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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?
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?
Sure, if you're a Nazi or like working at a boot camp. In the real world, the majority of well-run places I've worked at are flexible enough so long as you get your work done and don't take things to extremes like 3-hour lunches... The responsibility is also there that nobody should feel like you're dumping your workload onto your colleagues.
A boss who's into kicking heads will not get as much value from his staff as one who rides with a looser rein.
"A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to." -- Gandalf
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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
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.