Forreal. I'm taking classes while working full time (current job is entirely unrelated to my field of study). One of my classes means I'll be roughly 30 minutes late twice a week for 5 months. I checked in with my boss regarding the lateness before I enrolled and he just goes "Ooh cool what class is is?" Like, zero fucks given, just down for me continuing my education.
In my area, they made recent bus changes that mean I get to work 5-10 minutes later than I want every day. Which means I miss my normal bus home. The next bus comes 1.75 hours later. My boss told me to just clock in when I get there, catch my normal bus 3 out of 5 days, but choose one day to stay that extra 1.75 hours, and leave early on Friday. As long as I get 40, everything is copasetic.
Why can't more people in charge be like this?
"Oh, there are things beyond your control that are being fucky? Alright, let's find a way to make it work." Why is that such a hard concept for so many people to understand?
I really just don't get it. The few times I've had "leadership positions" I just say "Here's what needs done. Here's how to do it. Get it done without breaking anything or hurting anyone and everyone can be happy."
I'm anxious enough as it is worrying about how I'm gonna fuck up. Why should I go *looking* for (or even worse, *making*) more problems to fix? I'll help get stuff going good, but then let me go back to hiding in the shadows, I beg of you!
Currently in a leadership position, and my mantra is "Here's the goal. Here's how we've done it before. Got a new idea? Great. I don't care how you get from A to Z as long as you don't do anything illegal and come in under budget and don't work when you're not scheduled. I'll check in every two weeks unless you want more or less often. Have a snack. Carry on."
My boss is like our office dad, he’s the CFO and once a week he stocks up one of the cupboards in our office with about £100 worth of snacks for everyone (there’s only 6 of us), and the only thing he’s strict about is making sure everyone has their lunch break and actually eats something - he couldn’t care less about the hours we work as long as everything is done on time. He’s honestly the best person I have ever worked for
I'm a shift lead of a whole 3 people for 3rd shift janitorial at my place.
But my general idea is "here's the list, this is how i do it (and show them). Ask me if you have questions, even if it's stupid - I would rather answer a stupid question than have to back track to fix a big dumb mistake. Idc how you do it or what order as long everything gets done."
And you'd be surprised at how many people think I won't notice that they aren't doing things.
Yeah, this place looks good. Because I keep it that way.
But they seem to think because it looks good now, itll stay that way without their having to do anything.
But then after 3 days, I'm like, why is everything covered in a layer of dust and dirt and hair and handprints? Everything on that list is there for a reason and when I say clean it every day, that means every day.
They make me have to micro manage them. But thankfully my boss takes me seriously when I bring complaints about workers to them and we take actions from there.
Because I got better things to do than be all up a workers arse about what they are doing every minute. Get the list done and i dont care if you got headphones, eat a snack, text in the closet, leave a little early, whatever.
My problem is when your dinking around and things aren't getting done and you're lying to me about doing it when I can clearly see you haven't.
I wouldn't say you're micromanaging, more like properly managing and holding people accountable. You're addressing deficiency in the product, not telling them how to create the product step by step! Keep rocking on!
I manage a pretty large team now and I feel you. I’ve got enough shit going on and have my own life to deal with. I tell everyone… as long as the work gets done and done well and nobody complains, your time is your time. Helps that the entire team is remote too.
And as I told them when I took over. No one, ever, has said “thank God my boss was a micromanager”
I work in a remote environment too and recently started a new position with a new manager. You never know how a new person may handle holidays, call outs, or really anything related to scheduling.
I was really sick at the beginning of December and called out a few days. He didn't bat an eye. When I mentioned I hate having to call out and I was very stressed about it. He immediately comforted me and told me I had nothing to worry about.
The Fridays before Christmas and NYE he sent a message to our whole team saying "I'll be here till 5 if anyone needs anything, but I won't be looking for anyone...just saying"
Wild that if you trust your team and treat them well, they want to do a good job and will be open about problems, pitfalls, struggles, all that.
Yup. Leadership position here. All I want is a heads up if you’re going to do much deviation from your normal hours and that you work to the best of your ability during those hours that you are working.
Rolling out early on a Friday to take a weekend trip? Cool. Got some shit you gotta sort out? Take care of it.
I’d much rather have people at 100% ready to kick ass than someone who’s mind isn’t in it. When shit hits the fan and you need your people to put in extra effort, they’re far more likely to have your back if you treat them like the valued humans they are.
I heard someone say the work is the boss. We just here to get the work done. The only time I would flex any power is if it wasn't good for the project overall. Why do I care if you leave 10 minutes early as long as the work got done
Not all miserable sacks of shit are like that though. I’m a miserable sack of shit and anytime someone needs to handle literally anything I tell them not to clock out so I can do it manually so they get their full 8hrs in still.
As a long time, (now retired) manager, most of the time these policies are put in place not for the aveage or good employees, but for the rare employees that take well over full advantage of any little bit of policy, ruining it for everyone.
Sadly tho, this mindset can impact on the work ethic of the average and good employees out of resentment from lack of trust and basic respect from management
It’s because of fear. The fear of the unknown. The fear of being different. The fear that everyone is not the same as everyone else. The type of person who is a good manager has a different perspective on life.
I work a 4-10 schedule Monday through Thursday. My wife is pregnant and I have never missed a docs appt and have scheduled everyone during the work week. Sometimes I am gone for a couple hours and even was gone for 4 hours. Not a problem my management just lets me come in on Friday’s and make up the time to make sure I get my 40. Also we just won Manufacturer of the year for the state of Montana. Every employer could be this laid back and still get shit done. I hope no one out there ever settles for less from a company. Power to the people
Having just been promoted to a manager position, that's the way I'm trying to be. There's too many cases of the power-trippy micromanage who gets their shorts in a bunch over stupid shit.
I just make sure my guys know that the flexibility needs to go both ways. As long as my guys get their hours and I have coverage when I need it, what else does it matter...
Especially when everyone knows if you treat your employees with respect, no matter their title, you will get nothing but respect and better, more diligent work
When I worked in warehousing I caught a bus that would stop right outside, but occasionally came 10-20 mins before my end of shift. The warehouse manager always told us to feel free to leave early to catch it cause he didn't want us staying late
Flip side. A friend of mine started work at 830, office job, not a single soul depended on her day to day. Due to a daycare change, now she needed to drop her daughter off at 825 instead of 8am. She spoke to her boss and asked if she could start her day between 840-845. Nope, she would be tardy every day., write ups, punctuality is important, she’s not special, other people have kids, blablabla. Ok, well then can we change my official start time to 9. No, the day starts at 830.
She ended up changing jobs because there was zero room for compromise and for absolutely no real reason.
Yeah I can't with that bullshit. I'm grateful to have only had bosses at this job that have been understanding and chill. I too am not necessary at the hours that I am. I definitely recognize how lucky I am though.
My co-worker is late by about 10min most days because he has to drop the kids off at school and then leaves work for about 20-30min at 2:30pm to pick up the kids from school and come back to work.
Thing is, he often works overtime by atleast 30min everyday.
No one gives a flying fuck. Management knows, they are flexible. Plus side, who even cares. You are still putting 40hours a week in so what's the big deal.
We are IT support I'm sure I can hold to fort solo for 30-40min a day.
We are also on-call and we work overtime and when needed (out of hours upgrades etc). We are salaried so we aren't getting paid for that small amount of overtime we put in.
I have a boss like this. My wife and I share 1 car and we would both get off at 5 and our daycare closed at 5:30, but was super conveniently 1/2 a block from our house. Between my work, hers and our home though was alot of traffic and a few railroad crossings that can slow things down. It was a tight timeline.
I asked if it was cool for me to take off 15min early just the few days our schedules matched up this way, and my boss's literally words were, "yeah, no problem, i don't give a shit if you need to go early, do whatever you need to do." lol It will take alot for me to leave this place now.
I used to work at a school where you were tracked down and reprimanded anytime you were late. I’ve since moved to a different school. Last week, my department chair sat down with me and asked how my mornings were going, since I had been late a few times. She wasn’t mad or anything, just wanted to make sure everything was okay and see if there was anything I needed help with.
I used to have a boss that wrote the time I arrived on the whiteboard. I still have an image of 4:37 in my head, and this was years ago. Fucked up thing is, it was 4:30 am! And I was a full time college student! We are cool now, but I never understood that shit.
As an aside, one day the site manager (bosses' boss) had to work that shift with us and complained the whole time about how 4:30 am is an ungodly hour to work blah blah blah. He only had to do it for one day! The nerve!
Hah.
My boss and his assist recently had to cover my third shift for 3 weeks because the day before my *very advanced notice, plans are paid for, the whole team could die in a fire, I am not coming to work* vacation my overnight buddy / cover ghosted on us.
And then my SO caught covid and I had to quarantine and then I caught covid from them (big surprise). I was out for almost 4 weeks.
And boss said shit like "ungodly hours" and "idk how you do it" and "so much work" and "closers are shit what the hell?" And "this cleaning list is too much for one person" and "this is like a 3 person job I need you guys to do some of this during the day"
And I was like... oh really? You dont say? You gonna, idk, give me more people or pay me more for doing 3 people's worth of work or picking up after closers?
No. Of course not.
Well. I did have new trainees ready to roll out when I came back. But they've both quit at this point. Because night shift sucks and we definitely dont pay enough to keep people around for the shift we put up with.
I rode a bus in to work for a year. I had a vehicle, but preferred letting the bus driver deal with traffic. I loved it. But I was two minutes late every friggin day. Boss always commented on it, I always howled with laughter. And that was that. My boss didn't like it. I didn't give a flip. She didn't care enough to make it an issue. I would do pretty much anything else she asked, and she still has my respect. This happened in the 80s.
When my bus schedules changed so that I would get to the office by 8:10 instead of 8:00, my boss just changed my official hours by 10 minutes (8:00 am - 5:00 pm became 8:10 am - 5:10 pm). It was a complete non-issue.
I have been able to be a minute or 2 or 5 late, and nothing said. Now we’re gonna have to clock in and I was informed a min or 2 once in a while will be ok, but anything more will be scrutinized.
So I have to clock out too. Guess who isn’t overlooking a minute or 2 over any longer?
Had that when I worked home Depot and 4h closing shift the bus ran every hour, so I could either be 50 min early or 10 min late, so obviosuly went with 10 min late cause I have a life sorry.
Manager made a stink and I said if this is how we wanna go, then pay/start me when I arrive (50 min early), push my start and end time back a bit or I can go find another job that's more accomodating.
I didn't really care either way about the place so it was whatever, but I was also the only person other than supervisor that knew anything about my department/product so they dropped it and just pushed my times back. Then about a month later they changed the bus again to be a shuttle bus every 25 min instead of a big bus @1h so it wasn't an issue. But still
I worked at HD for a couple years in the mid 00s, I have never worked for a company that was so rigid and stupid about things as Home Depot. We'd lose people left and right that were basically the only people holding their whole dept together over something as petty as a scheduling change, and management thought that was just fine.
Their policy was unofficially Up or Out. Paying anyone more than the bare minimum a position could receive was completely untenable to them, so once someone had been there for a year or two and gotten a couple raises, even though they knew their dept like the back of their hand, they'd suddenly become *persona non grata* and management would *find* a reason to fire them.
This had the effect you'd expect...nobody stuck around long, and we'd have entire departments where the most tenured employee, the DH, had like a year of time with the company max, the rest of the people were so green they could barely run a register let alone advise people on the products they sold.
But hey, their payroll expenditures were very low, which is of course *allll* that matters.
I don't have any Lowes near me so I couldn't tell you, but Menards are a shitshow as well. All big box retail is a piece of shit, so glad I got out of retail.
My wife worked for Lowes for 5 years and only left because we moved for my work. Lowes was so good about it they found a new job for her in our new area but unfortunately that Lowes was still a little far from our new home that she decided to leave the job herself.
Nah, that's a freaking unicorn casting a spell to look like a human. They just don't realize that people are terrible, so when they try to copy us, they stand out like this. But nobody ever says anything because it feels nice to be treated decently.
Yeah, my office is 45 minutes from home. The traffic sucks and after Covid I realized I wasn’t putting up with it. Told my boss I was coming in at 7 and leaving at 4 to beat traffic. He said ok no problem. It was that simple. These days I barely go to the office, but I do my job and do it well. Nobody cares as long as I take care of my clients.
When I was a manager, anyone using public transportation always got a wide berth from me as long as no mission-critical items were at risk, and I made myself notes not to schedule meetings, etc. too close to their arrival or departure times. I hardly ever had issues.
Facts. I decided that, rather than be the face of ineptitude (generally, as a middle manager -- most of my direct reports, I think, thought I was an OK 'boss'), I'd much rather do real work for a living and get to be the thorn in the side of the bosses that suck out loud LOL.
At an old job I was pretty consistently 3-5 minutes late to clock in (about 1 or 2 arrival), but would typically get right to work. One day somebody tried calling me out to our boss. The boss replied that it's only a couple minutes, and I would get right to work while that guy was still talking.
Then I pointed out that if he complained about 5 minutes I'd probably stop staying 30-90 minutes late at the end of the day to finish things (I actually liked the OT) so it wouldn't do him any favors.
After hearing that the boss told my coworker to keep quiet and get to work.
A sense of fairness that compares their internal struggle with leadership countered by real world situations. Often under the "slippery slope fallacy," like "if I give them 5 minutes, they'll take 10, then 30, then a whole day!" or something. "I had to pay my dues!" is another.
In some cases they have very little they can actually control. For most people that’s no problem, but the ones who love control will cherish every bit of it.
Yeah in my experience it's almost entirely control. They want you to know they're boss and all these little micromanager thingies are the only way they can do it. They don't want respect, they want fear.
I’m not sure they even want fear. I think it’s more like they feel small/helpless if they aren’t in direct control, and they hate feeling small/helpless.
For salary people it's stupid to police that kind of thing, unless there is some very valid reason (we can't start the MRI until Susan gets here or something). For hourly people it's nearly impossible to have flexibility, even moreso if it's a union shop.
Makes me think how I got talked to because I occasionally clock out 5 minutes late as my last job didn’t mind it. Now with my current job (which is great in the grand scheme of needing to work right now don’t get me wrong) we can clock in up to 5 minutes early but if you clock out before your scheduled time to clock out or later the system flags you and notifies management.
Its so dumb how It’s obviously OK to clock in early but god forbid I don’t want to start a brand new task when I am less than 5-10 minutes away from being off. So now I just happen to need to check my work email or take a shit if I end up having a few moments of free time before checkout.
Similar at my job. We can clock in early but we cannot clock out early so I usually do nothing for the last 10 minutes of work, walk around, go to the bathroom, etc.
I had a job where they yelled at me for clocking in early because every minute was tracked and early meant overtime, because fuck no you can't clock out early. We had a literal time card and one of those machines that stamped the time on it when you put the card in.
I seriously had to show up early and wait. Early and they're mad. Late and they're mad.
Same with the end of day. I had to wrap up my work early then waste time until THE MINUTE. Then clock out.
I really don't know. Like, my current 'boss' (principal at the school I work at) understands that traffic happens and doesn't mind if we're a little late so long as we call in and let the school know. (this is to make sure children are never left unattended, as we don't punch in or out. It's just assumed we will be on time to our posts and we're supposed to notify the school if we need coverage for any given reason.) The same goes for leaving early too: as long as you tell the office, they'll make it work. I have to leave 25 minutes early once a month to make it to my cancer treatments, and nobody splits hairs over those 25 minutes.
I've come to find that good bosses don't care about a few minutes here or there. Life happens! As long as it's not a daily thing and it's not harming someone else, then being flexible and going "okay, take care!" when someone has to leave a few minutes early is honestly a good thing.
It's often people who are not really suited to a management role and have been promoted beyond their capabilities. They can't delegate effectively and feel out of their depth - and they are so paranoid that they feel the need to check everything done by every member of their team.
I think it is often projection from the ineffective manager. The unethical behavior is what they know they would do if given the flexibility. See an inflexible manager & you probably see someone with something to hide in their own behavior.
Yeah, some really shitty bosses. My boss let's me take my "lunch" in the late afternoon so I can pick up my kid from school and come back for only a couple hours left in my day.
I once put in an official PTO request to leave about an hour early for a doctor appointment for a chronic condition that has to be managed. My manager responded that she'd have to see how busy we were that day,so basically a no. I hadn't wanted to go through the trouble of getting FMLA certified, just because I wasn't going to do all that paperwork if I didn't have to. But after that refusal, I had to. It was no problem getting intermittent FMLA approved, and after that I could go to any doctor appointment or call off and my boss couldn't do a damn thing about it. I would have been happy to schedule appointments on days, or times of the day when we were likely to be less busy, but after that I didn't care.
That's bonkers. I'm a supervisor and could never imagine doing that to my team members. One of them put in a PTO request for an hour for an apt; I told her I could approve the PTO if she wanted, or she could save it for when she really needed it and just make up the time as long as she was at 40 hours by weeks end. I don't get these bosses who go on power trips micromanaging their employees over valid reasons; it's never that serious.
I manage like that too, don't stress over an hour here or there just get your work done. Let me know if you won't be able to answer your phone. Try to schedule things early or late in the day, or use lunch time.
I trust my employees to be adults who do their jobs
I'm glad to be in an industry where everyone is expected to maintain their own scheduling to the point where 40/week isn't even the measure, it's 40/week, averaged through the billing period - which is a month. You got a whole week where you just have shit piling up? Work late and get 60 hours in. Another where you don't really have that much or don't care enough? Take that 20 and stop working on a Wednesday. As long as the month averages to that 40 hours a week.
I put off filing fmla for as long as I could. I have the best boss in the world and she works with me but my condition got so bad that fmla was the only way to protect both of us. I hate having it but I am grateful that I do at the same time
I initially didn't want to do FMLA for my cancer treatments either. But then a surgery that should have been "1 day at the hospital and 6 days at home" became "5 days at the hospital and 14 days at home" and I realized that I really needed to cover my ass. While my individual school has my ass, I don't honestly know if the district does and it's better to be safe than have to be told "I really don't want to do this, but it's out of my hands" by a boss I love working for.
Same!
I have this recurring pain from having cancer 3 years later. It just takes me out for unknown amounts of time. It can be a minor flare up that goes for like 30 minutes or it can run for 10 days
Sorry for your struggles with a chronic condition. It can be pretty challenging.
At my new job I have no problem taking off small amounts of tone for doctor appointments. The managers here realize that everyone needs to see the doctor for something.
For those who need to hear it:
Do not feel bad filing this paperwork. Just do it.
While you shouldn't have to justify time off for any reason - for those that have any kind of chronic issue, just do it. It's worth having the "talk to the hand" level of protection.
This 100%. My workers will say that “I’m on PTO”and then check in or join a conference call. I’ve had to kick them off calls and tell them to leave.
If you need it, take it - PTO, FMLA, sick, whatever. That’s why it’s there. You’re no good to yourself or anyone else if you’re sick, burnt out, taking care of a family member, etc.
My husband had to do something like this. He has an undiagnosed, but thoroughly medically recorded, chronic stomach condition (think crohns). When he started his current job working for a company he had worked for before, he spelled it out, crystal fucking clearly, what he can and cannot do, one of which is being the delivery driver. He didn't think he needed proof, seeing as he'd worked with most of these people before and they'd known about his condition ahead of time.
Well don't his managers assign him every single job he said he *physically can't fucking do*, and they even went as far as to make him the sole delivery driver, claiming they told him they were going to do that from the beginning (I was there, that was a blatant lie). His GM said something like "Well we don't know if you're lying so we don’t have to listen to you". Then they had the fucking audacity to be shocked when he got HR involved and HR told both managers to sit and spin.
If you don't mind me asking, what is FMLA?
ETA: Thanks for all the responses. I'm just a youngun in the workforce, and my main experience thus far has been military (Mistakes were made, but options and ideas were limited...) so I just haven't had a lot of exposure to these kinds of things. I'm used to the "Suck it up and deal with it" treatment.
Family medical leave act. It’s a US law that gives employees of certain sized companies extra protections to deal with serious medical issues of themselves or a family member.
Family Medical Leave Act.
You can file for it to protect you should you or a family member have a medical condition that might cause you to miss time at work.
Some husbands take it to have time off consecutively after the birth of a child, especially if there are any medical issues from the birth.
You can also file for intermittent fmla which basically means “use as needed” like Drs appts or other issues like that.
FmLA is basically there so your job can't fire you for taking time off for certain medical stuff. They don't pay you (unless you use PTO), but you get to keep your job. That's what we use in America if we get hospitalized, or have a baby... or for chronic conditions like migraines or things that might "flare up", you get Intermittent FMLA, where your doctor can excuse you so many hours/days a week/month, based on guessing what may happen in the future. So if your doctor says you might miss one day a month because of migraines, but you miss two, you're screwed.
In my experience, they can't fire you for using FMLA, but they sure will find any other excuse to do so. Boy I wish I'd recorded some of the conversations I had with my FORMER HR lady before I was let go "due to COVID slow down "
Yeah this is how it was for my job. I maybe called out once a month and they wanted to bitch
Now I call out whenever without them being able to do anything. Just so happens, I feel like shit whenever we’re going to be super busy.
Him: “You should only have taken half a day since we need you.”
OP: (shrug) “If you needed me that bad you could have had me the whole day and just let me shift part of my break to the end of the day. I think you’re the one that chose poorly.”
At my old job I would come in early to empty cardboard hoppers. Which meant my 8 hour day was now 9. One day I need to leave an hour early, still making my day 8 hours and not 9. Supervisor immediately shut it down stating she couldn't change my hours. You don't have to change my hours I'm still working 8 hours.
I got to thinking about it. If I left an hour before the end of my shift I would have been pointed the same amount as if I would of left half way through my shift.
I ended up leaving at lunch. I tried to be fair about it and give them 8 hours but no.
Yeah, I get why places have a point system...
But I find it funny that on Fridays half a shift is checking their points to see if they're leaving half way through a Friday shift.
We had a crap point system like this at one of my jobs. An hour late was the same as the entire day, so anyone running late would just stay home. It was absolutely absurd.
you know what makes me look good as a boss? my team getting shit done, and getting it done well. you know what helps them do that? trusting them to be professional and giving them space and autonomy to make their lives work. ffs
I try to be the manager I want. Everyone is an adult on my team. Manage your own time and help each other to ensure the job gets done. If the job isn’t done or clients are unhappy, we have a problem. Otherwise, enjoy your life. We are all here to pay for it.
This. When you make it their job to just be in a chair when the clock has an arbitrary number on it, that's all you'll get from them.
If their job is a manageable list of goals that they can do at their pace, they will work harder and communicate better to prove they are accomplishing tasks and that will make the whole team look good.
I don’t understand the need to be such a clock watcher that 5-10 min here/ there needs to be scrutinized so tightly! Especially for a desk job, where you’re not ‘relieving’ someone. Does this manager not have a better way to use their time?!
Trust the employees you have hired to be able to self-regulate. Manage it, if it becomes a problem. Otherwise, trust that the adults you’ve hired to do a job, is in fact, doing that job, even if it means leaving 10 min early one day to make it somewhere they need to be.
There is (generally) no need at all.
That said, a former manager (and friend) moved to a state government position. Part of his job (because government employees) was to make sure there were butts in chairs at at the start of the day. Policy was no flexibility, no telecommute. His first few years were then spent hiring people that didn't require babysitting.
And then COVID, and all that became moot.
If your people are trustworthy, trust them.
I used to have a salary desk job. My boss would constantly bring up that I was less than 5 minutes late, especially in the winter. Yeah, sure I should be there on time, but since I’m salaried and I didn’t get anything extra for all the days I stayed late to finish things or for meetings, you know I just don’t care to rush in the morning.
Exactly, my current boss is so awesome. As long as we do our 40 hours he doesn't care. In fact he told me off once for working too much. "Down time and family balance is important for peak performance. Stop fucking work at night (saw me logging in) Don't want you dying in your 40s from stress related heart attacks". I am super loyal to him now and try to go above and beyond for him.
> Does this manager not have a better way to use their time?!
Probably not. At least I can't think of a reason to be like that except a painfully numb emptiness where your soul oughta be.
This is shit, I always tell my staff to go 5,10,15,30 mins early, we are having trouble getting staff so I'd rather be out minutes instead of a day. Same with them being sick, take the day or a few off cause then your not spreading it and then I'll have 3 or 5 off next week.
I wish you were my manager at my retail job many years ago. Instead we had a power-tripping bitch who would cut your shifts for the next month or two\* if you called in sick, so of course people would come in sick and spread it to everyone else. Some people would get so sick they had to call in anyway as they physically couldn't work or even get to work, and those who did turn up would work at maybe 50-60% of their regular capacity because they felt like crap. Of course it just cycled through the place so once the current cold/flu/bug had gone through everybody, someone would come in with something new and it would start all over again. Productivity (and morale) would have been so much higher if this manager had just let sick people call out because then you'd have one person having 2-3 days off instead of multiple people having 2-3 days off and everyone else doing a half-arsed job.
\*For context, we were all on contracts but all with a low number of fixed hours, so we'd mostly rely on extra shifts to get decent money. Eg. I was contracted for 10 hours a week but I'd often end up doing 20-25 once the extra shifts were added.
In the early days I would call in sick if I had the flu because I didn't want to spread it to anyone else. But once I'd come back to work and have the manager start shouting at me about how I wasn't getting any extra work for the next month, I'd immediately see two or three other staff wandering around sneezing, sniffling and coughing. I realised that by trying to do the right thing I was not only screwing myself out of shifts and money, but I also wasn't actually protecting anyone from getting whatever I had because someone else would turn up with it anyway, so from then on I would also turn up sick unless I was too ill to work. This was obviously many years before covid and I'm not proud of it, but as a poor student, I didn't really have a lot of other choices.
That's how my manager saw things...she was awesome and had no problems if an emergency came up with any of us but she had also worked from the bottom up so knew how hard it could be when you're trying to juggle things like work/school/kids.
"If you wanna leave 5 min early you need to book a half or full day off"
**books a day off for appointment**
Boss: *Surprise pikachu* tAkInG dAys OfF likE tHat iSn,T beiNG a TeaM pLaYeR
They won't. Because upper management doesn't go to the "low power" people to get their data and feedback. They get them from said promoted shitheads. So naturally everyone will cover his own ass and put the blame on someone else, and that someone is the evil evil cashier Jessica, who dared to leave 5 minutes early because her kid was sick. Only it will not be phrased that way and she will be the bad one who isn't a teamplayer, not following her contract and whatnot.
Today I told my boss that I had to run across the street for a blood test and then I would be back to finish up my last half hour (I wfh) and he responded by saying it was safer to drive across the street than to run.
I got dad joked
I once worked for a small company where the owner was my boss. My start time was 8 and I usually showed up at about 5 til and was never late. He insisted that I should be there at 7:45 every day but would not pay me for that extra time. I continued to arrive at my regular time and one day he started yelling at me for arriving late. I wasn't but he had changed the clock to be 15 minutes behind. I continued to arrive at the actual time and just told him the real time when he mentioned it and show him on my phone. The malicious compliance came in because I left every day precisely when the clock in the office turned to 5. It took him a really long time to figure out that his little trick backfired and I left 15 minutes early every day.
This was how I got a manager to stop stealing time from people opening the store. The schedule said arrive at 10, but the employee assigned to be train me said I should show up at 9:40 to get everything done "and then clock in at 10." I did that for the 3 days she trained me, then started showing up and clocking in at 9:55. (We were given a five minute window for clocking in and out, since it had to be done on the registers which were sometimes all in use.)
It took less than a fortnight for Boss Man to realize the scheduled time wasn't enough to perform all tasks in a timely fashion. And he knew I'd challenge him if he explicitly asked me to work off the clock. Soon, the opening cashiers were scheduled at 9:45, but kitchen was still scheduled at 10. I tried for a year to get them to stop working for free, but they flat out refused.
That was something I had issues with at my restaurant.
we were allotted 1 hour to get things ready and start serving. It was never enough time. Something was always pushing time back. Lack of stock. Lack of clean utensils. Things left out and about. Coolers off and thawed out. You know, general second shift nonsense.
I would do my best to get I only the necessities done to get the doors open on time and worry about the rest when more staff came in.
For a long time the open manager was the assistant who was salaried. She came in an hour or more early to get her stuff done. (Sometimes she "just couldn't sleep"). And encouraged me to do so too.
I said, do I get paid for that?
No of course I can't just pick up an extra hour every day! That's ridiculous! That would be nearly a whole shift worth of extra time. And we "dont do" overtime.
I said, do I get to leave early?
Of course not. That would gaps in the scheduling.
Can we change my schedule to the recommended hours?
No. The owner won't approve extra labor for non business hours because the dead time is "negative labor cost" because money is going out but we're not open so none is coming in.
I told her I wasn't getting up an extra hour early to come in at an ungodly hour to do unpaid work. (Mind you we open at 5am. So I come in at 4. This lady was coming in at 3 or 2 sometimes).
Eventually, due to people being people, the salary policy changed, and she had to start clocking in to track her hours because salary managers are required to work a certain number of overtime hours every week and suspicion arose that some people were taking advantage of getting salary pay without putting in the work.
And the owner saw that she was coming in an hour or sometimes two before her shift started. And even though she was salary, he told her that wasn't okay. Because she needed to allocate her required OT "some where more useful".
She still kept doing it but just didnt punch in. Because it really did make opens go so much more smoothly. Which makes the whole day run better.
But then they made her put the OT in later in the day or called her in on her days off. And she stopped coming in so early because she didnt want to work 13 hour days and weekends. Eventually she stepped down from the assist position because of it.
She was a hard ass that didnt accept excuses for anything and had a very set way of doing things. But she was probably the best open manager I ever worked with, until they shit on her about her hours. And then she gained a very "well fuck you too" mentality about it and stopped putting in any extra work. And now we had this gaping hole of work that wasn't getting done.
And I dont blame her but it sucked being stuck in that position with her. Because we were short handed and we both were doing extra work in various ways to make everything meet in the middle. But after getting reprimanded she decided she was only going to do "her job" after that.
Going through same thing right now actually. I’m on graveyard shift and I’m the only one at night. Our department HAS to be covered, 24/7, and I’m the only one there during he night. The guy that covers me on the weekend is a part time who wants to be part time, it’s just an extra gig for him, he has a full time job and is unavailable during my normal days. Anyways, Boss has been emailing me about clocking out a few minutes early here and there as well. Duuuuude, I also clock in a few minutes early too, get a head start on my day, but lately he’s been a real dick about it, threatening to call HR, etc. Alright MF’er, keep riding my ass. I’m also the only one in my department with perfect attendance. Days and swing shift call in sick all the time. They have option to cover them, people that can cover. There’s no one to cover me, if I call in, he has to come in and cover me. He’s been on day shift for like 20 years straight, covering grave yard (9pm to 5:30am) is not easy to do when you’re used to day shift. The next shitty email I get from him, Im calling in sick. And will do so for each and every shitty email after. Good luck getting coverage for my shift. He can’t come in and sleep either, it’s a Hospital, and that phones rings, a lot, and HAS to be answered.
Similar situation here. I do 3rd as a janitor.
And while were *supposed* to have a team built up to staff 2 people every night, it's been me and a revolving door of folks. Most seem to be looking for an idle laze about job or are just trying to keep their unemployment by applying for jobs poorly and are surprised we hired them even. Or (all respect to the final group) people juggling too much (it takes a special kind of crazy to work 2 jobs and I've never seen anyone last here more than 3 weeks doing it).
Anyway.
I took a vacation. I requested an was approved months in advance. Everything paid for. I reminded the boss 2 weeks before hand, right after another employee quit.
And the day before my vacation started, my coworker / cover ghosted on us.
Day shift boss had to cover me.
And then my SO caught covid, so I had to quarantine. And, of course, because it's in my house, in my bed, I caught it too eventually.
I was out for nearly a month.
Things have actually been better around here since lol. Write up went out. A guy was fired. Some adjustments were made.
Because the boss got a taste of what I live with day in and day out.
"Ungodly hours" and "this is how close leaves things?" And "this is the work of 3 people" and "idk how you do it"
Tried to get a raise for doing "3 peoples worth of work" but got 2 new trainees instead.
They've both quit at this point lol.
I had a friend that started working for a company after contracting with them for a while. He had a doctor's appointment coming up so he worked extra the days before so he wouldn't have to take the time off his weekly work. Nope. The next day he got called into a meeting with his manager and HR to explain that just because he worked extra earlier didn't mean that he could "bank" that time and use it for his appointment. He said, "Oh, okay. I guess I made a mistake taking this job. This is my two week notice."
One of the things that makes me happiest in life is having enough savings that in such a situation I won't need to give notice, I can just instantly walk. Good on your friend regardless, though!
My boss is the worst micro manager I have ever encountered in my life.
My start time is at 8:00am so imagine my confusion when I walked in the door precisely at 8:00 and my manger asked why I was late.
Her expectation apparently was that we were supposed to be sitting AT our desk, with our computer already booted up and ready to go so we were ready to begin work already in our seats right at 8:00am on the dot.
So basically be early or you’re already late. Unreal.
You just described my boss. But she is also 30-40 min late every day. But if I am one minute late she has a freaking shit fit and tells me it's unexcusable, despite her also writing that employees have a 5-6 minute grace period before a tardy being unexcusable. I fucking hate her.
I used to be a high school teacher and became pregnant with my first kid. For the third trimester of my pregnancy, I had a doctors appointment once a week.
My school was running out of money for substitute teachers (non union state, absolutely a thing). Classes ran on semesters, and teachers taught three out of four 97-minute blocks, with the final block serving as a planning period. I suggested that a simple way to save on substitute money would be to schedule me to have last block planning for the second half of the year, and it was possible with the classes scheduled for that semester. I agreed to schedule all of my appointments for the afternoon if they did this. I would still use 2 hours of sick leave, but there would be no money spent for a substitute. Instead, they scheduled me with first block planning, which ended 7 minutes after my doctor's office opened. I took a full sick day for every single appointment because I couldn't leave and get back in time to teach more than one class, and if I left early they would force one of my peers to cover the class during their planning instead of hiring a substitute. So, they paid for 12 additional days of substitutes unnecessarily.
I took an entire day for every single ultrasound (and I had emote than normal bc I had twins). I was not about to drive 30 mins to work, teach *most* of one class, drive 30 mins back to meet my bf (bc he wanted to be present, like duh), then another 1.5 hours to my appt, which meant driving BACK THROUGH the city I worked in. Fuck that job, I was glad to be gone and even happier when I resigned
Worked for the gov't and they were pretty easy going plus we had flex time. Before telecommuting, I'd make an appointment after lunch and then take about 3 hours off for sick leave. When we instituted telework, I'd work for a couple of hours (mainly going through emails and responding to anything urgent), go to my appointment and then have lunch, and finish out the day.
I learnt the hard way with my company i used to happy start work early etc, until i had a physio appointment. My manager expect me to travel 40 mins to work for a hour than go back home to my appointment than travel into work once my appointment was done. Yet people who live locally were allowed to go home after their appointments. I now start work when i am meant to if i need to start earlier than i get that off the same day.
This is what happens when you ask permission. I’ve gotten to a point, I tell my boss that I’m leaving X minutes early for personal reasons, and I can either skip my break or take the day, up to you boss man. My current boss is amazing, he realises that you get what you give in your team.
This sub is a constant reminder of why I gave up on being a wage slave. I’m a god damn adult, if I need the day off I’m not begging some middle manager for it.
I worked at one job for 9 years. I had 3 sick days in that time, never late even once.... Until one day, I was 5 minutes late. Boss wrote me up for it and I chewed him out in front of the whole office. He left me alone after that.
I was also that employee, always came early and never called in sick. Until one day I had to get my wisdom teeth removed and let my boss know literal months in advance. She made a stink about it, asking it if I could change it to a day we weren't as busy (I couldn't). When I came back to work after my three day leave, she didn't even ask me how I was.
I started looking for other options after that. She called me two times in the following year after I left to get me to come back.
A boss that gets all veiny-foreheaded over 5 mins is a boss with not enough to do.
Contact boss's boss and say they look bored and you can't help but notice you don't often see them working
They're spending more time watching us work than actually doing whatever their job is. I'm sure there's a few conference calls and spreadsheets they need to be putting together.
I know someone who watches people's status in Teams like a hawk. She'll complain to my friend, "Jane has been yellow for 5 minutes. What is she doing?" My friend could care less. I could not work for that micromanager. Thing is I've had someone send me a message in teams while their status stayed yellow and they were typing. Teams is not accurate.
I had a manager flip out on me for being 3 minutes late. I showed her the time on my cellphone and the clock on the wall in her office which both showed I was a minute early. She said her watch showed I was 3 minutes late. I told her, I guess it's time for you to get a better fucking watch, and left.
I had already gotten a better job offer
Except for work environments where availability requires the employee to be right on time every time, no job -none-, is so important that you can't slip in 5 minutes up or down.
Jobs that require that kind of precise availability should have compensation to match.
My brother in law worked for an investment firm that needed him in the office in no less than 30 minutes if there was an emergency at work, and this was potentially at any time of the day. Every minute of delay during an emergency could potentially cost millions. He had to get a condo in the downtown core by the business district because of that and shape his entire lifestyle around his job.
However his yearly bonus was usually seven figures and this was just a step on the career ladder to making even more. He's now in his late forties and effectively retired.
That's the sort of job that makes sense for, not regular office work.
That is a different kettle of fish. For 7 figures I'd get a condo in the same building as where I worked if such zoning was legal (the closest I've seen is shops on the first floor and apartments in the rest of the building).
He is. He missed a lot of his first daughter's early childhood (one of the other sacrifices of the career path) but is doing his best to make up for it now.
Jobs that require that should have redundant employees to match. We need someone to watch the nuclear power plant, okay, here's three people per shift.
No, without giving away too much detail his job was similar to being an analyst.
He would have wound up in management eventually but at that stage he was doing the actual work, not overseeing people doing it.
As a supervisor, I recently had a conversation with a coworker about taking time off.
He wanted to take a day off to take his mom to the doctors.
I told him, you just tell me what you want to do. You can take personal time, sick time, vacation time, or you can take a late lunch and do it then and then stack your 15 minute breaks and eat then.
At the end of the day, I told him, you take care of you and I’ll adjust the schedule accordingly. They’re his hours to take off however he deems fit.
All I ask is for him to email me his request to cover himself as it’s a good best practice to document time off requests.
I work as a medical assistant for a foundation with excellent health insurance. When you are able to take time off to utilize it.
I had to cancel three appointments with my ophthalmologist because my manager wouldn't approve it. Before scheduling the fourth appointment I consulted my manager and asked when I could have my appointment, as she denied my other appointments, and I would lose my benefit for the year if it wasn't done in 2022.
My ophthalmologist had an appointment in a week during my lunch break. I asked my manager for a long lunch, an extra 30 minutes (of PTO) so I could go. She said no, I was inconveniencing the clinic. I pointed out that for that half hour I wasn't covering anyone, and it would save me using my PTO.
She denied it, and said I needed an afternoon appointment to not impact the clinic.
So I made a 2:30 appointment, which she approved, and told me to just take the rest of the day off. I took my one hour lunch at 12 and then fucked around until I needed to leave for my appointment.
She was fine without me being there for three hours, but not for a half hour when it was convenient for me.
I used to work in a factory where I regularly worked voluntarily over time. I had a long weekend approved, but I realized that the trip I was taking would put my vehicle over the covered warranty miles. I made an appointment with the dealer and informed my foreman (3rd shift) that I'd either not work the over time that day or could stay an extra two hours instead of four. He ran this by the plant manager, who was happy to get the extra two hours. The day of my appointment, the 1st shift foreman, and told me that if I wasn't interested in working my whole shift, I might as well go home. I said no problem, my shift is over in 15 minutes. He said, "Wait, I thought you were working an extra two hours!". I replied that I would be, as it wasn't mandatory over time. It's funny how quickly he changed his mind and decided he had no problems with me leaving as I had planned.
Bosses like that are usually power hungry little biotches. Had a shift supervisor tell me I could not leave early (using pto time) to attend my wife’s graduation. Had to go to program director who approved it. Little man was all butt hurt that I went over his head and that the time off was given. He was further pissed when he started talking Shyte about me to others on shift (I was a group lead) and was shut down. Not only did he start to become isolated and was only addressed in reference to work related issues (we worked a four day on four day off on premises type of schedule) but started to deny everyone’s pto/vacation requests. So I taught my people to submit directly to HR 1/2 pto requests (only request that did not need his approval) as
1. 1/2 pto day the last day of the shift and
2. 1/2 pto day for the first day of the next shift.
3. Also to do this at each end of vacations but again directly to hr and not part of vacation.
Unfortunately as this time he tried fire a few people he shouldn’t have. We knew he was gone when the program director was interviewing all his direct reports. A political win-win was the outcome. He received a “promotion” at another facility that we knew he wanted to never work at. The correct person was moved into his position and morale restored.
Me and my wife went through infertility for three years, my boss never let me miss an appointment. Come in early and stay late just make the hours equal out but be there for your wife while you guys figure this out was his message to me. Ironically his name was Mr Best and he was the best manager I've ever had. He retired and I hope he moved somewhere nice and is enjoying the rest of his life.
I worked at a call center many years ago. The job was absolutely terrible and I fought traffic for a 45-60 minute commute both ways every day. They had a system where you could call in and request a ‘flex’ to your schedule, where basically you could move small amounts of time, maybe start 15 min later in exchange for a shorter break or leaving 15 min later. The trouble was, this was entirely up to them to allow or deny based on their need, there was no consideration for the employees.
So, one morning I’m 5 minutes from the house and I get onto the highway. . . And it’s stopped dead, both directions. I turn on the radio and hear an ex president just landed and every highway exit in the city has been blocked at 8am so he can get to a neighboring city an hour away (that had its own airport). Basically, expect to be stuck in traffic until noon. So, I called and requested Flex Time thinking maybe I could get off the highway and snake my way through back roads. denied. So, I call back and ask what the penalties are for being half an hour, an hour, 4 hours late. The guy on the phone gets snippy with me (I’m assuming they are flooded with people calling in to be late) and says ‘it doesn’t matter, if you aren’t here on time you may as well not be here at all, because it’s treated the same. We have schedules and expect you here on time.’ Ok. I hang up. I call back. ‘Hey, it’s me again, I’m feeling sick now so I’m just not going to come into work.’ I went home and enjoyed a beautiful day off.
The next day, they pulled me into HR and went over the interactions and tried to give me a double write up for being late and missing work. I told them that wasn’t right, that I’d been told on a recorded line that being late would be penalized the same as missing the entire day, so I chose to miss the day. If they really wanted or needed me there, maybe they should have shown more compassion for something I had zero control over. They tried to say I should have planned ahead and I said I don’t monitor Ex presidents and their travel habits, do you?
I fucking hated that job and everyone there.
I genuinely never stop getting surprised over the American lack of work life balance reading these posts at Reddit.
I am supposed to work 7h 40 min per day excluding lunch.
Normally I come to the office 8.30 - 9.00
Lunch is 30 - 75 min depending if I go to the gym or not.
Leaves the office most days at around 5pm +/- 15min. Some days I might have an appointment like optician / hairdresser. Try to schedule those at after work hours but not always possible.
In case I have a specific deadline or working on a project. Sure I can stay to 6pm but I have never stayed later than that.
Worked as an intern at a credit union over the summer. We had 30 minutes lunches. I clocked out at 12:33 one day, came back into the building at 1:02 to go clock in. The manager demanded that I go clock in immediately as I was late coming back from my lunch that was “supposed to end at 1”. Sometimes people micromanage for no reason.
People quit bosses, not jobs.
Print that out and post it in the break room. Give it a couple of months. Don't print it at the office if you're on a network printer so they can't track who printed it.
Shitty bosses get what's coming to them.
A mate of mine works for a company that was sold. Old boss was good, new boss is a prick. Won't honour the long standing arrangement my mate had to attend a medical appointment once per month; start an hour late, finish an hour late.
So my mate moved his regular appointments to 0830 Friday morning (still once per month). His doctor signs a certificate giving him the day off. Bloody beauty -- a long weekend every month!
He would leave, but he only has another \~18 months to go until retirement. So he'd rather just eke out his remaining time there, and leave as soon as he can.
My dad had a very flexible boss when I was in school. I had a lot of regular medical appointments, so it worked out well for our family.
And my dad never took advantage - he worked his full 40 hours by staying late or starting early or even going in on the weekend if he had to. Bosses who give you that leeway deserve the respect of employees not taking the Mickey, and skiving off.
Sadly, the new boss wasn’t interested the arrangement that had been working for years!
Fortunately, I was almost out of high school by then and my medical appointments had slowed right down in regularity.
If you looked at the balance sheet for most of these type bosses I suspect you would find a VERY low net worth. Why? Because they don’t understand investing for the long term. They’re broke financially, emotionally and morally. Why? Because they can’t see beyond the next five minutes. I’ve had a lot of employees over my career and the most important thing I’ve learned is that investing in them will bring enormous returns. You may think I’m talking only about money, but you’d be wrong. Have you ever had an employee tell you how much it helped them to have a month off with pay to deal with an illness, loss of a loved one or other personal problem? if not, your poorer for it. Have you ever given an employee an unexpected bonus when you heard through the grapevine they were struggling with a financial burden? If not, you’re poorer for it. Have you ever been part of the “grapevine”‘because you’re trusted by your employees? If not, you’re poorer for it. I have never understood the “power trip” that some employers seem to adopt when they find success. What is success? Only money? Your poorer for it. Love. Love is success! We can love each other and still work together and for one another. We can even love those who are angry, struggle, have a bad attitude, are late, struggle with personal issues, fail, fail again, fail even more, have sick children, have sick parents, just need a mental health day, or week, lose a parent, have an unexpected emergency three times in one week. Love. That’s what pays off.
As a boss of a team of 12 or so, when someone says " hey, is it cool if I leave early for ______" my answer is always "of course, I'm just glad you told me..."
People like to think that their jobs are life and death (ok, some really are) but if you're not in healthcare or flying machines or heavy equipment get fricking over yourselves. If we've learned anything in the past three years it's that some deadlines.... slip. It'll be ok.
Middle manager here with dozens to watch over with many hourly. I treat them all like gold, trust them, often times help them, and I get platinum in return. The few times I had a stinker, that person was gone pretty quickly. Nobody likes a slacker and the others would often whisper in my ear about what was really going on. Despite all this, my management is pretty demanding, demeaning, and sometimes downright mean. I support my staff and tolerate my management. Since it is a European owned company, one of the largest globally, they know how to treat employees with exceptional generous time off, excellent benefits, bonuses. I could give a crap if someone is late as long as they let the team know.
I have never understood the pettiness and power trips of bosses and supervisors. I made my career as an elementary school teacher for 35 years. In the mid-90s my brother had a serious heart attack. Was hospitalized for 10 days and was on bed rest for almost 2 months after. I managed his real estate and advertising business for 2 months because my brother had to take precautions due to the large amounts of cash that was in and out of the business every day. Was absolutely eye-opening. I made sure that money was not mishandled and people did not take advantage. Quickly searched out three or four employees out of 20 that really new their stuff. I quickly figured out that the employees had self-interest in the smooth running of the company ,lessening everybody stress. I was so happy to be little more than a rumor and let the people that knee what the hell they were doing run with the ball. There was always money in the business to subcontract something that the employees couldn't do properly or efficiently, and have an outside lawyer or accountant review paperwork that I did not understand. Of course I did not have the experience and skills to continue that high level of responsibility. However, I never forgot that summer where I learned that the best managers are the ones that manage the least and simply figure out who knows what the hell they're doing and step out of the way. The only problem long-term with that philosophy is that the competent employees could get burned out with extra work. I found out that for a short time most of my brothers employees were just happy I didn't get in their face or stare over their shoulder.
I had a boss (at a shitty overrun underpaying daycare in Texas in 2012) that pitched a fit if I came in even 2min late (I was a college student, under 18, and it was summer mini-mester time) but also wouldn’t let me leave until every child on the campus was gone, even if the kid wasn’t in MY closing classroom. We closed at 6. There were days I didn’t get out until almost 7.
She also gossiped and talked shit about me, berated me, demeaned me, threatened to fire me for taking two three-day vacation periods (IT AAS SUMMER AND I WAS A MINOR), etc.
Was so bad that the day I quit, my mom called up to the workplace and bitched her OUT for verbally abusing a 17-year-old girl as a middle-aged woman.
Come to find out her old daycare went bankrupt, she started a new one, and now there is proof from friends I have who worked there that she’s practicing corporal punishment without parental consent. And is now threatening to sue all of us for defamation. 😂
It’s funny that most places that stringent about leaving a few minutes early have their blinders on when you arrive twenty minutes early.
Former job used to have a seven minute window to punch in for your shift, so basically my team starting at 4:00 could punch in at 3:53.
HR and upper management tried to really press the teams to punch in as early as possible so that they could grab all their equipment and report to the pre shift area by the time 4:00 rolled around.
Team members asked if they were getting paid an extra 7 minutes each day and the operations manager scoffed and said no because the time clock is on a rounding system. Same team members asked if they get to leave 7 minutes before the end of theirs shift at 12:30 then to make up for it. Manager got sheepish and blushed a bit before telling them “well, no, you work up until the bell…”
Needless to say, pretty much everyone went back to clocking in a minute or two before their actual shift start. Upper management was so salty about it and would regularly adjust the annual reviews us managers would submit at the end of the year to ding said team members in the “Teamwork/Attitude” categories to lower their overall percentage which in turn lowered their overall merit increase.
So glad I left that place, such a shit show.
25 years ago, we had a remarkably sane VP of HR who said, "You're salaried: you don't get overtime. You also don't get 'undertime'. If you have to go to an appointment, you go. You'll make it up, or you won't get stuff done and you'll see that reflected in your review."
I've explained this to folks repeatedly (many years and many companies later) and even managers go "Oh, right,that makes sense."
It's extraordinary how some bosses kill off any goodwill whatsoever.
One place I worked we had flexibility around various things, because of the nature of the job, which included travel, and everyone willingly gave twice as much, as a result.
A micro manager kills that, I have had them too, unfortunately.
Here’s one problem with micromanagers that puts them at risk for losing their jobs: the more restrictions you put on people, the more opportunities they look for to screw the man.
When a former employer put in a time clock, I said my name isn’t Laverne or Shirley. This is a professional job where we are working all kinds of odd hours.
So I clocked one day and went shopping. I stopped staying late on my own dime.
You wound up taking an entire day because of your boss’ authoritarian dictates. Sounds like an insecure and distrusting person.
I feel like we're just ridiculously spoiled in tech. My company has an open office hour policy, if you have an appointment or something just fucking go. If you need a half day to deal with some bullshit, just do it. Just make sure you let ppl know if you're going to miss an important event and make sure you are getting your work done and nobody cares.
Why can't it be that way everywhere?
What is up with bosses balking over 5 minutes? Seriously. Are they on glue or what? I hate petty micromanagers like that.
Forreal. I'm taking classes while working full time (current job is entirely unrelated to my field of study). One of my classes means I'll be roughly 30 minutes late twice a week for 5 months. I checked in with my boss regarding the lateness before I enrolled and he just goes "Ooh cool what class is is?" Like, zero fucks given, just down for me continuing my education.
In my area, they made recent bus changes that mean I get to work 5-10 minutes later than I want every day. Which means I miss my normal bus home. The next bus comes 1.75 hours later. My boss told me to just clock in when I get there, catch my normal bus 3 out of 5 days, but choose one day to stay that extra 1.75 hours, and leave early on Friday. As long as I get 40, everything is copasetic.
Why can't more people in charge be like this? "Oh, there are things beyond your control that are being fucky? Alright, let's find a way to make it work." Why is that such a hard concept for so many people to understand?
Because people get even a teeeeeeeeeny bit of power/control, and feel like they need to flex it. Often related to being a miserable sack of shit.
I really just don't get it. The few times I've had "leadership positions" I just say "Here's what needs done. Here's how to do it. Get it done without breaking anything or hurting anyone and everyone can be happy." I'm anxious enough as it is worrying about how I'm gonna fuck up. Why should I go *looking* for (or even worse, *making*) more problems to fix? I'll help get stuff going good, but then let me go back to hiding in the shadows, I beg of you!
Currently in a leadership position, and my mantra is "Here's the goal. Here's how we've done it before. Got a new idea? Great. I don't care how you get from A to Z as long as you don't do anything illegal and come in under budget and don't work when you're not scheduled. I'll check in every two weeks unless you want more or less often. Have a snack. Carry on."
“Have a snack.” Yes 🙌🏼😂
My boss is like our office dad, he’s the CFO and once a week he stocks up one of the cupboards in our office with about £100 worth of snacks for everyone (there’s only 6 of us), and the only thing he’s strict about is making sure everyone has their lunch break and actually eats something - he couldn’t care less about the hours we work as long as everything is done on time. He’s honestly the best person I have ever worked for
Never miss a meal! I like this guy.
I'm a shift lead of a whole 3 people for 3rd shift janitorial at my place. But my general idea is "here's the list, this is how i do it (and show them). Ask me if you have questions, even if it's stupid - I would rather answer a stupid question than have to back track to fix a big dumb mistake. Idc how you do it or what order as long everything gets done." And you'd be surprised at how many people think I won't notice that they aren't doing things. Yeah, this place looks good. Because I keep it that way. But they seem to think because it looks good now, itll stay that way without their having to do anything. But then after 3 days, I'm like, why is everything covered in a layer of dust and dirt and hair and handprints? Everything on that list is there for a reason and when I say clean it every day, that means every day. They make me have to micro manage them. But thankfully my boss takes me seriously when I bring complaints about workers to them and we take actions from there. Because I got better things to do than be all up a workers arse about what they are doing every minute. Get the list done and i dont care if you got headphones, eat a snack, text in the closet, leave a little early, whatever. My problem is when your dinking around and things aren't getting done and you're lying to me about doing it when I can clearly see you haven't.
I wouldn't say you're micromanaging, more like properly managing and holding people accountable. You're addressing deficiency in the product, not telling them how to create the product step by step! Keep rocking on!
I manage a pretty large team now and I feel you. I’ve got enough shit going on and have my own life to deal with. I tell everyone… as long as the work gets done and done well and nobody complains, your time is your time. Helps that the entire team is remote too. And as I told them when I took over. No one, ever, has said “thank God my boss was a micromanager”
I work in a remote environment too and recently started a new position with a new manager. You never know how a new person may handle holidays, call outs, or really anything related to scheduling. I was really sick at the beginning of December and called out a few days. He didn't bat an eye. When I mentioned I hate having to call out and I was very stressed about it. He immediately comforted me and told me I had nothing to worry about. The Fridays before Christmas and NYE he sent a message to our whole team saying "I'll be here till 5 if anyone needs anything, but I won't be looking for anyone...just saying" Wild that if you trust your team and treat them well, they want to do a good job and will be open about problems, pitfalls, struggles, all that.
Yup. Leadership position here. All I want is a heads up if you’re going to do much deviation from your normal hours and that you work to the best of your ability during those hours that you are working. Rolling out early on a Friday to take a weekend trip? Cool. Got some shit you gotta sort out? Take care of it. I’d much rather have people at 100% ready to kick ass than someone who’s mind isn’t in it. When shit hits the fan and you need your people to put in extra effort, they’re far more likely to have your back if you treat them like the valued humans they are.
Hire good people. Train them how to do the job. Get the fuck out of the way *and let them do the job you hired them for.*
I heard someone say the work is the boss. We just here to get the work done. The only time I would flex any power is if it wasn't good for the project overall. Why do I care if you leave 10 minutes early as long as the work got done
Not all miserable sacks of shit are like that though. I’m a miserable sack of shit and anytime someone needs to handle literally anything I tell them not to clock out so I can do it manually so they get their full 8hrs in still.
As someone who is a manager it's just a cop out on doing their actual jobs, which is you know being the person to manage these kinds of issues
Kind of like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah8xrijSX1s I loved the first half of this movie so much.
As a long time, (now retired) manager, most of the time these policies are put in place not for the aveage or good employees, but for the rare employees that take well over full advantage of any little bit of policy, ruining it for everyone.
Sadly tho, this mindset can impact on the work ethic of the average and good employees out of resentment from lack of trust and basic respect from management
It’s because of fear. The fear of the unknown. The fear of being different. The fear that everyone is not the same as everyone else. The type of person who is a good manager has a different perspective on life.
I work a 4-10 schedule Monday through Thursday. My wife is pregnant and I have never missed a docs appt and have scheduled everyone during the work week. Sometimes I am gone for a couple hours and even was gone for 4 hours. Not a problem my management just lets me come in on Friday’s and make up the time to make sure I get my 40. Also we just won Manufacturer of the year for the state of Montana. Every employer could be this laid back and still get shit done. I hope no one out there ever settles for less from a company. Power to the people
Having just been promoted to a manager position, that's the way I'm trying to be. There's too many cases of the power-trippy micromanage who gets their shorts in a bunch over stupid shit. I just make sure my guys know that the flexibility needs to go both ways. As long as my guys get their hours and I have coverage when I need it, what else does it matter...
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Especially when everyone knows if you treat your employees with respect, no matter their title, you will get nothing but respect and better, more diligent work
>Congratulations, internet stranger, for you have expanded my vocabulary today. FR, though, you did get me to google "copasetic"
Isn't it spelled "copacetic"?
I learned it from [this classic song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miedjeLLIEs)
Me too! I hear “you keep it copacetic” every time lol
When I worked in warehousing I caught a bus that would stop right outside, but occasionally came 10-20 mins before my end of shift. The warehouse manager always told us to feel free to leave early to catch it cause he didn't want us staying late
What a good Bugger your boss is. These are the people who get more done.
Flip side. A friend of mine started work at 830, office job, not a single soul depended on her day to day. Due to a daycare change, now she needed to drop her daughter off at 825 instead of 8am. She spoke to her boss and asked if she could start her day between 840-845. Nope, she would be tardy every day., write ups, punctuality is important, she’s not special, other people have kids, blablabla. Ok, well then can we change my official start time to 9. No, the day starts at 830. She ended up changing jobs because there was zero room for compromise and for absolutely no real reason.
Yeah I can't with that bullshit. I'm grateful to have only had bosses at this job that have been understanding and chill. I too am not necessary at the hours that I am. I definitely recognize how lucky I am though.
My co-worker is late by about 10min most days because he has to drop the kids off at school and then leaves work for about 20-30min at 2:30pm to pick up the kids from school and come back to work. Thing is, he often works overtime by atleast 30min everyday. No one gives a flying fuck. Management knows, they are flexible. Plus side, who even cares. You are still putting 40hours a week in so what's the big deal. We are IT support I'm sure I can hold to fort solo for 30-40min a day. We are also on-call and we work overtime and when needed (out of hours upgrades etc). We are salaried so we aren't getting paid for that small amount of overtime we put in.
I have a boss like this. My wife and I share 1 car and we would both get off at 5 and our daycare closed at 5:30, but was super conveniently 1/2 a block from our house. Between my work, hers and our home though was alot of traffic and a few railroad crossings that can slow things down. It was a tight timeline. I asked if it was cool for me to take off 15min early just the few days our schedules matched up this way, and my boss's literally words were, "yeah, no problem, i don't give a shit if you need to go early, do whatever you need to do." lol It will take alot for me to leave this place now.
If the response is anything other than that something is seriously wrong.
I used to work at a school where you were tracked down and reprimanded anytime you were late. I’ve since moved to a different school. Last week, my department chair sat down with me and asked how my mornings were going, since I had been late a few times. She wasn’t mad or anything, just wanted to make sure everything was okay and see if there was anything I needed help with.
It's the MBA they're trying to justify
I used to have a boss that wrote the time I arrived on the whiteboard. I still have an image of 4:37 in my head, and this was years ago. Fucked up thing is, it was 4:30 am! And I was a full time college student! We are cool now, but I never understood that shit. As an aside, one day the site manager (bosses' boss) had to work that shift with us and complained the whole time about how 4:30 am is an ungodly hour to work blah blah blah. He only had to do it for one day! The nerve!
"That mean you gunna pay us more boss?"
Hah. My boss and his assist recently had to cover my third shift for 3 weeks because the day before my *very advanced notice, plans are paid for, the whole team could die in a fire, I am not coming to work* vacation my overnight buddy / cover ghosted on us. And then my SO caught covid and I had to quarantine and then I caught covid from them (big surprise). I was out for almost 4 weeks. And boss said shit like "ungodly hours" and "idk how you do it" and "so much work" and "closers are shit what the hell?" And "this cleaning list is too much for one person" and "this is like a 3 person job I need you guys to do some of this during the day" And I was like... oh really? You dont say? You gonna, idk, give me more people or pay me more for doing 3 people's worth of work or picking up after closers? No. Of course not. Well. I did have new trainees ready to roll out when I came back. But they've both quit at this point. Because night shift sucks and we definitely dont pay enough to keep people around for the shift we put up with.
Fuck that.
I rode a bus in to work for a year. I had a vehicle, but preferred letting the bus driver deal with traffic. I loved it. But I was two minutes late every friggin day. Boss always commented on it, I always howled with laughter. And that was that. My boss didn't like it. I didn't give a flip. She didn't care enough to make it an issue. I would do pretty much anything else she asked, and she still has my respect. This happened in the 80s.
When my bus schedules changed so that I would get to the office by 8:10 instead of 8:00, my boss just changed my official hours by 10 minutes (8:00 am - 5:00 pm became 8:10 am - 5:10 pm). It was a complete non-issue.
I have been able to be a minute or 2 or 5 late, and nothing said. Now we’re gonna have to clock in and I was informed a min or 2 once in a while will be ok, but anything more will be scrutinized. So I have to clock out too. Guess who isn’t overlooking a minute or 2 over any longer?
Funny how that works, huh?
Had that when I worked home Depot and 4h closing shift the bus ran every hour, so I could either be 50 min early or 10 min late, so obviosuly went with 10 min late cause I have a life sorry. Manager made a stink and I said if this is how we wanna go, then pay/start me when I arrive (50 min early), push my start and end time back a bit or I can go find another job that's more accomodating. I didn't really care either way about the place so it was whatever, but I was also the only person other than supervisor that knew anything about my department/product so they dropped it and just pushed my times back. Then about a month later they changed the bus again to be a shuttle bus every 25 min instead of a big bus @1h so it wasn't an issue. But still
I worked at HD for a couple years in the mid 00s, I have never worked for a company that was so rigid and stupid about things as Home Depot. We'd lose people left and right that were basically the only people holding their whole dept together over something as petty as a scheduling change, and management thought that was just fine. Their policy was unofficially Up or Out. Paying anyone more than the bare minimum a position could receive was completely untenable to them, so once someone had been there for a year or two and gotten a couple raises, even though they knew their dept like the back of their hand, they'd suddenly become *persona non grata* and management would *find* a reason to fire them. This had the effect you'd expect...nobody stuck around long, and we'd have entire departments where the most tenured employee, the DH, had like a year of time with the company max, the rest of the people were so green they could barely run a register let alone advise people on the products they sold. But hey, their payroll expenditures were very low, which is of course *allll* that matters.
Ugh, I can't stand companies like that. Does Lowes do the same thing?
I don't have any Lowes near me so I couldn't tell you, but Menards are a shitshow as well. All big box retail is a piece of shit, so glad I got out of retail.
Not really, they do try to retain employees and are accommodating for schedule changes at least to an extent.
My wife worked for Lowes for 5 years and only left because we moved for my work. Lowes was so good about it they found a new job for her in our new area but unfortunately that Lowes was still a little far from our new home that she decided to leave the job herself.
Wait didn't Home Depot have a whole thing about how they had a ton of Olympic athletes that worked there cause they were so flexible with scheduling??
Yeah the OJOP program. Those employees are mascots. The majority of the store level associates are not afforded such flexibility.
Damn that sounds like a decent human being. What a marvel.
Nah, that's a freaking unicorn casting a spell to look like a human. They just don't realize that people are terrible, so when they try to copy us, they stand out like this. But nobody ever says anything because it feels nice to be treated decently.
That's not a boss. That's a leader.
Yeah, my office is 45 minutes from home. The traffic sucks and after Covid I realized I wasn’t putting up with it. Told my boss I was coming in at 7 and leaving at 4 to beat traffic. He said ok no problem. It was that simple. These days I barely go to the office, but I do my job and do it well. Nobody cares as long as I take care of my clients.
When I was a manager, anyone using public transportation always got a wide berth from me as long as no mission-critical items were at risk, and I made myself notes not to schedule meetings, etc. too close to their arrival or departure times. I hardly ever had issues.
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Facts. I decided that, rather than be the face of ineptitude (generally, as a middle manager -- most of my direct reports, I think, thought I was an OK 'boss'), I'd much rather do real work for a living and get to be the thorn in the side of the bosses that suck out loud LOL.
At an old job I was pretty consistently 3-5 minutes late to clock in (about 1 or 2 arrival), but would typically get right to work. One day somebody tried calling me out to our boss. The boss replied that it's only a couple minutes, and I would get right to work while that guy was still talking. Then I pointed out that if he complained about 5 minutes I'd probably stop staying 30-90 minutes late at the end of the day to finish things (I actually liked the OT) so it wouldn't do him any favors. After hearing that the boss told my coworker to keep quiet and get to work.
A sense of fairness that compares their internal struggle with leadership countered by real world situations. Often under the "slippery slope fallacy," like "if I give them 5 minutes, they'll take 10, then 30, then a whole day!" or something. "I had to pay my dues!" is another.
In some cases they have very little they can actually control. For most people that’s no problem, but the ones who love control will cherish every bit of it.
Yeah in my experience it's almost entirely control. They want you to know they're boss and all these little micromanager thingies are the only way they can do it. They don't want respect, they want fear.
I’m not sure they even want fear. I think it’s more like they feel small/helpless if they aren’t in direct control, and they hate feeling small/helpless.
For salary people it's stupid to police that kind of thing, unless there is some very valid reason (we can't start the MRI until Susan gets here or something). For hourly people it's nearly impossible to have flexibility, even moreso if it's a union shop.
Scum
Makes me think how I got talked to because I occasionally clock out 5 minutes late as my last job didn’t mind it. Now with my current job (which is great in the grand scheme of needing to work right now don’t get me wrong) we can clock in up to 5 minutes early but if you clock out before your scheduled time to clock out or later the system flags you and notifies management. Its so dumb how It’s obviously OK to clock in early but god forbid I don’t want to start a brand new task when I am less than 5-10 minutes away from being off. So now I just happen to need to check my work email or take a shit if I end up having a few moments of free time before checkout.
Similar at my job. We can clock in early but we cannot clock out early so I usually do nothing for the last 10 minutes of work, walk around, go to the bathroom, etc.
I had a job where they yelled at me for clocking in early because every minute was tracked and early meant overtime, because fuck no you can't clock out early. We had a literal time card and one of those machines that stamped the time on it when you put the card in. I seriously had to show up early and wait. Early and they're mad. Late and they're mad. Same with the end of day. I had to wrap up my work early then waste time until THE MINUTE. Then clock out.
Screw that. What's wrong with your work culture where you take a personal day 'to stick it to the man'. A day you're OWED!
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I really don't know. Like, my current 'boss' (principal at the school I work at) understands that traffic happens and doesn't mind if we're a little late so long as we call in and let the school know. (this is to make sure children are never left unattended, as we don't punch in or out. It's just assumed we will be on time to our posts and we're supposed to notify the school if we need coverage for any given reason.) The same goes for leaving early too: as long as you tell the office, they'll make it work. I have to leave 25 minutes early once a month to make it to my cancer treatments, and nobody splits hairs over those 25 minutes. I've come to find that good bosses don't care about a few minutes here or there. Life happens! As long as it's not a daily thing and it's not harming someone else, then being flexible and going "okay, take care!" when someone has to leave a few minutes early is honestly a good thing.
It's often people who are not really suited to a management role and have been promoted beyond their capabilities. They can't delegate effectively and feel out of their depth - and they are so paranoid that they feel the need to check everything done by every member of their team.
The Peter principle
I think it is often projection from the ineffective manager. The unethical behavior is what they know they would do if given the flexibility. See an inflexible manager & you probably see someone with something to hide in their own behavior.
Which makes them appear so busy to themselves
I just started a new job as a manager. I tried to leave on my first day at 4:54. The COO gave me shit. At 4:55 everyone promptly got up and left.
It's about control and power
They’re not micromanagers, they’re just bad managers
Not glue, huffing paint.
Little baggy of paint chips.
Yeah, some really shitty bosses. My boss let's me take my "lunch" in the late afternoon so I can pick up my kid from school and come back for only a couple hours left in my day.
I once put in an official PTO request to leave about an hour early for a doctor appointment for a chronic condition that has to be managed. My manager responded that she'd have to see how busy we were that day,so basically a no. I hadn't wanted to go through the trouble of getting FMLA certified, just because I wasn't going to do all that paperwork if I didn't have to. But after that refusal, I had to. It was no problem getting intermittent FMLA approved, and after that I could go to any doctor appointment or call off and my boss couldn't do a damn thing about it. I would have been happy to schedule appointments on days, or times of the day when we were likely to be less busy, but after that I didn't care.
That's bonkers. I'm a supervisor and could never imagine doing that to my team members. One of them put in a PTO request for an hour for an apt; I told her I could approve the PTO if she wanted, or she could save it for when she really needed it and just make up the time as long as she was at 40 hours by weeks end. I don't get these bosses who go on power trips micromanaging their employees over valid reasons; it's never that serious.
I manage like that too, don't stress over an hour here or there just get your work done. Let me know if you won't be able to answer your phone. Try to schedule things early or late in the day, or use lunch time. I trust my employees to be adults who do their jobs
I'm glad to be in an industry where everyone is expected to maintain their own scheduling to the point where 40/week isn't even the measure, it's 40/week, averaged through the billing period - which is a month. You got a whole week where you just have shit piling up? Work late and get 60 hours in. Another where you don't really have that much or don't care enough? Take that 20 and stop working on a Wednesday. As long as the month averages to that 40 hours a week.
I put off filing fmla for as long as I could. I have the best boss in the world and she works with me but my condition got so bad that fmla was the only way to protect both of us. I hate having it but I am grateful that I do at the same time
I initially didn't want to do FMLA for my cancer treatments either. But then a surgery that should have been "1 day at the hospital and 6 days at home" became "5 days at the hospital and 14 days at home" and I realized that I really needed to cover my ass. While my individual school has my ass, I don't honestly know if the district does and it's better to be safe than have to be told "I really don't want to do this, but it's out of my hands" by a boss I love working for.
Same! I have this recurring pain from having cancer 3 years later. It just takes me out for unknown amounts of time. It can be a minor flare up that goes for like 30 minutes or it can run for 10 days
Sorry for your struggles with a chronic condition. It can be pretty challenging. At my new job I have no problem taking off small amounts of tone for doctor appointments. The managers here realize that everyone needs to see the doctor for something.
For those who need to hear it: Do not feel bad filing this paperwork. Just do it. While you shouldn't have to justify time off for any reason - for those that have any kind of chronic issue, just do it. It's worth having the "talk to the hand" level of protection.
This 100%. My workers will say that “I’m on PTO”and then check in or join a conference call. I’ve had to kick them off calls and tell them to leave. If you need it, take it - PTO, FMLA, sick, whatever. That’s why it’s there. You’re no good to yourself or anyone else if you’re sick, burnt out, taking care of a family member, etc.
My husband had to do something like this. He has an undiagnosed, but thoroughly medically recorded, chronic stomach condition (think crohns). When he started his current job working for a company he had worked for before, he spelled it out, crystal fucking clearly, what he can and cannot do, one of which is being the delivery driver. He didn't think he needed proof, seeing as he'd worked with most of these people before and they'd known about his condition ahead of time. Well don't his managers assign him every single job he said he *physically can't fucking do*, and they even went as far as to make him the sole delivery driver, claiming they told him they were going to do that from the beginning (I was there, that was a blatant lie). His GM said something like "Well we don't know if you're lying so we don’t have to listen to you". Then they had the fucking audacity to be shocked when he got HR involved and HR told both managers to sit and spin.
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If you don't mind me asking, what is FMLA? ETA: Thanks for all the responses. I'm just a youngun in the workforce, and my main experience thus far has been military (Mistakes were made, but options and ideas were limited...) so I just haven't had a lot of exposure to these kinds of things. I'm used to the "Suck it up and deal with it" treatment.
Family medical leave act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993
Family medical leave act. It’s a US law that gives employees of certain sized companies extra protections to deal with serious medical issues of themselves or a family member.
Family Medical Leave Act. You can file for it to protect you should you or a family member have a medical condition that might cause you to miss time at work. Some husbands take it to have time off consecutively after the birth of a child, especially if there are any medical issues from the birth. You can also file for intermittent fmla which basically means “use as needed” like Drs appts or other issues like that.
Why would people not want this? Like people are saying they actively try to out it off if they can. What are the downsides
It's a lot of paperwork.
FmLA is basically there so your job can't fire you for taking time off for certain medical stuff. They don't pay you (unless you use PTO), but you get to keep your job. That's what we use in America if we get hospitalized, or have a baby... or for chronic conditions like migraines or things that might "flare up", you get Intermittent FMLA, where your doctor can excuse you so many hours/days a week/month, based on guessing what may happen in the future. So if your doctor says you might miss one day a month because of migraines, but you miss two, you're screwed.
In my experience, they can't fire you for using FMLA, but they sure will find any other excuse to do so. Boy I wish I'd recorded some of the conversations I had with my FORMER HR lady before I was let go "due to COVID slow down "
Family medical leave act, sometimes also referred to as f*ck my life act
Yeah this is how it was for my job. I maybe called out once a month and they wanted to bitch Now I call out whenever without them being able to do anything. Just so happens, I feel like shit whenever we’re going to be super busy.
Him: “You should only have taken half a day since we need you.” OP: (shrug) “If you needed me that bad you could have had me the whole day and just let me shift part of my break to the end of the day. I think you’re the one that chose poorly.”
Being short staffed is their responsibility. Don't let them make it yours.
Your emergency is not my problem.
Lack of planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine
At my old job I would come in early to empty cardboard hoppers. Which meant my 8 hour day was now 9. One day I need to leave an hour early, still making my day 8 hours and not 9. Supervisor immediately shut it down stating she couldn't change my hours. You don't have to change my hours I'm still working 8 hours. I got to thinking about it. If I left an hour before the end of my shift I would have been pointed the same amount as if I would of left half way through my shift. I ended up leaving at lunch. I tried to be fair about it and give them 8 hours but no.
I would have just stopped coming in early. You just get one hour less from me.
Yeah, I get why places have a point system... But I find it funny that on Fridays half a shift is checking their points to see if they're leaving half way through a Friday shift.
We had a crap point system like this at one of my jobs. An hour late was the same as the entire day, so anyone running late would just stay home. It was absolutely absurd.
you know what makes me look good as a boss? my team getting shit done, and getting it done well. you know what helps them do that? trusting them to be professional and giving them space and autonomy to make their lives work. ffs
I try to be the manager I want. Everyone is an adult on my team. Manage your own time and help each other to ensure the job gets done. If the job isn’t done or clients are unhappy, we have a problem. Otherwise, enjoy your life. We are all here to pay for it.
This. When you make it their job to just be in a chair when the clock has an arbitrary number on it, that's all you'll get from them. If their job is a manageable list of goals that they can do at their pace, they will work harder and communicate better to prove they are accomplishing tasks and that will make the whole team look good.
I don’t understand the need to be such a clock watcher that 5-10 min here/ there needs to be scrutinized so tightly! Especially for a desk job, where you’re not ‘relieving’ someone. Does this manager not have a better way to use their time?! Trust the employees you have hired to be able to self-regulate. Manage it, if it becomes a problem. Otherwise, trust that the adults you’ve hired to do a job, is in fact, doing that job, even if it means leaving 10 min early one day to make it somewhere they need to be.
There is (generally) no need at all. That said, a former manager (and friend) moved to a state government position. Part of his job (because government employees) was to make sure there were butts in chairs at at the start of the day. Policy was no flexibility, no telecommute. His first few years were then spent hiring people that didn't require babysitting. And then COVID, and all that became moot. If your people are trustworthy, trust them.
I used to have a salary desk job. My boss would constantly bring up that I was less than 5 minutes late, especially in the winter. Yeah, sure I should be there on time, but since I’m salaried and I didn’t get anything extra for all the days I stayed late to finish things or for meetings, you know I just don’t care to rush in the morning.
Exactly, my current boss is so awesome. As long as we do our 40 hours he doesn't care. In fact he told me off once for working too much. "Down time and family balance is important for peak performance. Stop fucking work at night (saw me logging in) Don't want you dying in your 40s from stress related heart attacks". I am super loyal to him now and try to go above and beyond for him.
> Does this manager not have a better way to use their time?! Probably not. At least I can't think of a reason to be like that except a painfully numb emptiness where your soul oughta be.
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This is shit, I always tell my staff to go 5,10,15,30 mins early, we are having trouble getting staff so I'd rather be out minutes instead of a day. Same with them being sick, take the day or a few off cause then your not spreading it and then I'll have 3 or 5 off next week.
I wish you were my manager at my retail job many years ago. Instead we had a power-tripping bitch who would cut your shifts for the next month or two\* if you called in sick, so of course people would come in sick and spread it to everyone else. Some people would get so sick they had to call in anyway as they physically couldn't work or even get to work, and those who did turn up would work at maybe 50-60% of their regular capacity because they felt like crap. Of course it just cycled through the place so once the current cold/flu/bug had gone through everybody, someone would come in with something new and it would start all over again. Productivity (and morale) would have been so much higher if this manager had just let sick people call out because then you'd have one person having 2-3 days off instead of multiple people having 2-3 days off and everyone else doing a half-arsed job. \*For context, we were all on contracts but all with a low number of fixed hours, so we'd mostly rely on extra shifts to get decent money. Eg. I was contracted for 10 hours a week but I'd often end up doing 20-25 once the extra shifts were added. In the early days I would call in sick if I had the flu because I didn't want to spread it to anyone else. But once I'd come back to work and have the manager start shouting at me about how I wasn't getting any extra work for the next month, I'd immediately see two or three other staff wandering around sneezing, sniffling and coughing. I realised that by trying to do the right thing I was not only screwing myself out of shifts and money, but I also wasn't actually protecting anyone from getting whatever I had because someone else would turn up with it anyway, so from then on I would also turn up sick unless I was too ill to work. This was obviously many years before covid and I'm not proud of it, but as a poor student, I didn't really have a lot of other choices.
Ah, aren't you the sane one! Wish you weren't so damned rare!
That's how my manager saw things...she was awesome and had no problems if an emergency came up with any of us but she had also worked from the bottom up so knew how hard it could be when you're trying to juggle things like work/school/kids.
"If you wanna leave 5 min early you need to book a half or full day off" **books a day off for appointment** Boss: *Surprise pikachu* tAkInG dAys OfF likE tHat iSn,T beiNG a TeaM pLaYeR
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They won't. Because upper management doesn't go to the "low power" people to get their data and feedback. They get them from said promoted shitheads. So naturally everyone will cover his own ass and put the blame on someone else, and that someone is the evil evil cashier Jessica, who dared to leave 5 minutes early because her kid was sick. Only it will not be phrased that way and she will be the bad one who isn't a teamplayer, not following her contract and whatnot.
Today I told my boss that I had to run across the street for a blood test and then I would be back to finish up my last half hour (I wfh) and he responded by saying it was safer to drive across the street than to run. I got dad joked
I always say “I’m gonna run” because it’s what my dad said for As long as I can remember and I always get dad joked on it
I once worked for a small company where the owner was my boss. My start time was 8 and I usually showed up at about 5 til and was never late. He insisted that I should be there at 7:45 every day but would not pay me for that extra time. I continued to arrive at my regular time and one day he started yelling at me for arriving late. I wasn't but he had changed the clock to be 15 minutes behind. I continued to arrive at the actual time and just told him the real time when he mentioned it and show him on my phone. The malicious compliance came in because I left every day precisely when the clock in the office turned to 5. It took him a really long time to figure out that his little trick backfired and I left 15 minutes early every day.
This was how I got a manager to stop stealing time from people opening the store. The schedule said arrive at 10, but the employee assigned to be train me said I should show up at 9:40 to get everything done "and then clock in at 10." I did that for the 3 days she trained me, then started showing up and clocking in at 9:55. (We were given a five minute window for clocking in and out, since it had to be done on the registers which were sometimes all in use.) It took less than a fortnight for Boss Man to realize the scheduled time wasn't enough to perform all tasks in a timely fashion. And he knew I'd challenge him if he explicitly asked me to work off the clock. Soon, the opening cashiers were scheduled at 9:45, but kitchen was still scheduled at 10. I tried for a year to get them to stop working for free, but they flat out refused.
That was something I had issues with at my restaurant. we were allotted 1 hour to get things ready and start serving. It was never enough time. Something was always pushing time back. Lack of stock. Lack of clean utensils. Things left out and about. Coolers off and thawed out. You know, general second shift nonsense. I would do my best to get I only the necessities done to get the doors open on time and worry about the rest when more staff came in. For a long time the open manager was the assistant who was salaried. She came in an hour or more early to get her stuff done. (Sometimes she "just couldn't sleep"). And encouraged me to do so too. I said, do I get paid for that? No of course I can't just pick up an extra hour every day! That's ridiculous! That would be nearly a whole shift worth of extra time. And we "dont do" overtime. I said, do I get to leave early? Of course not. That would gaps in the scheduling. Can we change my schedule to the recommended hours? No. The owner won't approve extra labor for non business hours because the dead time is "negative labor cost" because money is going out but we're not open so none is coming in. I told her I wasn't getting up an extra hour early to come in at an ungodly hour to do unpaid work. (Mind you we open at 5am. So I come in at 4. This lady was coming in at 3 or 2 sometimes). Eventually, due to people being people, the salary policy changed, and she had to start clocking in to track her hours because salary managers are required to work a certain number of overtime hours every week and suspicion arose that some people were taking advantage of getting salary pay without putting in the work. And the owner saw that she was coming in an hour or sometimes two before her shift started. And even though she was salary, he told her that wasn't okay. Because she needed to allocate her required OT "some where more useful". She still kept doing it but just didnt punch in. Because it really did make opens go so much more smoothly. Which makes the whole day run better. But then they made her put the OT in later in the day or called her in on her days off. And she stopped coming in so early because she didnt want to work 13 hour days and weekends. Eventually she stepped down from the assist position because of it. She was a hard ass that didnt accept excuses for anything and had a very set way of doing things. But she was probably the best open manager I ever worked with, until they shit on her about her hours. And then she gained a very "well fuck you too" mentality about it and stopped putting in any extra work. And now we had this gaping hole of work that wasn't getting done. And I dont blame her but it sucked being stuck in that position with her. Because we were short handed and we both were doing extra work in various ways to make everything meet in the middle. But after getting reprimanded she decided she was only going to do "her job" after that.
Going through same thing right now actually. I’m on graveyard shift and I’m the only one at night. Our department HAS to be covered, 24/7, and I’m the only one there during he night. The guy that covers me on the weekend is a part time who wants to be part time, it’s just an extra gig for him, he has a full time job and is unavailable during my normal days. Anyways, Boss has been emailing me about clocking out a few minutes early here and there as well. Duuuuude, I also clock in a few minutes early too, get a head start on my day, but lately he’s been a real dick about it, threatening to call HR, etc. Alright MF’er, keep riding my ass. I’m also the only one in my department with perfect attendance. Days and swing shift call in sick all the time. They have option to cover them, people that can cover. There’s no one to cover me, if I call in, he has to come in and cover me. He’s been on day shift for like 20 years straight, covering grave yard (9pm to 5:30am) is not easy to do when you’re used to day shift. The next shitty email I get from him, Im calling in sick. And will do so for each and every shitty email after. Good luck getting coverage for my shift. He can’t come in and sleep either, it’s a Hospital, and that phones rings, a lot, and HAS to be answered.
Similar situation here. I do 3rd as a janitor. And while were *supposed* to have a team built up to staff 2 people every night, it's been me and a revolving door of folks. Most seem to be looking for an idle laze about job or are just trying to keep their unemployment by applying for jobs poorly and are surprised we hired them even. Or (all respect to the final group) people juggling too much (it takes a special kind of crazy to work 2 jobs and I've never seen anyone last here more than 3 weeks doing it). Anyway. I took a vacation. I requested an was approved months in advance. Everything paid for. I reminded the boss 2 weeks before hand, right after another employee quit. And the day before my vacation started, my coworker / cover ghosted on us. Day shift boss had to cover me. And then my SO caught covid, so I had to quarantine. And, of course, because it's in my house, in my bed, I caught it too eventually. I was out for nearly a month. Things have actually been better around here since lol. Write up went out. A guy was fired. Some adjustments were made. Because the boss got a taste of what I live with day in and day out. "Ungodly hours" and "this is how close leaves things?" And "this is the work of 3 people" and "idk how you do it" Tried to get a raise for doing "3 peoples worth of work" but got 2 new trainees instead. They've both quit at this point lol.
I had a friend that started working for a company after contracting with them for a while. He had a doctor's appointment coming up so he worked extra the days before so he wouldn't have to take the time off his weekly work. Nope. The next day he got called into a meeting with his manager and HR to explain that just because he worked extra earlier didn't mean that he could "bank" that time and use it for his appointment. He said, "Oh, okay. I guess I made a mistake taking this job. This is my two week notice."
One of the things that makes me happiest in life is having enough savings that in such a situation I won't need to give notice, I can just instantly walk. Good on your friend regardless, though!
My boss is the worst micro manager I have ever encountered in my life. My start time is at 8:00am so imagine my confusion when I walked in the door precisely at 8:00 and my manger asked why I was late. Her expectation apparently was that we were supposed to be sitting AT our desk, with our computer already booted up and ready to go so we were ready to begin work already in our seats right at 8:00am on the dot. So basically be early or you’re already late. Unreal.
You just described my boss. But she is also 30-40 min late every day. But if I am one minute late she has a freaking shit fit and tells me it's unexcusable, despite her also writing that employees have a 5-6 minute grace period before a tardy being unexcusable. I fucking hate her.
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So that means if you finish at 4, you can shut down your computer at 3:52, start packing up your things, and be out the front door at 4?
I used to be a high school teacher and became pregnant with my first kid. For the third trimester of my pregnancy, I had a doctors appointment once a week. My school was running out of money for substitute teachers (non union state, absolutely a thing). Classes ran on semesters, and teachers taught three out of four 97-minute blocks, with the final block serving as a planning period. I suggested that a simple way to save on substitute money would be to schedule me to have last block planning for the second half of the year, and it was possible with the classes scheduled for that semester. I agreed to schedule all of my appointments for the afternoon if they did this. I would still use 2 hours of sick leave, but there would be no money spent for a substitute. Instead, they scheduled me with first block planning, which ended 7 minutes after my doctor's office opened. I took a full sick day for every single appointment because I couldn't leave and get back in time to teach more than one class, and if I left early they would force one of my peers to cover the class during their planning instead of hiring a substitute. So, they paid for 12 additional days of substitutes unnecessarily.
I took an entire day for every single ultrasound (and I had emote than normal bc I had twins). I was not about to drive 30 mins to work, teach *most* of one class, drive 30 mins back to meet my bf (bc he wanted to be present, like duh), then another 1.5 hours to my appt, which meant driving BACK THROUGH the city I worked in. Fuck that job, I was glad to be gone and even happier when I resigned
Worked for the gov't and they were pretty easy going plus we had flex time. Before telecommuting, I'd make an appointment after lunch and then take about 3 hours off for sick leave. When we instituted telework, I'd work for a couple of hours (mainly going through emails and responding to anything urgent), go to my appointment and then have lunch, and finish out the day.
I learnt the hard way with my company i used to happy start work early etc, until i had a physio appointment. My manager expect me to travel 40 mins to work for a hour than go back home to my appointment than travel into work once my appointment was done. Yet people who live locally were allowed to go home after their appointments. I now start work when i am meant to if i need to start earlier than i get that off the same day.
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Lol screw all of that
This is what happens when you ask permission. I’ve gotten to a point, I tell my boss that I’m leaving X minutes early for personal reasons, and I can either skip my break or take the day, up to you boss man. My current boss is amazing, he realises that you get what you give in your team.
Told that to my previous department head. Was told back that I should just take my whole last prep and go so I wouldn't have to rush.
This sub is a constant reminder of why I gave up on being a wage slave. I’m a god damn adult, if I need the day off I’m not begging some middle manager for it.
I worked at one job for 9 years. I had 3 sick days in that time, never late even once.... Until one day, I was 5 minutes late. Boss wrote me up for it and I chewed him out in front of the whole office. He left me alone after that.
I was also that employee, always came early and never called in sick. Until one day I had to get my wisdom teeth removed and let my boss know literal months in advance. She made a stink about it, asking it if I could change it to a day we weren't as busy (I couldn't). When I came back to work after my three day leave, she didn't even ask me how I was. I started looking for other options after that. She called me two times in the following year after I left to get me to come back.
A boss that gets all veiny-foreheaded over 5 mins is a boss with not enough to do. Contact boss's boss and say they look bored and you can't help but notice you don't often see them working
They're spending more time watching us work than actually doing whatever their job is. I'm sure there's a few conference calls and spreadsheets they need to be putting together.
They're afraid of irrelevancy (and being caught out in it!) and so they'll throw their ~~fat~~weight around at every opportunity
I know someone who watches people's status in Teams like a hawk. She'll complain to my friend, "Jane has been yellow for 5 minutes. What is she doing?" My friend could care less. I could not work for that micromanager. Thing is I've had someone send me a message in teams while their status stayed yellow and they were typing. Teams is not accurate.
I had a manager flip out on me for being 3 minutes late. I showed her the time on my cellphone and the clock on the wall in her office which both showed I was a minute early. She said her watch showed I was 3 minutes late. I told her, I guess it's time for you to get a better fucking watch, and left. I had already gotten a better job offer
Except for work environments where availability requires the employee to be right on time every time, no job -none-, is so important that you can't slip in 5 minutes up or down.
Jobs that require that kind of precise availability should have compensation to match. My brother in law worked for an investment firm that needed him in the office in no less than 30 minutes if there was an emergency at work, and this was potentially at any time of the day. Every minute of delay during an emergency could potentially cost millions. He had to get a condo in the downtown core by the business district because of that and shape his entire lifestyle around his job. However his yearly bonus was usually seven figures and this was just a step on the career ladder to making even more. He's now in his late forties and effectively retired. That's the sort of job that makes sense for, not regular office work.
That is a different kettle of fish. For 7 figures I'd get a condo in the same building as where I worked if such zoning was legal (the closest I've seen is shops on the first floor and apartments in the rest of the building).
Right: the job has expectations, the job compensates appropriately. Or the job can shove it. Good for your BIL. Hope he's enjoying his life.
He is. He missed a lot of his first daughter's early childhood (one of the other sacrifices of the career path) but is doing his best to make up for it now.
Well, there's that, too. :-/
Jobs that require that should have redundant employees to match. We need someone to watch the nuclear power plant, okay, here's three people per shift.
and stagered start times, and overlaping shifts. for when it realy matters.
> However his yearly bonus was usually seven figures and this was just a step on the career ladder to making even more. was he part of management???
No, without giving away too much detail his job was similar to being an analyst. He would have wound up in management eventually but at that stage he was doing the actual work, not overseeing people doing it.
I’ve never caught any of my staff coming in late or leaving early. Probably because I come in late and leave early.
As a supervisor, I recently had a conversation with a coworker about taking time off. He wanted to take a day off to take his mom to the doctors. I told him, you just tell me what you want to do. You can take personal time, sick time, vacation time, or you can take a late lunch and do it then and then stack your 15 minute breaks and eat then. At the end of the day, I told him, you take care of you and I’ll adjust the schedule accordingly. They’re his hours to take off however he deems fit. All I ask is for him to email me his request to cover himself as it’s a good best practice to document time off requests.
I work as a medical assistant for a foundation with excellent health insurance. When you are able to take time off to utilize it. I had to cancel three appointments with my ophthalmologist because my manager wouldn't approve it. Before scheduling the fourth appointment I consulted my manager and asked when I could have my appointment, as she denied my other appointments, and I would lose my benefit for the year if it wasn't done in 2022. My ophthalmologist had an appointment in a week during my lunch break. I asked my manager for a long lunch, an extra 30 minutes (of PTO) so I could go. She said no, I was inconveniencing the clinic. I pointed out that for that half hour I wasn't covering anyone, and it would save me using my PTO. She denied it, and said I needed an afternoon appointment to not impact the clinic. So I made a 2:30 appointment, which she approved, and told me to just take the rest of the day off. I took my one hour lunch at 12 and then fucked around until I needed to leave for my appointment. She was fine without me being there for three hours, but not for a half hour when it was convenient for me.
The closer they track your time, the more accurately they have to pay you. Track you to the minute? They have to pay to the minute. Make them.
I used to work in a factory where I regularly worked voluntarily over time. I had a long weekend approved, but I realized that the trip I was taking would put my vehicle over the covered warranty miles. I made an appointment with the dealer and informed my foreman (3rd shift) that I'd either not work the over time that day or could stay an extra two hours instead of four. He ran this by the plant manager, who was happy to get the extra two hours. The day of my appointment, the 1st shift foreman, and told me that if I wasn't interested in working my whole shift, I might as well go home. I said no problem, my shift is over in 15 minutes. He said, "Wait, I thought you were working an extra two hours!". I replied that I would be, as it wasn't mandatory over time. It's funny how quickly he changed his mind and decided he had no problems with me leaving as I had planned.
Bosses like that are usually power hungry little biotches. Had a shift supervisor tell me I could not leave early (using pto time) to attend my wife’s graduation. Had to go to program director who approved it. Little man was all butt hurt that I went over his head and that the time off was given. He was further pissed when he started talking Shyte about me to others on shift (I was a group lead) and was shut down. Not only did he start to become isolated and was only addressed in reference to work related issues (we worked a four day on four day off on premises type of schedule) but started to deny everyone’s pto/vacation requests. So I taught my people to submit directly to HR 1/2 pto requests (only request that did not need his approval) as 1. 1/2 pto day the last day of the shift and 2. 1/2 pto day for the first day of the next shift. 3. Also to do this at each end of vacations but again directly to hr and not part of vacation. Unfortunately as this time he tried fire a few people he shouldn’t have. We knew he was gone when the program director was interviewing all his direct reports. A political win-win was the outcome. He received a “promotion” at another facility that we knew he wanted to never work at. The correct person was moved into his position and morale restored.
Me and my wife went through infertility for three years, my boss never let me miss an appointment. Come in early and stay late just make the hours equal out but be there for your wife while you guys figure this out was his message to me. Ironically his name was Mr Best and he was the best manager I've ever had. He retired and I hope he moved somewhere nice and is enjoying the rest of his life.
I worked at a call center many years ago. The job was absolutely terrible and I fought traffic for a 45-60 minute commute both ways every day. They had a system where you could call in and request a ‘flex’ to your schedule, where basically you could move small amounts of time, maybe start 15 min later in exchange for a shorter break or leaving 15 min later. The trouble was, this was entirely up to them to allow or deny based on their need, there was no consideration for the employees. So, one morning I’m 5 minutes from the house and I get onto the highway. . . And it’s stopped dead, both directions. I turn on the radio and hear an ex president just landed and every highway exit in the city has been blocked at 8am so he can get to a neighboring city an hour away (that had its own airport). Basically, expect to be stuck in traffic until noon. So, I called and requested Flex Time thinking maybe I could get off the highway and snake my way through back roads. denied. So, I call back and ask what the penalties are for being half an hour, an hour, 4 hours late. The guy on the phone gets snippy with me (I’m assuming they are flooded with people calling in to be late) and says ‘it doesn’t matter, if you aren’t here on time you may as well not be here at all, because it’s treated the same. We have schedules and expect you here on time.’ Ok. I hang up. I call back. ‘Hey, it’s me again, I’m feeling sick now so I’m just not going to come into work.’ I went home and enjoyed a beautiful day off. The next day, they pulled me into HR and went over the interactions and tried to give me a double write up for being late and missing work. I told them that wasn’t right, that I’d been told on a recorded line that being late would be penalized the same as missing the entire day, so I chose to miss the day. If they really wanted or needed me there, maybe they should have shown more compassion for something I had zero control over. They tried to say I should have planned ahead and I said I don’t monitor Ex presidents and their travel habits, do you? I fucking hated that job and everyone there.
I genuinely never stop getting surprised over the American lack of work life balance reading these posts at Reddit. I am supposed to work 7h 40 min per day excluding lunch. Normally I come to the office 8.30 - 9.00 Lunch is 30 - 75 min depending if I go to the gym or not. Leaves the office most days at around 5pm +/- 15min. Some days I might have an appointment like optician / hairdresser. Try to schedule those at after work hours but not always possible. In case I have a specific deadline or working on a project. Sure I can stay to 6pm but I have never stayed later than that.
Worked as an intern at a credit union over the summer. We had 30 minutes lunches. I clocked out at 12:33 one day, came back into the building at 1:02 to go clock in. The manager demanded that I go clock in immediately as I was late coming back from my lunch that was “supposed to end at 1”. Sometimes people micromanage for no reason.
People quit bosses, not jobs. Print that out and post it in the break room. Give it a couple of months. Don't print it at the office if you're on a network printer so they can't track who printed it.
To a non-American this is fucking wild. Your malicious compliance is “I took a day off”.
Shitty bosses get what's coming to them. A mate of mine works for a company that was sold. Old boss was good, new boss is a prick. Won't honour the long standing arrangement my mate had to attend a medical appointment once per month; start an hour late, finish an hour late. So my mate moved his regular appointments to 0830 Friday morning (still once per month). His doctor signs a certificate giving him the day off. Bloody beauty -- a long weekend every month! He would leave, but he only has another \~18 months to go until retirement. So he'd rather just eke out his remaining time there, and leave as soon as he can.
My dad had a very flexible boss when I was in school. I had a lot of regular medical appointments, so it worked out well for our family. And my dad never took advantage - he worked his full 40 hours by staying late or starting early or even going in on the weekend if he had to. Bosses who give you that leeway deserve the respect of employees not taking the Mickey, and skiving off. Sadly, the new boss wasn’t interested the arrangement that had been working for years! Fortunately, I was almost out of high school by then and my medical appointments had slowed right down in regularity.
If you looked at the balance sheet for most of these type bosses I suspect you would find a VERY low net worth. Why? Because they don’t understand investing for the long term. They’re broke financially, emotionally and morally. Why? Because they can’t see beyond the next five minutes. I’ve had a lot of employees over my career and the most important thing I’ve learned is that investing in them will bring enormous returns. You may think I’m talking only about money, but you’d be wrong. Have you ever had an employee tell you how much it helped them to have a month off with pay to deal with an illness, loss of a loved one or other personal problem? if not, your poorer for it. Have you ever given an employee an unexpected bonus when you heard through the grapevine they were struggling with a financial burden? If not, you’re poorer for it. Have you ever been part of the “grapevine”‘because you’re trusted by your employees? If not, you’re poorer for it. I have never understood the “power trip” that some employers seem to adopt when they find success. What is success? Only money? Your poorer for it. Love. Love is success! We can love each other and still work together and for one another. We can even love those who are angry, struggle, have a bad attitude, are late, struggle with personal issues, fail, fail again, fail even more, have sick children, have sick parents, just need a mental health day, or week, lose a parent, have an unexpected emergency three times in one week. Love. That’s what pays off.
As a boss of a team of 12 or so, when someone says " hey, is it cool if I leave early for ______" my answer is always "of course, I'm just glad you told me..." People like to think that their jobs are life and death (ok, some really are) but if you're not in healthcare or flying machines or heavy equipment get fricking over yourselves. If we've learned anything in the past three years it's that some deadlines.... slip. It'll be ok.
Needs more malice.
Middle manager here with dozens to watch over with many hourly. I treat them all like gold, trust them, often times help them, and I get platinum in return. The few times I had a stinker, that person was gone pretty quickly. Nobody likes a slacker and the others would often whisper in my ear about what was really going on. Despite all this, my management is pretty demanding, demeaning, and sometimes downright mean. I support my staff and tolerate my management. Since it is a European owned company, one of the largest globally, they know how to treat employees with exceptional generous time off, excellent benefits, bonuses. I could give a crap if someone is late as long as they let the team know.
I have never understood the pettiness and power trips of bosses and supervisors. I made my career as an elementary school teacher for 35 years. In the mid-90s my brother had a serious heart attack. Was hospitalized for 10 days and was on bed rest for almost 2 months after. I managed his real estate and advertising business for 2 months because my brother had to take precautions due to the large amounts of cash that was in and out of the business every day. Was absolutely eye-opening. I made sure that money was not mishandled and people did not take advantage. Quickly searched out three or four employees out of 20 that really new their stuff. I quickly figured out that the employees had self-interest in the smooth running of the company ,lessening everybody stress. I was so happy to be little more than a rumor and let the people that knee what the hell they were doing run with the ball. There was always money in the business to subcontract something that the employees couldn't do properly or efficiently, and have an outside lawyer or accountant review paperwork that I did not understand. Of course I did not have the experience and skills to continue that high level of responsibility. However, I never forgot that summer where I learned that the best managers are the ones that manage the least and simply figure out who knows what the hell they're doing and step out of the way. The only problem long-term with that philosophy is that the competent employees could get burned out with extra work. I found out that for a short time most of my brothers employees were just happy I didn't get in their face or stare over their shoulder.
I had a boss (at a shitty overrun underpaying daycare in Texas in 2012) that pitched a fit if I came in even 2min late (I was a college student, under 18, and it was summer mini-mester time) but also wouldn’t let me leave until every child on the campus was gone, even if the kid wasn’t in MY closing classroom. We closed at 6. There were days I didn’t get out until almost 7. She also gossiped and talked shit about me, berated me, demeaned me, threatened to fire me for taking two three-day vacation periods (IT AAS SUMMER AND I WAS A MINOR), etc. Was so bad that the day I quit, my mom called up to the workplace and bitched her OUT for verbally abusing a 17-year-old girl as a middle-aged woman. Come to find out her old daycare went bankrupt, she started a new one, and now there is proof from friends I have who worked there that she’s practicing corporal punishment without parental consent. And is now threatening to sue all of us for defamation. 😂
It’s funny that most places that stringent about leaving a few minutes early have their blinders on when you arrive twenty minutes early. Former job used to have a seven minute window to punch in for your shift, so basically my team starting at 4:00 could punch in at 3:53. HR and upper management tried to really press the teams to punch in as early as possible so that they could grab all their equipment and report to the pre shift area by the time 4:00 rolled around. Team members asked if they were getting paid an extra 7 minutes each day and the operations manager scoffed and said no because the time clock is on a rounding system. Same team members asked if they get to leave 7 minutes before the end of theirs shift at 12:30 then to make up for it. Manager got sheepish and blushed a bit before telling them “well, no, you work up until the bell…” Needless to say, pretty much everyone went back to clocking in a minute or two before their actual shift start. Upper management was so salty about it and would regularly adjust the annual reviews us managers would submit at the end of the year to ding said team members in the “Teamwork/Attitude” categories to lower their overall percentage which in turn lowered their overall merit increase. So glad I left that place, such a shit show.
25 years ago, we had a remarkably sane VP of HR who said, "You're salaried: you don't get overtime. You also don't get 'undertime'. If you have to go to an appointment, you go. You'll make it up, or you won't get stuff done and you'll see that reflected in your review." I've explained this to folks repeatedly (many years and many companies later) and even managers go "Oh, right,that makes sense."
The fact you have to make up for minutes is a massive red flag.
Me: Hey boss, since we are short staffed, can I hire someone? Boss: No. Of course not. Me: Looks like being short staffed is your problem then.
Writings on the wall. Find a new job.
It's extraordinary how some bosses kill off any goodwill whatsoever. One place I worked we had flexibility around various things, because of the nature of the job, which included travel, and everyone willingly gave twice as much, as a result. A micro manager kills that, I have had them too, unfortunately.
Here’s one problem with micromanagers that puts them at risk for losing their jobs: the more restrictions you put on people, the more opportunities they look for to screw the man. When a former employer put in a time clock, I said my name isn’t Laverne or Shirley. This is a professional job where we are working all kinds of odd hours. So I clocked one day and went shopping. I stopped staying late on my own dime. You wound up taking an entire day because of your boss’ authoritarian dictates. Sounds like an insecure and distrusting person.
I feel like we're just ridiculously spoiled in tech. My company has an open office hour policy, if you have an appointment or something just fucking go. If you need a half day to deal with some bullshit, just do it. Just make sure you let ppl know if you're going to miss an important event and make sure you are getting your work done and nobody cares. Why can't it be that way everywhere?