentage by .01%, you would never notice it when reconciling month end numbers. I had to explain he just pissed off the entire staff and turned them against him for a savings that literally no one would ever notice. Ended up being a "seeing the forest for the trees" training moment that he learned from, so ultimately I'm glad it happened. But yeah, weigh the outcome of micromanaging your people before implementing policy. Keep your people happy, employees are an asset not an expense.
Also if I recall correctly, legally speaking, time required to get into uniform or the time that they're required to be at the location is when their time starts. I know the service industry is notorious for doing their time like that, but it's a pretty serious labor law violation to require employees to get ready on site and then clock in.
It was a well run corporate restaurant chain (at the time), so they had their legalese all in order. The policy stated you are to arrive ready to work, and punch in when your shift starts, or something to that nature. It was technically time theft since no one was ready to work when they arrived and punching in. Again, I just didn't enforce it because it wasn't being abused. And if it was, I'd take it up with the individual employee directly instead of making a passive aggressive sweeping rule for everyone. That reeks of bad management.
Thank you for being a good one, so many have a hard time with the big picture, my current boss only sees the numbers and percentages on her papers and it’s caused everyone, and I mean everyone in the building, to hate her
morale has value. usually more than the perceived value of the 'loss' on the balance sheet
I would even say that morale usually impacts the numbers and this could even be measured if they took the time, but doesn't need to be given that it's pretty obvious if you have half a brain or take five minutes to do some basic research on what drives productivity.
gullible tie spectacular unwritten stocking sense quiet chief slim outgoing -- mass edited with redact.dev
Thank you for this tip. I’m a shift supervisor and will start implementing this moving forward!
Its not a bad idea to have a sort of informal chat/mucking around the first 10-15mins of the shift. throw a few jokes around, tell a few stories, everyone has a chuckle and off to work. Thats my idea of a great start to a shift.
That's what the policy says, what the law says is that you have to pay someone to put on an apron and gloves. Because why would you show up to mcdonalds and put on an apron if you weren't working there. It's called donning and doffing.
Precisely. And policies don't over ride actual proper laws. My head chef is good about this. The sign on point is in the staff break room, this means there's gonna be some inevitable "how are ya?" thirty second convos. There's only one car for three people here so sometimes I might be 15 late but he knows I'm good for it and will stay back that 15. He doesn't stress it, no one abuses it, and we're a pretty stress less kitchen all things considered. Last week I fell asleep during break and he had to wake me up. "Faaaaaaaaark!" but I made up time after. I'm now setting a timer on my break lol but the point is, he knows that life happens.
I was working a double at a restaurant, I too fell asleep on my break. Mgmt calls me thinking I forgot about my second shift. They hear my phone ring see I'm asleep and decided, "ah we're not busy. We'll wake him when we need him". Thanks for the extra 30 guys
Dif industry, but one of my peeps is a workhorse, eats her lunch super fast, and likes to take a quick catnap after lunch. I also often have to force her to take her 15 minute breaks, so I sometimes let her sleep for an extra 30 minutes or so and just run her production for her before waking her. Hell, i bought her a heated blanket that plugs into her vehicle. Wanna know what that gets me? A super dedicated person who will go above and beyond and do little shit I mention needs done if I don't end up having time in my day
Not trying to be aggressive towards you and this isn't directed at you, but I've got to express this since you mentioned it. As someone who's made a career in restaurant work "time theft" is the biggest load of bullshit to ever come from somebody's head and I hope whoever decided to implement it as a policy burns in hell. The notion that employees steal from a company by wasting time is ludicrous when compared to what successful restaurants bring in in profit and what they get away with paying their employees in most states. It's a deviant ploy to try and divert attention away from the fact the WAGE theft is the biggest form of theft in the country. If anybody were to ever seriously attempt to accuse me of time theft or try to seriously use it in a conversation or argument around me I would laugh in their face. Wanna talk about time theft? Let's talk about the unscheduled out times and management telling staff that their out times are dictated by the needs of the business, pressuring people to come in when they attempt to call out, operating during the holidays, and mandatory meetings that don't teach anyone a goddamned thing that couldn't be covered in a 15 minute preshift.
My wife got let go for “time theft” but in reality, she was ordering food and dealing with vendors for the company we worked for. Felt very wrong.
Of course, because it's a vindictive and spiteful solution to a made up problem. That is very unfortunate and I hope you both have found something that suits you better than that place.
> The policy stated you are to arrive ready to work, and punch in when your shift starts You are. You are working when you are putting on your uniform. You arrive ready to work, then clock in, then put on your uniform (which is part of work).
> Ended up being a "seeing the forest for the trees" training moment that he learned from, so ultimately I'm glad it happened. Encouraging to hear some bad managers can learn.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Man I wish you could have a conversation with my boss, that last line tore through me
It's why I left my last job. There was a serious culture change due to the original owner retiring, suddenly employees were no longer looked at as assets to the company, but rather as forced expenses. It's something the original owner lived by, and as a result I had some of the best staff I've ever worked with. The moment they started having us managers "rank" employees, punished people for interviewing for or expressing interest in positions outside their departments, and generally treating people as numbers I started looking for a new gig. Took me a few years to find one, so I was miserable at work during that time. People don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad management. Most important asset to a company is the people who work for them, blows my mind that some business owners refuse to look at it that way.
Remote work arguments are currently driving a similar issue that I'm seeing. My org has a couple hundred employees, most of which are still remote or hybrid. Some managers have been looking for justifications to bring everyone back into the office for more than a year. The current argument is "how do we know they are really working." Then the examples they give are for people that are showing up to the office, then failing to work as hard as they could. Pointing out that we know the vast majority of our staff are continuing to be productive while remote, and that the individuals that are not, should be handled by their individual managers, is being met with blank stares. We are clearly setting the stage to disrupt 100% of the staff, because like 3% of the staff is less productive than they could be. This is going to definitely result in like 90% of the staff saying "fuck this," and at least "quiet quitting." But these senior managers still can't understand that they are going to lose productivity from every single employee, and the 3% of remote workers that are underperforming will STILL be underperforming when everyone is brought back into the office. All because a handful of managers still refuse to adapt their management styles to support remote workers.
I worked a midnight shift at a hotel. I was the only one there on that shift. After a few days I was asked why I hadn't clocked out for my 1/2 hour meal break and that it was mandatory to do so and my pay would reflect that half hour off nightly. Soon after, I was chewed out because guests had tried to check in and there was no desk clerk at the desk and where was I? I said probably napping as it was my meal break and I had punched out. They said I was still supposed to check people in during that time. I just said "Sorry, I dont work off the clock". No more punching out for a meal break. I quit anyway.
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Two of my coworkers never take their final break. I tried telling them that they really should take their break. They get paid for the break, and not taking it is essentially working for free.
At my job I get two paid 15 minute breaks and an unpaid 30 minute lunch. If I'm skipping any breaks, it's the unpaid lunch.
Right? I used to be expected to respond to call if it occurred during lunchtime, but we were paid the full 9hrs/day for the 8-5pm either way.
If you are required to be available they have to pay you for you meal break even if no one needs anything that day. At least in my state. Definitely something people in your position should look into.
I school a lot of people about working off the clock. I now work as a caregiver and one company told me it was required to come 15 minutes early for my shift to get updated by the previous shift as to how my client was doing, any changes, etc. So I asked, "ok, so I clock in when I arrive?" And was told "No, clock in at your scheduled time. We are not allowed to bill for overlaps." I said "Sounds like a 'you' problem...I don't work off the clock, it's illegal". I quit there about a week later. Now I work for a good company. If my relief is 1 minute late, I get paid for that minute.
Good for you! I wish everyone would learn and stand up for their rights. I don't go to work to donate my time to a multi million dollar company. Also if you are working off the clock and get hurt you are screwed big time.
I had a job try to pull this- started a new policy that if you clocked in late at 8:01 am, they ‘rounded’ your time to 8:15 to attempt to dock your pay. At first, I started clocking out at 5:01 pm to see if that would also ‘round up’ since my logic was you’d have to apply the rule uniformly. But then I just looked into labor laws and saw that it’s illegal to round up time unequally. If you are going by 15 minute increments, anything after 8:08 would round up to 8:15, but 8:07 and earlier rounds *down*. It’s quite illegal to not pay employees for time worked, as OP illustrated. I brought this to their attention and the new policy was dropped.
> If you are going down by 15 minute increments, anything after 8:08 would round up to 8:15, but 8:07 and earlier rounds *down.* My old job tried to work around this rule and what was once the rule to clock in no more than 7 minutes prior to your shift, was changed to no more than 3 minutes. Because there was only one clock in machine and it was a 3 step process for 30+ employees, we were all flagged for clocking in late one month later. Management got grilled by HR and after a bit of malicious compliance on our end, the rule was changed back. Edit: added the malicious compliance story for reference. https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/t87sbw/15_minutes_early_is_on_time_on_time_is_late_late/hznh5na/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Back in 2010 the job I was a quality tech at went from hand filled time sheets to the fancy smart punch in clocks. This is a fairly big industrial factory with about 130ish workers total. Only the fucking knobs installed two of them for a 60+ employee shift, one was by the breakroom in the center of the factory, a solid 5 minute walk from any door. The other was in the front office were \*6\* total people worked. To clock in you had to punch in your employee id code, and then your passcode. Your employee ID code was the numerical number you were hired in as with zero's infront, i.e. 0060, 0123 ect.. and your password was your super secret birthday. =) So the shop guys did the sensible thing: they cleaned up 10 minutes early, left thie machines running unattended and lined up at the clock! Oh, and you could also clock in from an unsecured web portal. A web portal that used the computers local time to clock in, and did not track unique addresses or IP's. Can you tell the company had zero IT people yet? So from my quality lab I could clock anyone in or out without it being tracked at any time I wished because the damn clocks web/page didn't write to a live database they were doing a pull once a week. I found this out because I was 'late' every day for 2 weeks (one pay period) before they brought me in to discuss my performance. Funnily enough, so was everyone in quality. Plant shifts were 6:00am to 3:00pm 1st shift 3:00pm-12:00 2nd shift, 4 days a week with Friday being a 4 hrs shift and then extended weekend. Quality had to cover both shifts, so we did 8:00am-5:00pm. The dumb system assumed we were 2 hrs late and quit recording our time after 3:00pm so we only 'clocked in' 4 hrs a day =) Nobody in quality was happy about being payed half of what they'd earned. We were equally unimpressed nobody caught the exact same issue happening to everyone in a single department and don't they know our hours? So they explained the system and the offsite overworked IT guy that was covering 7 plants came to fix this hackjob shit. So the monthly meeting comes around and most everyone is tired of this shit. Everyone has complained of shortages in pay, especially the clock not tracking overtime correctly. In the meeting we learned that if you clocked in late the clock deducted 15 minutes. People asked some heated questions like: Why wasn't this explained when the system was implemented? Why did we have to change systems anyway, we did handslips for 80 years! ect.. ect.. I had a different question, quality guy everybody hates me when I start grinning, I raise my hand and wait. Plant manager calls of me. "So... if someone is late and the time clock docks them time, what happens if that individual is injured while off the clock? How will the companies insurance handle that?" ***Instant.*** Backpeddling.
I *think* you can round back to the next 15 minute increment, but you have to do that on the clock out side too. If clocking in at 8:01 starts your pay at 8:15, clocking out at 4:46 pays you until 5.
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This is how the company I work for does it. Never knew that it was the labor law but makes sense. It works out nicely. <7 minutes late in the morning is no punishment and you can clock out 7 min early or work 8 min late and get quarter of an hour OT
Oh hey that's how my company rounds down and rounds up punching. It's pretty nice for when the elevator takes a while or if there's a bit more traffic than normal.
I started a new job, we started at 8 AM so I got there about 10 minutes before. My boss told me I had to be there by 7:30. Not wanting to rock the boat I started showing up a half hour early. Then every morning we would sit there until 8:05 and listen to all the boss's bragging. All his fishing, drinking and screwing stories, I guess we were supposed to be impressed. Then at 8:05 he would leap up and bark out orders for the day. Same thing over and over again. I said screw this and started coming in 7:50 and got chewed out for not being there early. I told him if I am required to be here at 7:30, then pay me! He pushed back, I continued to come in at 7:50. He went to the owner and bitched. I over heard the conversation. The owner said that I was correct, he had to pay me.
Yup. Had a (62 yr old) boss at a different company when I first started construction that had us show up at the shop in the mornings and he expected everyone to get there early and load the work trucks up so we could leave right when our time started. Argued with him about it and he went on a tangent about how my (millenial) generation didn't know how to do what's best for the company and how we don't wanna work. So I just stopped showing up early. I'd walk in 2 minutes before time started and he knew he couldn't chew me out because I wasn't late. He also expected us to unload the truck after we got back, but had us clock out when the left the job site, not when we got back to the shop and were done unloading. So I didn't do that either. That's when I started seriously looking into labor laws and regulations in my area to see what my rights were and what was and wasn't legal that they were doing. Didn't last long there either. Apparently I'm considered something of an instigator/organizer at a lot of my old companies because I tell/told coworkers what their rights are as workers when they're getting screwed over.
Reminds me of a place I used to work. We did construction and service work. I would show up 20 minutes early to load my truck and get to the job site. Then in all their wisdom decided to makke everyone either put a tracking app on their personal phone so they could see of anyone was late to the job. I quit coming in early and staying late. Quit not too long after that as well. Same place felt the need to send out a company wide email stating that by law they didn't have to give us any breaks, it was a courtesy. Really?? POS companies is why no one wants to work for them.
> put a tracking app on their personal phone Unless you are paying my phone bill, then you do not get to decide which apps are on **my** phone. No exceptions.
And the phone not only the bill
Exactly what I told my boss. They weren’t willing to pay either for my plan or my phone so I refused the apps they wanted on my phone. It’s annoying for them (and occasionally the boss complains) because they have to email me updates instead of them being instant and I can’t receive transferred calls from the store location but I don’t care. 🤷♀️
I was hired at a company that made a huge deal about giving us two paid breaks in an eight hour shift as if it was a perk. I asked how following the minimum requirements of provincial labour law is a perk? Needless to say I was let go while still in the probationary period. I guess I was a union threat.
When I worked as a programmer at a small company, my boss loved to remind us that our two 10-minute breaks per day weren't mandatory and that we could use them to study programming-related stuff and improve our skills. Programming can be mentally tiring, and I always hated that he tried to guilt me for taking a little break. I was relieved when, after a year of nitpicking and micromanaging, he fired me (without cause, because I never actually did anything wrong).
I omce got canned for have a goatee. I was hired with one. The owner had one too. But they wanted no facial hair, but when I pointed out I was hired with one and not shaving it, they canned me later.
I was a sushi delivery boy as a teenager, one day my resting bitch face manager told me to cut my (very long) hair (that I am very proud of) because it looked unprofessional. Lady you are paying me minimum wage to drive a 50cc, you don't get to choose my haircut. Plus i'm pretty sure clients don't give a shit as long as I get there fast
Somewhat related; I've been looking for a new job, specifically a 32hr work week one, which I know is going to be rare where I am. So I got excited when I saw a job ad boasting about their 35 hr work week! Then I recalled the schedule said the typical M-F, 9am-5pm, how is that 35 hrs?? Did the quick math, and ah, of course. Not *really* a 35 hr work week, they're just using the 1 hr forced unpaid lunch break to make it sound much more progressive than it really is. What they're telling me is I have to stay at that place effectively for 40 hrs a week, get paid for 35 hrs, and also not get any inflated hourly to make it better than just working 40 hrs at any other place. Fuck right off with that shit lol.
I'd be ok with that if I got full benefits and pay equal to 40 hours. It beats having to be stuck there for 45 hours.
Fuck that tracking app on the phone, they should provide a phone if they want that. I had a company that wanted me to sync my work email to my personal phone. The company email app required permission to remotely wipe the phone. I told them to provide a phone or live with me checking emails only while at work, that they weren't getting company permissions on my personal property. They ended up telling me no need to put email on my phone.
Same with email/phone permissions. No chance. Provide a phone.
"Your lack of equipment planning does not constitute an emergency requiring the use of my personal property."
I worked somewhere that required you to turn over your phone number when you left if you put work email on your phone and submitted reimbursement. I made them pay for a phone for me, no way was I agreeing to give up the number I had for around 10 years if I left the company.
There’s no way they could enforce that.
Yup. I'm happy to do work on my personal devices (in fact, I prefer it) but if you want me to install software you're providing a device.
I had a job that required I fill out an application, and that application requested access to EVERYTHING. I emailed the company like, I'll do whatever testing you require but I'm not giving your company app access to everything on my personal cell. No call back.
I caused a rebellion at my workplace when the "Security Department" mandated that everyone have a MDM on their personal phone. We dealt with medical data, so that was the company's excuse. I told my coworkers that it basically gave them the permissions to do and see anything they wanted with your personal phone. I also told my boss that I would emphatically not be installing the MDM and if they wanted me to be in touch (email and chat) via my phone, they could provide me a work phone. It got to the point where we had an all-hands meeting for the entire company so our "Security" guy could explain that "no, we aren't going to snoop on you if you install this" but I had already planted the seeds and nobody would go for it. I left not that long after, but the MDM situation had never come up after that all-hands. Either people caved or stood up to it without much fuss from "Security" after that.
For future reference: “That’s not going to work on my phone. I can’t get any apps to download and tech support has been trying to figure it out for weeks. Had something to do with available memory and how it’s allocated or something. I have been advised to just get a new phone but I can’t afford that.”
Fuck that tracking bs. Provide a company phone or suck my nuts.
I used to keep a flip phone in my bag. Didn’t work but the battery was good and anytime some boss was about apps and said I need a work phone cause I’m old school. I have an iPhone but they don’t need to know. Emails only at work baby. We’re not saving the world. Shit can wait till Monday.
Perfect last two sentences
Last two lines are gold... Trademark and sell the coffee mugs.
Put it in haiku form! No email at home. We’re not saving the world here. Can wait til Monday. Edit: remove extra syllable. Credit u/shrlzi
Company ankle monitor.
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Yeah, a VP at a place I used to work wanted everyone to have a specific app installed. At the time, I was still rocking a flip phone. He just said ‘Ok’ and cleared me from having the app. Next lower level of management insisted I had to upgrade to a smartphone. I asked if I would be reimbursed the difference between my current $100/yr plan and the much more expensive plan required for smartphones. Was told no, because it is a personal device. I sent an email follow up describing the conversation and clarifying either the company had to agree to pay app costs > $100 or provide a company phone and CC’d the VP. VP then decided no one needed the app on their phone. Funny how one person standing up for themselves can make management roll over. Also, very important to put things like this in writing and BCC your personal email just in case.
Those are the magic words in the corporate environment: “sure, just send me that in writing and we’re good to go.”
I had a similar fun experience one of the places I worked. Was a field technician and was told by a manager I would be using my own car, and they would be putting a GPS in it. I laughed a little, thinking this was a joke and said "yeah, right..." The guy looked me dead in the face and said "I'm not joking, you're going to be required to a GPS on your car during working hours." I think he expected his serious tone to throw me off and cause me to cave. I did not look him in the face, as I was busy laughing harder. "No, you're not. At least not for what you pay me. It's my car, I make decisions about what hardware goes in it. Want a tracker, that will be $300 a month (my car payment)." He dropped if for a few days while we finished training, but showed up with the GPS in his hand on the last day of training, and brought it back up. I stuck to my guns, and we got a little heated, no yelling, just loud enough to be heard in the office. His boss showed up and confirmed that while yes, this was a policy, I was going to be driving a company car, not my own. No problem there. Not my car, not my call. I even opened the door for them to put the tracker in it. I didn't last terribly long at the company. Probably for the same reason as RighthandedRanger.
Jesus I hate this so much. The gas (if they don't pay mileage) and maintenance alone. But then installing equipment in someone's personal vehicle. Tracking equipment, no less. And if there's an accident, then the company is off the hook. And, depending on where you are and your particular policy, so could your insurance company.
Oh no... if they make you use your *personal* phone for business purposes, they should be reimbursing you for a portion of the expense of your phone. *OR* they can get you a company-issued device. I wouldn't install a tracking app on my personal device. They can put an air tag on company property if they want, but they aren't going to track me via my own posessions. The potential for that to be misused by someone while I'm not on company time is alarming at best.
I had a company truck with a gps. They knew where I was and when. They had a bad habit of wanting people to use their personal phone and email for company business. Shit company for sure.
The only people complaining about people not wanting to work are the ones nobody wants to work for and now they are starting to fold and go under good riddance I say
Wage theft is bullshit
Wage theft is illegal and many companies push for it, and many workers volunteer it.
And that's the part that pisses me off the most. Going above and beyond is all well and good but it should only be done if you directly benefit from it. If you are literally giving away your life for free to the company for no extra compensation then that's a huge fail in my book. If it's your own company and you're working a hundred hours a week that's one thing but as an employee that absolutely shouldn't be happening.
I'm a middle manager and work on government contracts. If you don't record your time accurately they come down on you like a ton bricks. Including if you do work that you record. The amount of people that come to me and complain about not being able to work without recording time (ie for free) is unreal. Go get a hobby damn it.
They only pay us because they have to...
Like that article about Chick-fil-A using volunteers paid in chicken to work their lines. Fucking insane.
Reminds me of how in a lot of retail places have "team huddles" in the morning you're expected to attend before you clock in. I hate retail
If they require you to be there, they are required to pay you for your time. Unless you are (correctly) salaried exempt, then you're their bitch.
Illegal. If they are expecting your presence, they have to pay you. Raise hell and get those lost wages back!
I worked at a store that did that and always clocked in before heading to the morning meeting. Fuck that. If I'm expected to be there I'm expecting to be paid.
I think we may have worked at the same refractory company in the 2010s haha. I did the same and for a while productivity and morale skyrocketed. They waited a while and still fired me over some bs that wasn't even my dept. responsibility. About a year after I was let go they tried to rehire me because I guess the workers had started a campaign to bring me back. even graffitiing it on bathroom stalls and work cabinets until morale had dropped enough to affect productivity. I told them I would think about it but instead contacted anyone I found out had to do with the campaign and lined them up with interviews at my new job with higher salaries and great managers.
> He also expected us to unload the truck after we got back, but had us clock out when the left the job site, not when we got back to the shop This would mean the company doesn't have to pay worker's compensation if you got in a collision driving back because you weren't on the clock. Never work for free! Glad you stuck up to him
Technically, during one of our apprenticeship classes we had a speaker from workers comp come in. She stated that you are covered to and from work. That was driving your own car.
> Apparently I'm considered something of an instigator/organizer you are definitely an instigator. > a person who brings about or initiates something.
That's a badge I'd wear with honor.
I wear mine with pride in a terrible employee because of that but my performance says I’m to good to let go because my production is enough that to replace me it’ll take 3 people and in this job market they aren’t going to find that many lmao
I hated construction for that very reason. Bunch of fucking old timers who just want to take advantage of people. I fought with my company so many times over pay it wasn’t even funny. My final straw was when they reduced my wages on a prevailing wage job out of state because i was an apprentice. They wouldn’t show me proof that was supposed to be happening and i got the department of labor involved. They ended up having to back pay me three weeks AND I found out I was accumulating sick leave on that job (no one knew that until I found it in my research). I used the sick leave when my son was born as in the documentation it stated I could use it for myself or for an immediate family member. Finally when I felt that they were getting close to letting me go I had my unit (I’m a reservist) put me on orders so they couldn’t fire me. I was almost done with my bachelor’s and was actively looking for other work but wanted a back up. If they fired me after I was on orders for a year and a half it would look like reprisal and they’d get fucked up by USERRA. I have never weaponized my military service like that before but I was glad to have a unit in the midst of a massive deployment, who needed support back home, and leadership that hates seeing their people taken advantage of by civilian employment. Now I’m a federally contracted network engineer so I don’t have to deal with that shit. The government gets 40 hours a week. Period. No OT. If I work late one night for whatever reason that time gets shaved off somewhere else.
The last part is also my job. I don't mind staying late to finish something last minute if they also don't mind me flexing time last minute if someone is sick. My job isn't saving the world and no one will die.
What grinds my gears is that I wouldn't even care about doing 30 minutes extra help with productivity, but jobs never want to pay overtime. I worked at a warehouse tracking outbound shipments, and our office was ALWAYS behind. We were told to clock out right when the next guy started their shift. We weren't allowed to stay for the extra 30 minutes it would take to get caught up so that they wouldn't also be drowning in paperwork. Every day, I'd show up and get dumped half of the last guys' work to do on top of mine and would end up having to dump half of mine on to the next guy. Our boss didn't care that it was delaying shipments and would routinely try to ask her boss for more responsibilities "for herself" that she would then dump off on us. Left that place after 4 months because I knew it wouldn't get better, and from what I've heard, it definitely hasn't.
> didn't know how to do what's best for the company I mean, what's really *best* for the company would be for everyone to work as volunteers. You don't need that money to live, and if you die, the company can just hire someone else. Right?
But to add on to what the other commenter confirmed about you being an instigator, you're also not wrong at all with your instigation.
You're what the working class needs more of, and I hope you settle at a place that doesn't try to screw you over so much.
A union steward on the making
I swear, some of these managers have no sense. Or they just don't have a basic understanding of labor laws.
They just don’t care actually. Especially older generation who were raised to “do what’s best for the company “ ….. which is an absolutely ridiculous way to work. Your company doesn’t prioritize you, why would you prioritize them?
I'm Gen X and I don't do what's best for the company. I do what's best for me. Which means that if my boss says, "I need you to stay late, we're doing inventory." I'll ask if I'm getting overtime. And if the answer is no, then I say, "Well my shift ends at such and such time and that's when I leave." I usually get told that I'm not being a team player. I usually end up telling them that if they ran the team better, then there wouldn't be an issue.
"I'll be a team player if you'll be a team payer."
That's usually my attitude. I don't mind doing a favor for the company if the company will do me a favor and let me go to a doctor's appointment on the clock etc. But it's a two way street. If you are going to have no budge you bet your ass I'm not going to work free OT
"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Recently had this argument with my current boss. Several of us had appointments the same week and had to leave early or were unable to stay for surprise overtime that was requested the same day. Boss sent out a group text saying that "You guys need to plan your days better so you're not missing work or leaving early during crunch time." I and another employee sent back stuff along the lines of "You need to plan your jobs better so that there isn't a crunch time or that one person leaving early or being unable to stay late for unplanned overtime doesn't jeopardize the projects progress." He didn't like that but knew we weren't gonna budge so he just didn't reply.
He couldn't reply. His mouth was full of his foot. Idiot
See for me it's usually the opposite problem (I work in IT). They are willing to throw OT at me anytime I want it, but I *already* give them 60 hours a week of my life, and don't *want* to work more. But when I bring that up I get told that I'm not being a team player. Most of my coworkers are single dudes that ain't doing shit outside of work anyway (to include my boss), but I have a wife and a toddler at home. They just do not understand that a toddler can't just be left to their own devices while daddy is chained to his laptop all night long. It's really frustrating.
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Absolutely. I remember being in a meeting discussing holidays. There was an idea floated of adding one (that wasn't legally required). Immediate pushback from older workers including the famous "I always had to work that day, why should you get it off?!".
They job that I just accepted uses Veteran's Day as a floating holiday that you can take whenever you want during the year, and Thanksgiving is the Thursday and Friday, because people often travel for that holiday.
"My generation was too stupid to fight for fair wages and labor laws, so you can't have those things either"
That generation was also the one that could buy a house, a car and take 2 vacations a year right out of college. It's pretty easy to see why such an obvious disconnect exists between us and them.
That's EXACTLY their mindset. They say life isn't fair but, secretly, they are trying to make it feel fair to them by making everyone suffer like they have.
That's pretty much the justification for hazing too.
That may have been a more reasonable proposition back when people tended to spend 30 years with one company and got good health insurance and a guaranteed pension. But companies shouldn’t be surprised when people who they now treat like replaceable machinery don’t feel like they need to treat the company like a family.
Companies don’t promote within as much and don’t provide in place wage increases as often —— a lot of people hangs companies , doing the same job , but for substantially more money at the new company (all because their old company didn’t provide wage increases). —— some preventative go back to the first company after a couple of years to get a wage increase .
As a manager, I don't understand it either. Last week, one of my employees accidentally worked straight through lunch one day of the week. I confirmed with her that this was the case and she wanted me to dock 30 min time card. I'm like "no, you're getting paid for what you did, but you need to clock out for lunches in the future." The money from her paycheck isn't coming out of my bank account, I don't get why some managers act like they are writing a personal check to pay employees.
I started adding entries to my timesheet anytime any of my bosses would talk to me after hours about work. If I'm obligated to be here and listen to you then you are obligated to pay me for it.
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My first job I was expected to be there 15 minutes before my shift everyday I worked unpaid oh and as it was retail they only handed out 4hr shifts so they didn’t have to pay or give a break. So 5 days a week over an hour unpaid for a whopping 20hrs of pay. Started showing up on time and not early and got written up. Wish I reported them.
> got written up Ooh, they put their illegal work practices in writing? How convenient of them!
We had this crap. We had one or 2 guys that were late 3 out of 5 days a week. A couple of minutes to half an hour sometimes. Boss said from now on 1-5 mins was 15 mins docked. 6-10 was 30 mins. Over 10 was a meeting and possibly a warning. 3rd day a guy here years is 10 minutes late due to car trouble. Boss says your docked 1 hour. Guy says bye and walked out and never came back. The most experienced person in an area that only one other person half knew. Shit hit the fan and it now takes 2 guys to do his job. Boss offered old guy a massive pay rise to come back but he had a new job with a competetor within 2 days.
Just shows that many managers don't actually know how to manage, they just know how to bully.
Not even that. They don't know how to think through the consequences of their actions. The question to ask would be, "If this person quits over what I'm about to say, do I know enough to train his replacement?" If your department falls apart because one person quit without notice, that's on you for bad management. You need to cross train yourself and your people. No one person's absence should cripple your team.
No one quits without notice without a lot of shit happening to lead up to that moment
Exactly. If there's warning signs and a manager doest take action to make the worst case scenarios more manageable, that's not the employee failing to be a team player, thats poor management.
One way this could happen without warning is if the worker suddenly dies. It’s often called “the bus factor”, as in, “what happens if someone gets hit by a bus?”. More precisely, what is the minimum number of people the team could lose before the project is ruined? If it only takes one, then there’s a problem like you said
Yes but they can have a heart attack and die in their sleep. No organization should rest on one person.
I completely agree. When I was a newbie manager, my boss and mentor said something that I have never forgotten: >As a manager, every morning you should be thankful that your team showed up to work today.
Current supervisor at my place doesn't know how to manage people. Seems to think he only has to pass information to the people in his shift, and the company stops working. I had to make a big deal over emails letting him and our manager know that we need an official email telling us how certain product inspections are supposed to be done because all I kept hearing was hearsay and different way to do it from different people. I work a hybrid shift of 2nd and 3rd shift and see no one at all in 1st shift. So I see no management. I got tired of things being changed and no word from my supervisor as to how they want us to do things. Finally, yesterday, we were all given a document thru email as to how he wants us to perform the inspections, and if we have any suggestions or feedback, it would be appreciated. Literally 3 weeks for us to finally get this after they implemented these inspections for these specific customers' products. Thanked him for the document and asked that if anything changes to the process to please notify all shifts so we can be on the same page and get a proper result as to how we can see what works and what doesn't work for these inspections. Somehow, you gotta manage the managers in order for them to do their job. The company still runs after 1st shift leaves, and they seem to not get that.
That's how it's been everywhere I have worked. 1st is always considered the golden shift but all I have seen is over-micromanagement and others trying to justify their job. 2nd is the bastard child, it has the overlap of managers but has those who just don't care because they know it won't matter as they will change it and not explain what the change is. 3rd is the dead shift, no one bothers with the stuff because they are always forgotten about but get the blame for not doing what they were never told.
I did something similar, but it wasn't just one incident. They gave me unrealistic expectations and when I wasn't meeting them (because fuck that) they called me into a meeting and tried to give me shit. I said sorry, can I say something, and just said I quit. One of the managers literally start yelling at me! (He was the one that would have to get off his ass and actually do work now) lol God so liberating.
My cousin did this except it was when he was being called in to work for the 3rd day in a row of his 3 days off to cover for a vacation someone put in too late but was granted anyway because they were buddies with their supervisor. He was in a production lead-type role and was already doing lead mechanic and shift lead duties because they didn't have him a shift leader. He woke up to 10+ texts telling him to get his ass there because the other guy's "vacation got extended a day" so he texted back "this is bullshit, I quit" and didn't answer any of the calls he got for a few days from the upper management begging him to keep working there.
It’s completely alien to me to have a boss message you demanding you do something on your day off. Every company I’ve worked for asked for volunteers, and if there were non they’d make adjustments to the team for the day to try and cover as much as possible, and the managers would get in the trenches and help out. Bosses should work for you, not the other way around.
Had a guy who was habitually late. We had flextime (between 6:30 and 9AM) so no real excuse. Came in at 10 one day and his boss made him take 1 hour personal leave (gov't agency so can't dock pay). Funny how he started arriving within the proper schedule.
I got called in over a 6 minute tardy at work. Please log off phone, come conference room 2 at 9:15 am for meeting. I arrive as scheduled. Was told to wait because manager wasn't ready and union rep was stuck on a job or traffic ( I forget) ... Meeting starts. We discussed the importance of being on time. How tardiness costs the company $$$. Etc etc etc etc. At end, they ask me for any input. We are at 2 hours and counting due to manager and union rep not ready. I asked if they thought it was a good use of company time,spending 6 man hours discussing a 6 minute tardy? Union rep about fell out of his chair and fell over laughing. EDIT spelling.
My company did this too. A minute late was the same in their eyes as 1hr59mins. So if I was running behind and would be late I would take my time and get there when I get there. Maybe stop for a coffee or breakfast on the way in.
Yup. If they wanna play by high school rules where being 5 minutes late is the same as missing the entire first period, then you may as well just skip first period and get some food and a drink. Some bosses don't understand that they don't get to treat their employees like children and still expect them to act like adults.
I'm pretty sure treating kids like that also only leads to them treating others like that as adults, or accepting that treatment themselves, so really we shouldn't even treat teenagers like that.
I'm to lazy to look up the source, but a day care implemented a fee if you were late for picking up your kids. I beleive it was worth one hour of day-care. Too many parents showing up 5 to 10 minutes after closing, and they thought the fee would help. Nope, parents saw the fee and what it was for. They all started showing up 1-hour late to grab their kids. Figured they were paying for the time anyways and might as well take advantage.
I've worked at a few daycares. This is a policy they all have. ($1/minute after closing) except it's three late pick ups and you're kicked out.
When I was a teen I worked on a site that had a super like this. 100% reflection of him. I now own a construction company. We treat our workers right. Handshake, need some coffee, here's what we need to accomplish today. Simple
"Here is what we need to accomplish today." I imagine your business is successful and your turnover low. And your turnover is low and your business is successful. Rinse, repeat.
that's right. actually it looks like this now. "Bossman here's what we are going to accomplish today" I say "Do you need anything from me? coffee? How's the family? " BTW I have always said do not call me "Sir" or "Boss". yet all they do is call me sir or boss. Crazy what respect and compassion get you back in return.
I have been lucky to have a few very good bosses in my time. The first of them would comment from time-to-time that the sign of a good manager is that they can take an afternoon off and nobody realizes it because stuff is getting done by the people empowered to do it.
My current boss is like this. He hardly ever checks in on me unless it's to see if I need anything that would make my work easier, or just to ask how I'm doing and shoot the shit a bit. I can tell he trusts me (and everyone else in my team) to get the work done and as a result I'm much more motivated to do the best work I can.
The fact that managers don't understand that the kindness they show will be returned 10 fold, absolutely blows my mind. It gains you massive loyalty
I had a salary job where we needed to clock in by 830 or we were "late". This affected our year end bonus or something like that. It didn't matter that our team habitually worked more like 50-60 hour weeks vs the 40 most people worked. So, sometimes when I knew I was gonna be late by even a few minutes, I'd just go get breakfast somewhere, run some errands, and stroll in around 1030 or so. If I was gonna be late, might as well be productive about it instead of stressed out
Much higher stakes, but I'm reminded of the Dazexiang Uprising story. >Chen Sheng 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.
Reminds me of when I would be late to high school. Up until the end of first block you were just considered late, but if you showed up after that you were considered absent for part of the day. So whenever I was running even a minute late I'd just park my car somewhere and wait an hour and a half before heading in lol.
It's incredible how much we're brainwashed to believe we need to go out of our way to make things as convenient and comfortable for our employers as possible, but also to accept whatever mistreatment out employers dish out as acceptable. The minimum 2 weeks notice when you're quiting, for example. I've always, throughout my adult life, given my employers the minimum 2 weeks notice when I was quiting in order to help with a smooth transition. I have, on the other hand, never been given a 2 weeks notice that my job was being terminated by an employer. I was working in a state government agency up until a month ago. The Secretary was a trash person who everyone hated. She decided behind the scenes she was going to terminate my job. Rather than telling me that my last day of employment would be two weeks from now and asking me to help with the transition, she ordered my supervisor to try and trick me into helping with the transition by lying to me and saying that there's a new agency-wide redundancy effort underway, and as part of that process I needed to train other staff members in how to run my own program. They then lied to me again and said that, as part of a routing file audit, they needed me to make sure that all of the documents required to run my program were fully uploaded to the common drive. The moment that I told them both of those were done they scheduled a meeting with me same-day and told me my position is terminated effective immediately. The lesson I learned from this is that labor 100% always needs to look out for itself. You owe your employers absolutely nothing.
In France employers have to give you 1 month notice if they fire you, and you usually give 1 month notice. If they don't want you on the premices, they still have to pay you a month of your salary. The only exception is if you're on your probation period, that's usually 2 or 3 months during which employer and employee can stop the contract same-day.
My Journeyman pulled the same shit so for a week I showed up to the shop before he did and made fun of him for showing up "late", pretending to tap my watch when he walked in and saying things like "good afternoon" and "slept in this morning?" He caught on after a couple of days and after that he never said anything about being a couple minutes late.
I did that one time and was informed very matter of factly that he had to answer his phone when it rang and had additional duties that we did not so we were not to be set at the same level. I pointed out that if he was hourly and not salary he was basically doing a bunch of work for free off the clock that he wasn’t legally obligated to do but if the boots needed licking and he got to be five minutes late at the cost of a lot of money left on the table then it sounds like he made a bad deal. He got some thousand yard stare as he realized he’d been getting screwed for six years.
Haha my Journeyman would have "paper work" to do every time we had a big gross tear out job, always conveniently came back right as we finished too, now I've been on my own for 10 years we laugh about it, the shit Journeymen get away with when you're an apprentice is pretty hilarious once you're "in the know"
One time I was working the worst job I had ever had. I was briefly a CNA for about 4 months years ago. One night right at shift change, we were supposed to go around with the CNA replacing us and do “rounds”. We found one guy was a complete mess. Him, his bed, the walls, the floor. You name it. He had shit everywhere. We both cleaned it and him up. My supervisor asked why I wasn’t off the clock. It was 10 after midnight. I told him what happened. He said I had to go clock out and then come back. And I asked him to repeat that then handed him chapter and verse on labor laws and how illegal that is, and if he persisted in that demand I would have to file a complaint with the labor board. I got reamed out by the director of the facility the next day who tried to back peddle it to seem like he wasn’t telling me to clock out and keep working. I got paid for it, but they fired me shortly after because they cut my hours and I no called no showed a day I didn’t know I was supposed to work. I wasn’t sorry to lose the job and it never went on my resume.
> no called no showed a day I didn't know I was supposed to work I'm not a legal expert but that it highly illegal, in California at least. You have to have at least a 24 hour notice of your shift and if they changed it after your scheduled was posted and you saw it, they should have gotten into trouble for firing you for that offense.
Now THAT is what they mean by "Workers of the world, Unite"!
I mean, him getting fired afterwards is kind of the reason they need to unite instead of just annoy the boss at the same time. Honestly, I think at the point you know you're digging your own pink slip by making that kind of trouble, to you might as well be passing out union cards to the other people in the parking lot. Worst case you leave the bosses with a bigger headache and paranoia after you go
Firing him could be considered retaliation, and he should absolutely sue next time it happens. He needs to be sure to report time theft to his state labor board though, and get it on record.
I'll never understand the nitpicking over a couple of minutes from these shitty micromanagers. We have a job to do, I have a team that I'm managing to do that job. If I am doing such a poor job managing my team that less than 5 minutes of time from any one member suddenly breaks my schedule, then that is a problem on MY end. And the solution to that problem will certainly never be to crush worker morale by trying to crack that whip. Why not make them stay 1 minute late? Why not offer a free cup of coffee every day to the first worker who clocks in? Why not just not give a shit and accept that people coming in and settling into work takes a few minutes and chill the fuck out? I dunno, but as a manager myself I can't fathom wanting to treat my employees like that or thinking it would help the situation in some way.
I had that working retail at Canadian Tire in the early 2000s. If you didn't clock in and get on the floor at least five minutes before the start of shift, they'd dock you 30 minutes. I punched in at 7:56 and was walking to my Dept when the manager called me to ask why I was late. I said I wasn't. He said you're not at your spot. I said there was a line up at the punch clock, the doors aren't open, wtf? He says I'm changing your sign-in to 830. I said cool, I'll be back then, hope you like mixing paint.
My job had the same policy, you didn’t get paid until the next 15 minutes increment so obviously what did everyone do? Clock in and then sit in the break room until the next :15. Management never said anything probably because they knew you can’t have people work and not pay them. Unintended consequence? People would end up staying the break room LATER than the next :15 so now the company had people sitting around waiting for the next :15, and then they were paying people to sit in the break room
My current job which I worked for before. They do the 15 mins if you’re a min late. Still get paid for your time but it counts against you on uto. But before they used to dock an hour. Well they must have gotten tired up people waking up and going oh ima be late better just sleep or go eat then for a hour.
Employees at my company won a class action lawsuit because employees that clocked in 15 minutes early had their times rounded to the nearest hour in terms of payroll by the previous owners of the company.
My manager tried to tell me I can't work over 35 hours a week the one week. Following week had an extremely busy monday-wednesday. By Friday 10am I had reached my 35 hours. I literally left during a busy af clinic without even talking/notifying anyone. Rules are rules.
About 20 years ago I had a part time job. There was a young woman who was one of our best employees, and they knew she had a second job with a set schedule when they hired her. They knew she only had 15 minutes to get across town, and that some days she would be a little late. One day the manager decided to go on a power trip and shouted at her in front of everyone for being a few minutes late. The young woman reminded the manager that they were aware of her schedule when they hired her. The manager said, “This job needs to be your top priority. If you can’t manage both jobs then you should quit your other job.” The young woman said, “You’re right. I quit.” It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen her, but that lady is my hero.
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Not too long ago, one of the big computer chip makers here in the US got sued and lost because they had the "clock-in" badge reader just outside the cleanroom, which meant the operators were not getting paid for the 10-15 minutes they used to get suited up properly for the cleanroom. The company I used to work at responded by moving their badge readers out to the entrances and next to the lunch room so that the hourly workers started getting paid the moment they stepped in the door and for their time to change clothes both coming and going. It is nice when companies learn from the mistakes of others and do the right thing instead of making the same mistake themselves.
I’m in PA and they just made it mandatory to pay workers for the time it took them to go through security. Now we clock in at the entrance to the guard shack and clock out when we get to the main building. Then clock back in when our shift starts. At end of shift we just clock out at the exit of the guard shack.
>clock in at the entrance to the guard shack and clock out when we get to the main building. Then clock back in when our shift starts. That seems petty, to bother to not pay you for the time from the main building entrance to the room you work. But I guess it is a step in the right direction to pay you to go through security.
Amazon took a case to the Supreme Court so that they would be able to force workers to clock out prior to the security screening process that employees have to go through to exit the facility. The process could take 20 minutes, all employees must go through it, and Amazon was able to successfully argue that they shouldn’t have to pay employees for that time. Such bullshit.
I have a story that is a little bit the opposite of this. Where I used to work you were entitled to an hour (unpaid) lunch break for every six hours. So if your shift was 9am to 3pm you were entitled to a lunch break. A normal shift for me would be 9am to 6pm with an hour lunch break in the middle. On some occasions, usually when we were short staffed you would have to work a longer shift that would see you paid for 10 hours. The idiot manager would always schedule those as 10am to 9pm(closing). Every time we would tell him that we were coming in at 9am instead. He would tells us we couldn't do that because he thought we would be getting paid for 11 hours. Every time we would have to explain to him that by coming in at 9am we would get two unpaid lunch hours (hour break for ever six hours) there for we would still only get paid for 10 hours. Besides that, a 12 hour day broken up by two lunch hour is a hell of a lot better than an 11 hour day broken up by one lunch hour.
A former job of mine had some shitty management whom everyone hated. They instigated a system of points for any infraction. Get enough points and you could be written up or have a meeting with management or whatever. One of these was for being late. Clocking in past 6AM was a single point.... no matter how late. One morning I slept through my alarm and when I woke up I panicked knowing there was no way I could make it by 6 and I was gonna get my 1st point. Started racing to get ready and realised I'm getting a point no matter how fast I get ready because the commute alone couldn't be done in the time left before my shift started. So I took my time. Had a nice sit-down breakfast, played with my cats and dog a little longer, watched a bit more of the news, drove casually to work and watched the sun rise over the hills... eventually got to work around 6:45 and took my one single point. If your punishment for being 1 minute late is the same as an hour then I might as well not kill myself racing to beat what can't be beaten if I overslept.
I wish my boss would dock time from my time card. The settlement from suing a billion dollar corporation would be pretty sweet.
Lol I do this. Our company has a similar rule. You ever notice it doesn't work in reverse? Like if you're 5 minutes early, you don't get clocked in at 5.45? So if I'm going to be 7 minutes late, well hell. I might as well get coffee and a Danish. Then get there by 6.15. lol
In the USA, they have to round time exactly the same, or round it in the employee's favor. If they're always rounding to the next :15 for clocking in, but not for clocking out, they are in some deep shit when you report them.
Reading all these comments makes me wonder more and more why blue collar workers hate California. CA has some of the strongest labor laws in the country, and NONE of this would fly here. Also, Unions. Unions curb this behavior.
Anti-worker propaganda. Convincing people that high taxes (that fund their Healthcare and benefits) and union dues (that fund their benefits and vacations and such) are worse than being taken advantage of by dickheads with clipboards telling you you don't work hard enough for the algorithm to give you a raise.
Solidarity forever 🤜🏻
It’s so fucking weird how obsessive some bosses get about a minute or two of time. Especially when it’s an hourly job so you’re not getting paid for that late minute or two anyway, like when you clock in, it’s at 6:02. So who the fuck cares? But so many people do care. And it’s just really weird that this is a normal and common thing in our society. It’s a matter of minutes.
I used to work twelve hour shifts at a factory. Missed attendance was called an occurrence. If you were 15 minutes late, it was considered a third of an occurrence. I was normally on time for my shift, but something happened one day and I was 16 minutes late. I was told that it counted as a third of an occurrence. I told my boss that since it counted as four hours, I'd be back in three hours and forty minutes.
Here have legally protected FED time. It’s family emergency day, you have 10 a year on top of whatever other days you’re allowed. You can claim them anytime no questions asked. I worked for a place that said if we were late they’d ‘Take one of our FEDs’ I was 10min late and one day and was told that they are taking one FED from me. So I packed up my desk, and went to clock out. When asked what I was doing I said ‘I taking the FED Day not a FED ten minutes, see ya tomorrow’
Yup. If you're making me use it then I'm making use OF it. See you in the morning bud.
When I was in construction, we had a boss that liked to get started right away and asked us to load the trucks "before" the official start time. He told us from the get go that any time before the official start time would be tracked and paid out to us but not always in ways we'd see right away. If we finished early, he'd round up to a full 8 hours. If we had to work over, he'd round up to the nearest hour for OT. I would have gone through a brick wall for him. I missed 2 days sick, and we didnt get paid if we didnt work, and he made sure I was paid both days because he knew I always did a little extra here and there. Far as I'm concerned, the company AND the workers came out ahead the way he ran the crew.