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Are You On Time To Work?
gravitie asks: "I'm a developer in my local area. I'm on what is supposed to be 'flex time', so I can work the hours that my boss and I see fit for me to fullfil the number of hours I'm required to get a week. Besides this I must clock in at 7:30 AM every day I am at work. If I clock in at 7:31 I am late, no questions asked. If I am late 3 times in one quarter I get a verbal warning. Next time I get a written warning, then it just goes down hill from there (docked pay, etc..). Is this standard in todays business world? Should 1 minute late really be considered 'late'?"
If you have flex hours, why do you have to clock in at 7:30 AM?
Are you late even at 7:31? One minute past? YES! Your employers set up the rules, as a good employee you should respect an abide by those rules. To be honest, it should never be an issue. You should make an effort to arrive at 7:00. That will give you plenty of time to deal with any unforeseen traffic conditions in your drive in to work, issues with weather, car problems, breakfast, etc. As well, if you are consistently early for work, your employers will take note, and will be impressed by your attitude and willingness to get started with your work! Those are the kinds of things which give you good reviews and get you better raises and help with promotions. You should never be late. You should strive to make sure that it will never be an issue.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
How does treating creative workers like assembly line factory workers improve the company's bottom line?
How does having your biggest asset -- your employees -- breaking out in a sweat for being a minute late (and probably spending half the day worrying how many more late days they have in their "quota" before being punished), make the company more competitive?
How does explaining that your company has more petty rules than the local McDonald's franchise attract the best and brightest employees?
Don't get me wrong: some coordination is necessary, so that employees can confer with their fellow employees. But a goodly number of people aren't at their best at 7:30 (I sure as hell am not), and won't do their best work if some Pointy Haired Boss greets them each morning with a stop-watch in hand. This creates resentment, not loyalty.
Times are bad in IT right now. If the past is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future, times will be good again, and employees will be more scarce. And employees (and potential employees) will remember how the company treated people in these lean times.
I expect the poster's company will have a terrible time attracting talent at that point -- if they haven't already gone under by then, because only the most desperate and talentless of their employees won't have found jobs at a place that doesn't treat knowledge workers like unskilled factory workers.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
No it is not. Not everyone sleeps like a log, regular as clockwork. Not everyone has reliable transport. What happens if there's a serious accident and they close the motorway for 3 hours? Why is 1 minute so important? There are 450 minuts in a 7.5 hour working day. 1 minute is less than three tenths of one percent of that.
Why do some employers treat their workers with contempt, condescention, and suspicion? Why are they so irrational? Whay purpose do such arbitrary rules serve? If timing has to be so precise, surely a machine should be doing it.
Stick Men
"A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to." -- Gandalf
---
Heavily armed, easily bored and off my medication.
I expect the poster's company will have a terrible time attracting talent at that point -- if they haven't already gone under by then, because only the most desperate and talentless of their employees won't have found jobs at a place that doesn't treat knowledge workers like unskilled factory workers.
While in general I agree with everything you've said, I'd caution you to be just a little more temperate in your choice of language. Factory workers must be punctual because the assembly line can't move unless everyone is present at their posts, not because they may or may not lack some particular set of skills or aptitudes that a different worker or type of worker might or might not possess.
Time was that Americans understood they were to treat all their fellow citizens equally. Granted, if you're a typical /.er, your childhood and adolescence were inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred, and that's about the only kind of political discourse you've ever heard, but it was not always so, and, for what it's worth, there are plenty of us out here in fly-over country who pay reverence to the old ways.
We just picked this up, too. Each "late" is an "occurance," which add up to verbal warnings, written warnings and dismissal at 7 occurances.
I think it's just that companies are trying like mad to shift the base definition of work, given that ecomomic circumstances keep most of us as a captive audience. When the economy picks up and we all start to bail, they can "negotiate" a more relaxed environment again, which won't do more than return to the status quo of a couple of years ago. I agree that it seems short-sighted to treat your employees like children... any of your employees.
That said, I'd also add that my group is extremely lucky that our managers stood up to say "we work on infrastructure, so we can't work 8 to 5 like everyone else." They could have just as easily said "a 40-hour week? my people will be thrilled! no more late nights and long weekends!" Other departments weren't happy with that ("why does I.S. think they're special?"), but they don't have to show on several weekends a year for routine maintenance and system outages.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I agree completely. My sister was detailing a similar situation where she works (she's a biologist). People were coming in 5-10 minutes late, and it pissed off management.
At the time, the workplace was very motivated, and people worked all kids of unpaid overtime, with no prompting from management.
However, when management went on a rant, everyone started coming in at 8:00 am, but stopped working atexactly 5:00.
It seems that their focus on "minutes" cost them hours in free labor, and caused some bad feelings.
On another note, I've supervised people before, and dealt with this problem. The trick is not to be a slimy PHB. If you've got somebody that's always running late, tell them to come in on time and don't act like a weasel! It really does work
Im normally a few minutes late, but i could fis that. However, if they start making me punch a clock, well then, no more working through lunch, no more staying after 5:00 to finish up, no more letting that extra 15 minutes of OT slide, no more cellphone on the weekends for emergencies. They want me to punch a clock? FIne. 40 hours, thats all they get. They keep making noises here about requiring authorization for OT. I would LOVE that. "SOrry sir, i know you printers not working yet, but im not allowed to work past 8 hours without written authorization, so ill have to pass this on to another tech, he should be here in less than 4 hours"
They want to clock me down to the second? Fantastic. THEY get clocked to the second also.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Are they trying to get rid of you? That's my first guess. The only time I've seen this first hand was when someone was looking for a reason. Are they trying to punish you for working flextime? This may be about something else.
Unless you being one minute late is having a direct and profound impact on coworkers or clients (and that's extrememly rare, military, cults etc.) I'd guess someone is after you.
It's a really bad sign, even if nobody is after you. A rule like that is an indication of a dangerous nitwit manager who will make worse decisions in the future. Those future bad decisions will not be "Free lunch in the breakroom on Tuesdays" but may include memos like "Omission of the cover sheet on TPS reports will result in docked wages (applies to hourly employees only.)" or "Mandatory lunchtime meeting in PHB's office, please bring vaseline."
Management is free to make whatever decisions they like within the law, but that doesn't make all their decisions right, or even sane. If the rest of management doesn't find a problem with this, you're in hell.
Mind you, I like to get to work early, but since my commute could vary from 45 minutes to over 2 hours, depending on the limits of human stupidity, I was occasionally late. Fortunately, my employers were more interested in the performance of duties which were:
In my job description
Actually provided value
If you can't find out what this is really about, and get the one minute rule ameliorated, then mind your P's & Q's while you look for other work.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
You have hit it perfectly here.
As a small tangent, I would like to describe an excellent example from real life.
I haven't read any recent salary surveys, but... Someone I know, let's call him Jim, runs a small business (about 20-30 employees).
He needs 2 programmers on staff. He is forever complaining to me that he has the most crappy programmers, and that all programmers are lazy, self-centered sons of bitches.
Nice. Especially since I'm a programmer.
Well, I found out why he has such trouble. He hires a programmer. He expects them to be there by 8:00a, but that they are on time so long as they arrive within about 5 minutes of Jim getting there (random time, between 8:00 and 8:30 -- usually closer to 8:00. If Jim is really late, (9:00 or later) then the programmers had better be already hard at work when he arrives)
In addition, he starts to really harp on these guys any time they leave before 5:00 or if they leave before him more than a few times.
He takes the "the staff should be already working when the boss arrives, and still working when the boss leaves" mentality, but tries to be slightly flexible about it.
In addition, he pays his programmers $40K - $45K per year.
I talked to Jim about this several times, saying something to the effect that if you treat your programmers as if they are worthless, you will not attract the creme of the crop.
Besides, if a half-decent programmer with a degree can go anywhere and earn $55K - $70K (at the time -- early/mid 2000 these rates were very easy to come by) why would he work for you when you are both really aggravating AND are paying way way less.
His response? You programmers are so arrogant. Why should I pay you that much, you're not worth it. You're all lazy and incompetant.
So... he gets crappy programmers... and wonders why...