Got suspended from work.

POSTED BY: Gorramreavers
UPDATED: Saturday, January 22, 2005 20:31
VIEWED: 12964
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CAITE

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 5:06 AM

I had a job last summer where ONE SECOND was considered late. Talk about harsh! I once came back from lunch four minutes late because the zipper had broken on my pants and I ran home to change. I told a superviser this, and she gave me the go ahead to go home even though it might make me a tick late. However, I STILL got called into the managers office and reamed out for being late. I explained, and told her that my zipper breaking in the middle of a shift was unlikely to happen again.

HEB

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Knibblet:
Suggestion: Go to bed 15 minutes earlier and set your alarm for 15 minutes earlier than you have it set now.

I have to say that, as someone to trying to shake the habit of being late for things, for my type of lateness this does not work. I always expand to fill the time no matter how early I get up. Not sure what the solution is exactly - maybe prioritise like get dressed first eating breakfast can always be skipped once or twice if you run out of time maybe.

I've just started uni though and it's fantastic - where I was always up to 10 minutes late for things, students are like half an hour late. I'm always one of the first ones at anything - it makes such a nice change.

...................
Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.

SHADESIREN

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:19 AM

Quote:

Even though you're happy to be rid of your job couldn't you still claim for wrongful dismissal or some such? I'm not one for all this sueing malarky but it sounds like your boss'll do it again if someone doesn't say something and these laws are there to protect employees for a reason.

Yeah, it's a thought. The good news is that after I applied for Unemployment, they made me wait kind of a while, but they DID approve me for it.

The funner news is that I apparently have a hearing problem, and part of what they complained about was my not "listening" and my "talking to loud" - both issues directly related to hearing problems. If they decide to try to fight me over it, I'm going in with results from the hearing test I'm going to go get. I already KNOW I have a problem... I'm taking the test results in to the Unemployment office, anyway. Just because.

http://home.comcast.net/~shadesiren

SIMONWHO

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:45 AM

Bosses. Talk about power tending to corrupt. Thankfully I work for myself now so I only have to answer to me but I still carry enough horrible memories to sympathise.

SAFFY

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 12:27 PM

I totally respect you for owning up to your part in this problem, but a time clock in the white-collar sector is ridiculous. (I work in IT, and if we had to punch a clock, I'd be fired and so would my boss and my boss's boss and the VP, etc.)

One suggestion I have (if you decide to keep this job) is to reorganize your routine so that you do something else in the morning before work -- like go to the gym or run. That way you're getting up earlier and can skip that or cut it short if you're running late. I'd also suggest setting both your alarm clock and the alarm on your cell phone, because it is WAY too easy to set an alarm improperly.

I manage to do it at least once a month, and I've had the same clock forever. ;-/

CONNORFLYNN

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 1:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Gorramreavers:
About 6 months ago 'they' started a new policy. If you punch in later than exactly 8am twice in one month you get a verbal warning. If you do it again within 3 months you get a written warning. If you do it again you get 3 days suspended withou pay, then termination. :(

So I did OK the first couple of months, maybe punching in a min or two late once or twice overall. But then October, I had an 8:01 and a 8:03. Then in November another 2 days under 8:05. I was good thru December but this month I had a 8:01 and then today...disaster. Somehow managed to shut the alarm off instead of SNOOZE, and I was almost an hour late.

So now I have a longer weekend than I would like. I feel bad because this is something that I could have avoided and my coworkers are now short a man. I do think the policy is a tad harsh but I know they need their people ready to go when it is time for a shift to start. I am an internet tech at a smallish ISP. This has happened to a co-worker/friend and he actually found another job with his time off. I am not ready to move on or anything but it is a bit scary to know that if I manage to screw up again, Im out of a job (in the middle of winter..no less). This came down about 2 hours ago so I am still reeling a bit.

Anyone here go through something like this?

"..it is my very favorite gun."

I spent 5 years as a Manufacturing Engineer with a bootcamp like set of policies. They were so bad that the Department of Labor got involved and made the company president post signs on every door listing his infringements LOL (Great thing for customers to see when they arrive for business meetings hehehe

). I have to say..in a NON-Manufacturing/white collar position, unless they are keeping track of every billable minute, why on earth would they have a policy like that? I wish you luck.

As for manufacturing hehe..I did a time study in a 300 employee plant. I kept track of each department for 1 day. On average each employee left their stations about 5 minutes earlier (then the normal 5 mins for cleanup) for 2 breaks, for lunch and before it was time to go home, and took on average 10 minutes to resume work after each break. There were 2 breaks a day plus a half hour lunch break. I was asked to keep track of the number of times employees used the bathrooms and for how long..but I refused hehe. I felt that that was over doing it and an invasion of privacy. (Fortunately the HR person agreed with me, since I probably would've lost my job for being "Disagreeable" roflmao)

Anyways..the time added up quickly if you use the info as an estimate. Each employee was "non-productive" for an average of 50 minutes a day. So that adds up to approximately 15000 minutes a day or 250 man hours per day. If you put a $60 an hour price tag on those hours, it adds up to about $3,900,000 a year in "Billable product and time" that is lost due to non-productivity.

Now I don't know if your employer is a freak about billable minutes or productivity..but the above was just an example of how companies perceive employees.

ZOID

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 2:01 PM

Connorflynn wrote:

Quote:
...If you put a $60 an hour price tag on those hours, it adds up to about $3,900,000 a year in "Billable product and time" that is lost due to non-productivity.

Now I don't know if your employer is a freak about billable minutes or productivity..but the above was just an example of how companies perceive employees.

Wow, that is so cool! I just love it when statistics are used to reduce humans to machinery! I know, maybe we could just put the humans-cum-tools-of-productivity in harnesses. Harnesses are humane; draft horses don't seem to mind them, or at least they never complain about them. When the employee dons the harness in the morning, they'll know your business means business. Then if they start talking to a co-worker, or get up to go to the bathroom (again? what is she, pregnant?!), or spend too much time fixing the boss' computer (wait a tick... who's that guy and what's he doing to my computer?)... Why, you can just give them a subtle jerk to remind them whose beneficence is keeping the roof over their heads and food in their children's mouths. And of course, the beauty of 'be fruitful and multiply' is that -- should one or two shuck off the traces -- you can always plug in a new 'team member'.

Being a wage slave sucks. The only advice I can give is to watch "Fight Club", and then take up a job as a waiter or nightwatchman.

Anarchically,

zoid, Subtle Jerk

P.S.
Just kidding (like David Fincher). Ummm, and where can I get one of those $60-per-hour jobs? Just tell me the name of the company; I can complete the application, interview, hiring, orientation and payroll processes by computer, from the comfort of my own home.
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

THESOMNAMBULIST

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 2:09 PM

Hey Gorramreavers.

Sorry to hear about your situation. Clearly it's something you feel bad about, y'know letting down your fellow workers, and that's a nice attitude. Ultimately though - does it really matter? So many of us go chasing things, day in day out, again and again, but y'know does it really make any sense. An hour, a minute, fifty nine seconds etc.... It's all so abstract.

Time. You know it's not set in stone. Time is frequently being tampered with, ok it's microseconds I know, but a day isn't exactly 24hours everyday, apparently they have to add and substract nano seconds on occaisions to make everything work out properly - it's crazy! The calendar month makes even less sense. 30 days, 31 days, 28 days then Blam!!!! Have 29!!! WTF? Crazy nonsense - and yet we all live by it. These strange bizarre rules that some faceless society way back when concocted and now we adhere to as though we're damned if we don't.

I dunno, I just think that when we're all done, and it's our time in the mud-box are we really going to evaluate our lives by the frequency with which we kept our punctuality???

Ok, we know the rules and we live by them, sure but maybe there are other things more valuable to take hold off.

For my part I'm freelance so I largely dictate my own times for things, so maybe my attitude is somewhat skewered, but I'd like to think that I would't punish a person for showing up one minute late for work..... To me that's just obsessive and ultimatley, extremely negative.

Hey so long as you DO your job right.

Anyway all the best and I hope you don't torture yourself over this one OK.

Later
TheSomnambulist

www.cirqus.com
For Pictures:
http://www.cirqus.com/lightfantastic.html

BROWNCOAT1

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 2:17 PM

I am of the same mind as Malicious & Knibblet. I am never late for work. One of my pet peeves is being late and I strive to do all I can to avoid it. I am consistently 15-25 minutes early for work. My philosophy is that if my start time is 7am, then I am at my desk, my computer fired up and ready to go before 7am. Call me a bit uptight about it, but that is how I was raised.

Now I do have staff under me that are constantly late. No big deal really as it is normally only 5 minutes or so, but there are some that take advantage of my easy going nature. There are some that are 10-20 minutes late every day, then punch in and have to go get coffee, make the morning rounds to chat, etc. These people have been warned, it turns up in their files and at review time, and they are advised they have to stay late to make up the time or their checks get adjusted. After that they are Human Resources problems if they continue to abuse the lack of policy enforcement.

I have never understood how people can be late. As Knibs said, all you have to do is go to bed a bit earlier and get up a bit earlier if your current schedule is seeing you getting in late too often. Better to lose a bit of sleep or free time than a job in this economy.

__________________________________________

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CONNORFLYNN

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 3:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by zoid:
Ummm, and where can I get one of those $60-per-hour jobs? Just tell me the name of the company; I can complete the application, interview, hiring, orientation and payroll processes by computer, from the comfort of my own home.

ROFLMAO..me too:)

The $60 is a figure the company established for Overhead costs and labor costs..that get passed on to the customer per billable hour:)

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