Lateness/tardiness policies...

Originally Posted by Connemara

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Thank god for doggie bags.

winnah!

Being late, not to mention habitually late, is probably one of the fruitiest behaviors of loser GDI fuckups. Back when I was a pledge in undergrad (yes, this is a fruity anecdote about how hard I phrat), our first meeting began with our pledge trainer making us repeat the phrase, "If you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. If you're late, you're forgotten." I was simply raised to always be on time. It literally blows my ******* mind that people can actually be late. How long have you been alive? You do understand how time works, correct? Is it a mystery why you were late yesterday? What specific actions or tasks are you for some reason unable to allocate the correct amount of time to to complete, despite the fact that you do them EVERY ******* DAY? The fact that you should even have to enact a "policy" to stop people from ******** all over your business is absurd. Hire someone who wants to make money.

+ ******* 1.

I run on (insert your race or ethnicity here) time so I tend to need a little flexibility.

I think any discussion about being late doesnt work without the full context of the job. My job goes in seasons, we have 6 months of insantiy followed by 6 months of decreasing business. During busy season I get to work between 7-30 and 8. Generally I leave at 5 regardless since I cant sit still for more of the day than that, but now I am showing up @ 8-830+. Its not even discussed because in todays 24/7 internet blackberry world, in a sense, I am always working. I will always take a call after hours, on the weekned, etc... Plus, I travel a nonsense amount of time so if you average out the amount of time I spend working, its well more than the 40 hours a week my salary is likely based on.

To that end, if your employee is productive, the job is getting done, your getting 'bonus time' out of them after hours or similar, I would over look it. Untill they do something stupid like miss a meeting, etc...

but whatever you do, set a precedent, make your policy known, not only to him but to the whole group. I will finish with this last personal annecdote:

When I was in college and got my first internship, on my very first day, I asked what time I was expected. I was told to show up at 8-30 or 9 to allow the 'real' employees a chance to get in and get settled. 1) it turns out this was only supposed to be for the first few days till I grew autonomy. Later we moved offices, and I had a pretty far commute (for me anyways). Also, I was in college and a lush, so early mornings were not my thing. I did make it up by usually being the last one to leave on days when I was working, but it started to be 9, then 9.15 etc... which culminated in a couple of 10am starts. This whole time no one said a word to me. up to this point, I had only ever worked retail, and I was used to having my chain yanked pretty hard if something wasnt up to snuff. I assumed this was ok, that this is what big kids jobs were like. Show up whenever, leave late, stuff like that. So finally, I showed up late on my birthday, like 9.30. Well, I guess my boss thought it would be nice to bring in some doughnuts for me to celebrate with the department, but guess who was late! Needless to say I got fired the next day, The exuse being they decided to merge two of the intern positions and sorry, and its been great and then she couldnt help herself and said 'blah blah blah, oh by the way, you were late like every day and thats not ok' , and when this was happening, I said, from day one you told me to come in around 9. If my being this late has been a problem, why did you wait 5! months to say something to me, and why now, when you are firing me.

The point of that is that if someone had said something to me from the jump about the expectations, I think I would have been able to make it in no problem (I could for my other job). So dont keep it in!

The whole "its not a big deal" attitude here really blows me away.

I'm from a blue collar family and I learned early on to be early to work and my time in the military didn't do anything to change that attitude.

As the others have stated I get up fight traffic and all that jazz to be to work on time so I don't expect to hear excuses. The guys in my office are supposed to be professionals and as such I expect them to act like professionals. Part of that is showing up on time for work.

Everyone has a bad day once in a while. Gets up late, gets caught by the train, ect so I tend to let the first time or two slide but someone who makes a habbit out of being late gets written up.

My wife on the other hand is exactly like many here. Constantly 10 - 15 minutes late. Would get outstanding performance ratings every year except for her showing up late all the time. Her and her boss finally worked it out where she goes in at 8:30 but only takes a half hour lunch. She's still late but only a few times a year. So I can see both sides of the coin but in my business it's not possible to alter people's schedules to let them come in a little later.

I think a number of people in this thread would have shot themselves had they worked a schedule like mine in my first job. I had to be at work by 5am in order to accomplish what I needed to be done before the QC guys started at 6am, before OPs started at 7am for the day.

This can actually be done at his desk.

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Originally Posted by BP348

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The guys in my office are supposed to be professionals and as such I expect them to act like professionals. Part of that is showing up on time for work.

Part of being a 'professional' is having the independence and judgement to know how much time and effort it's going to take to do your job at an excellent level. It's a big deal if your work is crap, no matter how much effort you put in. It's not a big deal if your work is excellent, but you arrive an hour later than everybody else.

Being a 'professional' means that outputs get measured and judged. Inputs only matter in unskilled positions (b/c they're directly correlated to output).

If, in this case, being on time is critical to the job (i.e. other people depend on you being there promptly), then to do a great job, you need to be on time. But that's not true of many (perhaps most) professional roles.

Originally Posted by matt22616

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Being late, not to mention habitually late, is probably one of the fruitiest behaviors of loser GDI fuckups. Back when I was a pledge in undergrad (yes, this is a fruity anecdote about how hard I phrat), our first meeting began with our pledge trainer making us repeat the phrase, "If you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. If you're late, you're forgotten."

+1000000000000000000000 TFM

Originally Posted by SpooPoker

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I have a zero tolerance policy for lateness. If I can wake ****** up, beat the traffic and the elements and get there at the sound of the bell ready to go, so can you.

Every place I have worked, the chronic latecomers never advanced.

Originally Posted by Crane's

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My thoughts exactly.

Admittedly, part of what pisses me off is that I have an hour + commute and am in the office at 8:30, while this person only has to roll out of bed and walk a few blocks, and can't show up at 9:00. Today we have a 9:00 meeting; I was here at 8:20 because I don't trust public transit to be on time.

Now, I knew about the commute when I took the job. If I'm late because of public transportation/traffic, that's no better or worse than this person being late. They just have no reason to ever be late.

Originally Posted by matt22616

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Being late, not to mention habitually late, is probably one of the fruitiest behaviors of loser GDI fuckups. Back when I was a pledge in undergrad (yes, this is a fruity anecdote about how hard I phrat), our first meeting began with our pledge trainer making us repeat the phrase, "If you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. If you're late, you're forgotten."

I was simply raised to always be on time. It literally blows my ******* mind that people can actually be late. How long have you been alive? You do understand how time works, correct? Is it a mystery why you were late yesterday? What specific actions or tasks are you for some reason unable to allocate the correct amount of time to to complete, despite the fact that you do them EVERY ******* DAY?

The fact that you should even have to enact a "policy" to stop people from ******** all over your business is absurd. Hire someone who wants to make money.

My father (owner of a small blue collar business) always shortened this to "If you're on time, you're late" (and made it very clear that this was even more true for the boss's son).

Wow at some of the responses here. We have an incredibly high performance office environment and we are very very flexible. People need to show up on time for meetings (even one minute late is unacceptable) but besides that you just need to be reachable via your cell and email, most people won't even come in if they don't have meetings.

Originally Posted by dcg

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My father (owner of a small blue collar business) always shortened this to "If you're on time, you're late" (and made it very clear that this was even more true for the boss's son).

I think the question is, in this particular role, is there a reason that 9:00 is "on time"? Or is it just an arbitrary time that you *think* people should be at work by? If there's a reason, then it's part of job performance and you need to address it; if it's arbitrary, you need to think about why it's really important.

Originally Posted by holymadness

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Flex time all the way. The best job I ever had let me show up any time between 8:30 and 9:30 and leave 8 hours later. Employee gratitude = productivity.

+1

I worked in a government office where we were mostly policy analysts (i.e., knowledge workers, not producers of widgets), but management were really stuck on a precise start time, every day. Some managers even monitored how long people took in the bathroom (not making this up). Variances of as little as 10 minutes were recorded, and you were expected to make up the time after work - shortening your lunch or coffee breaks to make up the time wasn't allowed.

Having to kids, I argued with my director several times that the nature of my job and work was such that as long as I made my deadlines and the policy advice was good, it shouldn't matter where I made up lost time. No go, he said, you're a senior analyst, and if we accommodate you all the junior employees will want the same consideration.

Needless to say, morale was rock bottom. We towed the line as best we could to avoid trouble, but when the cats were away, the mice played (as the saying goes). I got out of there in just over a year, and a whole pile of people followed me.

IMO, it's the quality of the output that matters, not whether you're putting in 7.5/day.

Originally Posted by Geoff Gander

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putting in 7.5/day.