I’ll provide a couple of scenarios that I will taylor to my situation, which is, my boss is hardly ever in this office and is often in meetings so hard to get ahold of. I am in the equivilent of a mid-management role but am not a ‘manager’ and have no employees. I work in the same office as the regional Directors (including my boss) and the regional President, who has an EA that is a busybody and has previously ‘ratted’ me out on a few things.
These are the scenarios:
a) You become very sick after lunch and need to leave for home about two hours early.
b) You need to take your dog to an emergency vet/the babysitter can’t make it/there is a plumbing emergency. This occurs while you are at work and you find out about it mid-afternoon, about an hour and a half before home time.
c) You know there will be heavy traffic due to some event and plan on leaving 30 minutes early. You worked through lunch.
Now, who do you tell, if anyone, and how do you go about it? Do you leave a note on your door/computer? Are you telling certain people because you should, or because you don’t want to get in trouble?
My immediate boss, who doesn’t work on the premises. I’d do this no matter what the scenario and because it’s the right thing to do. If I couldn’t get ahold of her (with the exception of B), I’d stay at work. For B, I’d just deal with any fallout.
I’m simply not in your situation – working in (I think) a different industry and a different part of the world – but all these situations as well as any other ones are covered by “I arrive and leave as I please.” As long as the work gets done, and I put in something resembling a month-loadful of hours (ha! Most months I’m well over quota; and I’m salaried, so no overtime…), I’m fine and everyone else is fine (and does the same)
If I’m leaving before 5 PM or arriving later than 9 I’ll mark myself “out of office” in Outlook, and that’s it.
If my boss isn’t around I’ll just leave. If my boss is there I’d stick my head in to let him know I’m taking off early and why (if I just don’t want to be there I’ll make up something better). I get to work a half hour early every day so I don’t worry about the occasionally long lunch or leaving early.
Last Friday I just couldn’t wait to get to my weekend so I worked into lunch a bit to get everything wrapped up and while my boss was checking it over I asked him if he needed anything else from me for the week and if not I was going to disappear. He said he wouldn’t be looking for me but would call if he needed anything.
That’s what I have always done if my boss wasn’t available to talk to in person. I’m usually working as a temp and getting paid hourly and having someone sign off on my hours, so it isn’t quite the same, but in a salaried position, it saves a lot of trouble to keep your superiors in the loop for your comings and goings. It’s funny how they don’t seem to notice the times you work extra hours, but notice the one time you left half an hour early.
There is always someone looking for me. I leave an out of office note on my e-mail, and inform my boss personally if at all possible. Also, I stop by my direct reports offices (we’re on the same hall) and let them know how/if they’ll be able to reach me. Boss and DRs get an e-mail if I don’t find them.
If I’m really running (i.e. baby sick at daycare) then I just tell the first person I find and ask them to pass it on. I don’t usually make phone calls while driving, but I’d probably call the boss from the road in that case.
I text my boss and speak to one other person on my way out the door, “Tell boss I’m gone!”
The text (or email sometimes) usually contains the reason and justifies my timesheet, e.g., “I’m leaving to go meet the plumber at 3:30. I’ll be using 2 hours of personal time. There are no deadlines you need to worry about. or XYZ person has agreed to cover my deadline and post my file by 5:00.”
In other words, I make sure the boss knows my obligations are met, my time accounted for, and all projects are being properly fed and watered in my absence. Anyone wishing to tattle will be generally soundly ignored.
FTR, I work as a contractor in our client’s office. My boss is actually in another state. When I said “my boss” I mean the team leader in this client’s office, who directs all my work. My boss does not care about my comings and goings, as long as the client agrees to whatever.
In all the places I’ve worked there’s always been at least an informal protocol for something like this. It usually worked out to something like:
Immediate supervisor
Administrative assistant for the department
Office manager or receptionist
Immediate supervisor’s boss
Co-worker in the department
And even if you reach your immediate supervisor who happens to be away from the office at the time, you still tell one of the other people so someone on the premises knows.
If it’s an emergency I let my boss know what’s going on and why I have to leave. If I was supposed to meet anyone I let them know that I have to leave due to unforeseen circumstances and we’ll reschedule. If there’s anything on my plate that can’t wait until I get back I get one of my teammates to keep an eye on it - if it’s the kind of emergency where I can’t stop to do that stuff I let my boss know that it needs to be done and he’ll get someone to take care of it. Email my teammates that I’ll be gone until (whenever).
So basically notify my boss and teammates, put off/reschedule meetings, make sure I’m not leaving anything undone. This usually takes all of about 5 minutes although it can sound like a lot.
Oh, and set my out of office email and voicemail including who to contact if immediate assistance is required.
We all have Blackberries so communication is easy while in the cab rushing home.
If it’s not an emergency but something like “I got in early, worked through lunch, I’m tired, traffic is a mess and I’d like to leave early” I’ll check that I’m not walking out on anything (or that I can do it remotely from home), ask my boss if it’s OK and then let my coworkers know. I wouldn’t do this on a really busy day, only if it’s pretty quiet.
I tell my boss, my admin, and sometimes a few others that I’m working closely with on projects. Usually I’ll send an email with my cell or something if I’ll be available. Don’t normally say why. I’m at the office late enough most days that it’s not an issue, and I’m on salary.
I drop an email to my team (including my manager) and anyone I’m working closely with at the minute.
The 30 minutes early thing, I just leave. I’m salaried and often working at 9pm doing email. If anyone needs to reach me, I have a cell phone.
I work with global teams, its rare everyone is in the office at the same time anyway (rare, take that back…my teams are NEVER all in the office at the same time.)
If it’s during normal business hours, say 8-5, I call my teammates and ask them if they can watch my screens, leave an email and a voicemail message indicating who my backups are, and then a call to my manager letting them know what is happening.
One of my responsibilities is to approve/correct orders, and if no one is backing me up, shipments to our customers might be held up. If we are open, there has to be someone around to approve orders.
If I’m headed home and will be indisposed for some reason (such that I won’t be able to check email form my Blackberry) I’ll let at least my boss know, as well as anyone who may be waiting on deliverables form me - reports, presentations, etc.
Otherwise, if I’ll be able to check email/answer phone calls, I just say bye to folks in the office, and head home - myself and many of my colleagues work from home at least a couple days a week.