Employer here (yes, I know right?! Sigh). Being on time and punctuality is about respect of other people time not about suppressing workers freedoms. We have no time to arrive for anyone. You can use the office if you like or work remotely from wherever you chose. But being late for a meeting with anyone relayed to the firm (customer or coworker including me) has to stay a seldom occurrence. Having multiple people wait for you 10 min is a pain point for everybody involved. It happens, I get it, but it everybody does not keep it to once in a long while everybody waits at every meeting which is not respectful of their time and its wasting quite some money too (Yes my people earn well above average). Is it too much to ask some basic respectful handling of each other?
BTW: there are employees that can’t handle that much autonomy yet. They specifically ask me to check their working hours and be at the office present for them to help them get their hours in and help with technical problems. But that’s usually new staff which has not learned to keep a routine. With time they usually get it together sooner or later. Surprisingly most make use of the office pretty regularly and just don’t come in if they travel to visit family or need to be at home for family reasons. Its a win all around as far as i am concerned.
Honestly, if I get the job done and do it to spec, managers can shut the fuck up.
It’s a very good day when I show up just 10 minutes late.
Depends on the situation. Meeting up with friends? I wouldn’t blink at them being 10 minutes late. Opening shift at a cafe? 10 minutes would put me so far behind I’d be in big trouble.
I’ve always told my daughter to never show up on time because it sets a bad precedent. No one cars if the person whose always late is late. Everyone freaks if the person whose always on time is late.
Still too early.
Bruh
Eh. This depends on the job being done. In my field of work the only thing that matters is that you get the job done. What office hours you keep are not very important. On the other hand, my friend works shift work where he has to replace someone directing a process (think air traffic control). Being 10 minutes late is a dick move because you are forcing the person you are replacing to stay longer at the end of a shift.
Then shifts should have an overlap.
I know they don’t and won’t, but there’s no good reason not to do it, except that the company would make a bit less money.
Depends on how things are run. My wife works at the hospital and works 12 hour shifts, rotating days and nights. You’re expected to show up 15 mins early so the previous shift can hand off their patients to you.
I’m not sure how you’d do 12 hour shifts with overlap unless the overlap was considerable or shift times were all over the place. The hospital here gets a certain budget and it makes sense to have it running as optimal and efficient as possible. You also get paid from punch in to punch out so coming in early gets you paid more. Realistically her shifts are 12 hours 15 mins.
But then your wife should be scheduled and paid for 12.25 hour shifts.
She gets paid for it, it’s just not on the schedule. There’s no unpaid labour at her work.
By listing a schedule starting at one time, but expecting the actual start to be earlier they’re communicating an inaccurate schedule.
Could you imagine prescribing one dose but expecting another? Billing one amount but expecting a premium on top of that?
15 mins early is standard here. Basically everyone expects 15 mins early to everything (work, appointments, etc). Her work is more direct about it since it’s a core part of their work, but it’s nothing unusual where we live.
Yeah I dont think 12 hours is feasible, anyway.
By hour 10, are people really working with the same level of care as when they started?
In healthcare that’s a much bigger concern than some middle-manager in a corporate office.
Three 8:15 hour shifts, instead of two 12:15 hour shifts. Seems much more reasonable, adds 15 minutes total to work time.
In theory, more medical errors happen from bad transfer of care than from fatigued caregivers, so that’s why they go for longer, fewer shifts.
Or so they say. I’m not sure I believe it.
I asked my wife about this, she said in her experience that’s true. I actually just asked her why they work 12 instead of 8 and that’s the answer she gave too.
I also mentioned it in another comment but most of her coworkers prefer the 12 hour shifts as they get a lot more days off. She said it’s busy enough that 12 in the hospital feels like 8 elsewhere so it doesn’t feel like she’s working super long shifts.
Doctors often have longer shifts too. My cousin is an anesthesiologist and works 24 hour shifts. He likes it for all the same reasons.
Well I have no reason to doubt her. Plenty of reason to doubt employers, but not the people working the shifts, so OK. Good to know.
Sounds like they should work towards 3 shorter shifts and offer enough time for a proper patient handover rather than abusing staff for over half a day.
There are 8 hour lines too but no one wants them. 12 hour days means more days off. Most people either work 2 days, 2 nights, 5 days off, or 5 weeks of lots of shifts days and nights and then one full week off.
So they should offer 8 hours and comparable days off (or even better)
None of this 12 hour bullishit should be justifiable.
Then they’d need to raise her wage too which they won’t do. She’s already well paid for her position. The more she works, the more she makes. If they raised her pay and lowered her hours so she’d get the same paycheques that would be great, but definitely wouldn’t happen. She also enjoys working. Saving people’s lives is a very fulfilling job.
12 hours aren’t bad. If I could choose 12 hours 3 days per week plus a 4 hour day instead of five 8 hour shifts I’d take that easily. Or four 10 hour days. When you’re already working 8 hours, an extra 2-4 hours isn’t bad. I used to work 12-15 hour days when they’d let me, but then they started refusing overtime so I can’t do that anymore.
Yeah, they always sell the 12 hour shifts with the tag line, “You’ll only be working 14/15 days a month!” It’s true, and I love my 5 days off in a row, but there is a huuuuge difference in an 8 hour day and a 12 hour day when you’re juggling the other necessities in your life, like kids, appointments, and emergencies.
I believe there’s studies showing that fewer handoffs lead to better patient outcomes.
I know people who prefer 12 hours shifts. My partner is scheduled for 7-7:30 shifts. Including a half hour lunch break, that means there’s a 30 minute handover window while still working 12 hours… in the end they get paid for when they are clocked in/out and not when they are scheduled.
There are some studies that show that having shifts shorter than 12h actually do more harm to patients than benefit since that means more turnover in each case and more disconnect between patient and medical professionals.
I’ve heard way crazier shifts, things like 36h shifts where I live years ago.
How much of a difference could there possibly be, regarding alleged patient harm, between 12hr and 10hr shifts?
You wouldn’t do 10h shifts, you would do 8h shifts or you would have daily drift in shifts and that’s horrible for workers.
As other people have written in this post, workers prefer 12 to 8 since there are less error and they get more vacation days.
You wouldn’t do 10h shifts
Why? I’m literally asking why 10hr isn’t even a possibility, it’s all just 8 or 12 in here. Why wouldn’t I do 10hr shifts?
Are shifts typically 12 hours due to a staffing shortages or is it for better patient care? I’m all in favor of hospitals being efficient and optimal, but if more funding is required so that the hospitals are staffed properly then I don’t see why that’s not something being funded by the government.
It’s generally perceived to be better for patient care.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/indhealth/48/3/48_3_357/_article/-char/ja/
There are a lot of studies looking into it, though, and it seems like it’s pretty context dependent.
That makes sense, if you’re working 12 hour shifts then at least your weeks are more predictable and you can have more baked in recovery days between shifts.
Contrasted with rotating 8 hour shifts where some of your days can be during the daylight and other shifts throughout the night, with less recovery time in between to prepare for the sweeping changes.
I just want to say, fuck rotating shifts. Those are worse than working straight nights or 3rd shifts.
Rotating shifts just sounds nuts. At that point it sounds like there was a clear hiring problem if they needed people to rotate their shifts.
It’s both that 12h shifts are better for care and that people are understaffed. They need more nurses in those 12h shifts.
I’d be all for more funding to the hospitals too. Unfortunately I don’t make those decisions. Our hospitals are already funded by the government but it would be nice if they’d give them more money for staff and equipment etc. A lot of floors are chronically low on supplies. At least the staff gets paid really well, which is a bonus. My wife makes about 2.5x what she’d make in a retirement home or similar.
You’re expected to show up 15 mins early
“Expectation” means it’s not showing up 15 minutes early for a 12 hour shift, it’s 12 hour and 15 minutes shift.
She gets paid punch in to punch out. If she goes in extra early she gets paid more. If she doesn’t bother going in early to relieve the previous shift she doesn’t get the extra pay.
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To overlap the next shift would have to come in early or the first would stay late.
So either you make it even harder to come in on time or you permanently institute the issue of running late.
Not to mention that would absolutely just become another dumbass all Hands-On meeting to waste everyone’s time with.
Nah people should just be there when they agreed to, being flaky is not and should not be everyone else’s problem.
That doesn’t make any sense. If you’re supposed to be there at 5:00, the shift should change so you’re supposed be there at 4:50, so that you’ll be there at 5:00 when you’re ten minutes late?
And what am I supposed to do if you do get there at 4:50? Clock out early? Feel you awkwardly hovering behind me?
I already pay for commute.
If the company isn’t paying me for extra 10 minutes, they’re not getting free 10 minutes.It shouldn’t be your problem if the next shift doesn’t show up on time.
When I used to work shifts you bet the employer paid for every extra minute I had to wait for the next guy - it’s the law.
It’s interesting to bring up air traffic controllers because they (in most countries) have strictly regulated work hours. The research into fatigue and safety problems is pretty extensive, and the last person you want working overtime because someone got sick is the controller telling a dozen or more planes where to fly at once.
While not all jobs have the same stakes, that goes to show how it’s an employer’s responsibility to account for reality.
Literally me today. My relief showed up 15 mins late. I’m now leaving like 30+ mins late because now I’m stuck in the middle of things that they should be doing.
Betty can show up ‘on time’ and spend 40 min making coffee and shit talking with her neighbors, but I show up 10 min late and start working right away but I’m the bad employee somehow.
Ive come to learn that employers are not paying you for your labor but for your time. They care more about your availability than how much you actually work. It is also why how hard you work never factors into how much you get paid.
You never get a raise (above inflation) by doing your current work “better” or “harder”. You get a raise by changing roles completely or adding on responsibilities that expressly is worth some extra pay. Or changing company.
But as an employee, I’ve come to realize that I don’t value my pay as what I do, but how much time per day I dedicate towards my work. Time is all we have, really.
They pay me 20% below what I should earn? Maybe I work 50% slower eh? Who knows?
What should you earn?
Ive come to learn that employers are not paying you for your labor but for your time.
Commuting time should be salaried.
Because depending on the company you’re for a large part not paid for productivity but for presenteeism.
I agree with you but unfortunately you have to work with people, and those people’s ideas of you can make it harder or easier for you to actually do your work, or influence the stress you’re exposed to, so it’s in your own interest to put up a good façade, then if necessary fuck them in the ass… figuratively.
Well if you are supposed to be at work at 7 then you should be at work at 7 tbh
The underlying question is “why do you need to be at work a 7 in the first place”. If Betty can chat with coworkers half an hour longer than the other person starts working, that half hour can’t really be that critical. In that case, 7 is just an arbitrary number and the difference is that Betty starts work at 7:40 while the other commenter gets in trouble for starting at 7:10, which is just plain bullshit.
If I need to start working at 7 for some reason (shift work has been mentioned) and I start at 7:10, we can talk, but Betty’s 7:40 ass better get four times the amount of shit.
I mean you have signed a contract requiring you to be at work at 7. So that’s when you have to be there, unless you want to be sacked. With an hourly or monthly wage the company is paying for your time and they expect you to put in that time. It’d be different if you had a contract by tender or piecework contract, not sure of the correct English language term. If you have that, you can often set your own hours (to a degree) as long as the job gets done. But that’s not what most people have in their employment contract.
Other side of the coin to slacking from the required work time would be if the employer would be slacking from the required pay. And that does happen too and is even worse. But the contract should bind both sides to it so neither happens.
I mean you have signed a contract requiring you to be at work at 7.
The question is “Why should contracts specify the exact time?”
If you sign a contract with valid stipulations, of course you’re required to abide by it, but the subject of the conversation is this specific stipulation.
The claim is that “requiring you to be at work at 7” is an outdated norm.
Because it is much easier to make that sort of contract than measure some objective “work done” metric. Unless you’re hoping to be signing piecework/work by tender contracts all the time.
My employer mandates 40h of work per week and a core working time where all employees are supposed to be available. No fixed hours required. I don’t see how fixing hours is easier than that.
And ultimately, that is my point: Why set fixed times, if the time itself doesn’t actually matter?
It can be that the employer just considers it easiest for them.
I can see it mattering if it’s shift work and someone else has to stay late. If it’s office work? Nah. Doesn’t matter.
Exactly. It also matters what type of shift work. If you’re late to a hospital nursing shift, that sucks because you can’t do the changeover stuff and they’ve been there 12 hours. Or if you’re the only one taking phone calls in the morning or something. In sane a world, there would be room for decent folks as well as folks who are always on time.
decent folks as well as folks who are always on time.
Decent folks are always on time, as they value your time the same as theirs.
This is the number one mistakes that dumbfucks make about decent folks, hence why I said it that way.
I haven’t met a decent person that is perpetually late. Nor one that calls me a dumbfuck.
They probably meant descent. As in the fall of society.
Haha. True
If there is no buffer for shift changes, they’re doing it wrong. Just in time is a bad model in general, but it’s horrible mismanagement for scheduling shifts.
Stay late 10 minutes: that’s as good as leaving on time. I can’t be expected to pay you more.
Arrive 10 minutes late: how could you? 10 minutes of my time is an eternity!
Keep pretending to pay a fair wage and I’ll pretend to give a shit about being on time.
I don’t think they’ll be pretending to pay for long if you keep being late lol
Yeah… better to get there on time and then slack off at work.
Depends on your position and workplace: Some really don’t care when you come in as long as you’re getting shit done, others are the opposite. I’ve worked both and prefer working at places that don’t care as long as things run smoothly.
I mean yeah? I don’t know how employment contracts work elsewhere but here it says when you should be at work and of course by (repeatedly) breaking your contract you’ll get sacked. Fair enough imo
Lots of people work salary
Does that mean they are contracted for certain work but not certain hours or certain time of day?
Salary means you get paid a certain amount of money every year but everything else is defined by your contract: You might not have to come in at all if your contract doesn’t stipulate that, you could even literally be paid to do nothing or you could be on call 24/7 or anything in between.
This is not the same thing as contractors, who are not employed by the company and bill for their work at an hourly rate. Salary is more stable income usually with decent to good benefits in the US and can work any number of hours (or lack thereof). Contractors can make more per hour, but still have to cover their own medical, dental, retirement, etc.
It’s not necessarily contract work, but yeah I guess you could describe it that way.
You get hired for $X/year, and that’s what you make. Your paycheck, if weekly for example, will always be $X/52 regardless of how many or how few hours you worked.
Why not just put in zero hours?
You’d be super wrong there, at least in my case: I’m late all the time, not only do I still have my job, I get great reviews and token raises every time I’m up for review. If I left, they’d be in trouble, they definitely won’t fire me. I don’t bust my ass and they understand I won’t be taking calls outside of designated hours, doing anything heroic, etc. but I am still very valuable to my employer.
I joked about having a job interview once during a meeting with leadership and it was one of the most awkward silences I’d ever heard until I told them I was just kidding: They thought I was serious and their terror was palpable. My manager once told me I’d have to commit multiple crimes to get fired when I made a joke about getting fired because there was an end of day meeting on a Friday.
I stay because it’s a chill job and I like most of the people I work with even though the pay isn’t amazing, but I could probably go somewhere else and make at least 30-50% more, though at the possible cost of more stress and less job security. My commute is pretty great too, 2 miles away and sometimes I even walk to work.
Have you got caught?
It’s not exactly a secret, but sure I guess? I’ve said hi to my boss, their boss, the CIO’s secretary, the CIO, etc. when coming in late plenty of times.
Seems your boss is pretty lenient about it
My boss, my boss’s boss, etc. - you work at the right place and are valuable enough, they 100% don’t care if you’re a little late, even if it’s every day! They let me leave early if I want too and if my lunch break runs a little long, that’s fine. Not every place is a micromanaged shithole.
On the other hand, if something runs late and I have to stay and address it, I don’t complain so I guess it’s a two way street. I’ve even come in early before when necessary (though it’s rare).
Like most statements about work, it really depends on the job.
For shift work without overlapping shifts, being late keeps someone else on duty after their shift is up.
But if you’re working an office gig and your work is getting done, it’s fine. There’s a reason I don’t schedule any meetings within an hour of the start or end of the day.
shift work without overlapping shifts
That is 100% wage theft as someone has to work overtime. either come early or stay late.
Come on time. And if someone stays late they should be paid for staying late 100% of the time.
But they also shouldn’t have to stay late. People work jobs so they can afford life outside of work. Making people stay late is stealing from their life outside of work no matter how much they’re paid.
When I was a retail manager, I was a hardass on people coming in so late that it would impact coworkers. I covered the floor in those situations, but I couldn’t cover multiple departments, but when 3 people are out sick and 4 are late, I can’t do it all.
I also fought corporate to authorize more hours so I could have coverage for people to get sick or stuck in traffic, but corporate were a bunch of assholes after our chief competition bought us out and slashed staffing.
If retail jobs paid better than minimum wage, maybe the teenagers that are hired will be more willing to come in on time.
Crazy, I know.
We paid decently for retail. It was a few years back, but it looks like they pay about 40-50k now for floor-level staff. It’s not amazing, but way better than others.
What hurt more with the corporate buyout was the number of employees let go and the end of some truly great perks. Manufacturers had programs to get us credit towards free products in return for selling their stuff, and since almost all the companies had the programs we didn’t even have to shill one brand over another.
My better salespeople bcame experts in their products because they didn’t just see all the products as things they’d never be able to afford, which helped both our sales and helped inform the customers. And they’d get 10k+ of high-end products a year. In my best year as an underling, I got over 20 grand in freebies. But the new corporate overlords banned employees taking part in those programs because they were afraid staff may sell the freebies on the aftermarket.
You ever ran late to a college class because you had to stay longer than scheduled at your shitty retail job to cover your perpetually late coworker who was supposed to relieve you?
Sometimes running 10 minutes late is no big deal, but sometimes it is. It becomes a problem the moment it causes someone else problems.
Really depends what you are 10 minutes late for. A meeting with other participants, ok if your role is to sit and listen. Not OK if people are waiting for you to start. It’s not OK to be late to relieve a co worker either
