(This is not a need answer quick situation.) 
We’ve all been there: Slept through alarm clock, wake up in panic, hair disheveled, . Can either tidy up, or rush to work, but not both simultaneously.
Now, bosses and managers, would you consider it worse for an employee to be on time but a bit unkempt…or tidy and groomed, but noticeably late?
Get your butt to work. Once you’ve logged in and stomped out any fires that popped up overnight, go to the restroom and comb your hair.
Either is preferable to sloppy punctuation.
I’m the least kempt person at work.
Punctuality is important to me. I don’t care if you look like you just rolled out of bed, or smell like you just got tossed out of a bar.
I’m not a boss, but let’s pretend I am for a minute. For the most part, punctuality is more important than appearance. If you reek like a vomit-soaked brewery, you should probably take a quick shower before coming to the office. However, you’d better not be late because your hairdryer broke or you ran out of mascara. It doesn’t take all that long to become presentable, does it? Then again, I can get up, shower, dress, and be out the door in 15 minutes, so maybe I’m not a good data point.
Based on the circumstances here, I vote for unkempt. The reason being, yeah, maybe you woke up late and don’t have time for a shower, but one should be able to make oneself at least presentable in 5-10 minutes unless one has some serious hygiene issues like the few unfortunate people that have overwhelming BO without a fresh shower and clinical strength deoderant. Still, short hair can be brushed in a couple minutes, long hair can be brushed some, tied back, and finished later. Wash your face, put on some deoderant, swish some mouth wash, and make-up wearers can skip or if it’s THAT important can put on a bear minimum and finish later.
Also, doing government contracting, there’s a minimum expected appearance. If someone shows up looking like a slob, unless you have a really out of the way cubicle/office or just get lucky avoiding the people the higher ups, that will reflect bad on you AND the contract as a whole. Plus, you never know when an impromptu meeting might be made with important people present, and unless they are already really familiar with your work, your competence often will be judged on appearance.
So, it really seems to me that it’s look/smell like a slob or be 5-10 minutes late. If there really are major problems only you can handle that would be catastrophic if you were late, then you ought to have been getting calls to get you in as soon as possible, at which point being a bit sloppy might be expected. Otherwise, at least for the type of work I do, 10 minutes late, even 20-30 minutes late, doesn’t really matter, except for that rare occassion there’s an important early morning meeting, just make it up later. The only reason “late” matters to me is that every 10 minutes later I’m out the house adds 5-10 minutes to my commute, which means I leave 15-20 minutes later in the evening, which then adds a similar 10-20 minutes, so that 10 minutes late ends up stealing 20-30 minutes of my time and adds to stress.
All of that said, I do know there’s a lot of jobs out there that are very strict on punctuality, particularly the types of jobs where one clocks in. So, if you can clock in and run to the bathroom and clean up, I can understand why in that sort of situation punctuality would be more important.
It depends entirely on the person’s job functions. If they are customer/client facing then I want them to take the time to look nice, if it’s a warehouse job at shift change then get your butt to your workstation so Joe can go home.
I never cared what my employees looked like (when I had some) but then again I was not dealing with the public; more wholesale/production.
Pretty much this. It depends on the nature of your job, even on a schedule you might have for that particular day.
It’s situational for me. I am typically very flexible. Our standard working hours are 8-5, but some with a long commute have come early and left early to minimize time in traffic. One guy would not usually get in until after 9 but would leave strictly at 5 due to kids/daycare, but would log in for a couple of hours (or however long needed) after the little ones go to bed. I am good with all of this, for people I trust to do what it takes to meet the deliverables. But if we have a meeting that includes my boss (CFO) or CEO or the executives we support at 8:00, I want butts in seats and laptops fired up and ready to go in plenty of time to be prompt for the meeting. So on “no critical meeting” days, they can primp to their heart’s content and roll in late, but promptness is critical when we’ve got a key meeting. I trust people to manage their schedules as much as possible within certain business constraints, and that works very well in most cases with good employees.
Depends on the job but late is a relevant term, some can be late, some on their own time and be star employees others can be on time every time and be major slackers. Would rather have someone be there because they love what they do and I appreciate that and accept their time schedule as I know their heart is to be there for this purpose (job).
As a broad generalisation I’d say being at work - however bad you look - is better than not being there.
Many years ago I had a job that was computer support for a county 911 agency and most of the police and fire stations in the county. Funding for computer hardware was never a priority there so a large part of my job was being on-call and going to swap out broken computer terminals and printers for working ones. We had 15-year old equipment so the working terminals were “repaired” by virtue of using cannibalized parts. Which means even they didn’t work very well. I was called out a LOT, at all times of the day and night.
I made my own judgement call that if the police station wanted me to come fix their equipment asap in the middle of the night, they’d have to tolerate me looking somewhat less than professional. I would often be seen stomping around the station at 3am with no makeup, in sweat pants and barely combed hair, and barely more sociable than Angry Cat. Surprisingly nobody complained about my appearance, so I guess I made the right call. (During business hours I always looked proper.)
Depends on the job. And how unkempt vs late they are. If they are expecting someone to deal directly with important clients, a single 30-second encounter with an unkempt employee may cost the company a lot of money so being totally absent would be better. However, for someone who does manual labor or lurks in a cubicle, it’s better to be slightly unkempt than late. Showing up half-naked and covered with blood and vomit is probably worse than being late for the vast majority of jobs.
Agree. In my workplace I’d rather you be 15 - 20 minutes late if it means you don’t look like a slob. In a factory or something, just be on time.
We have a pretty casual dress code so as long as you’re clean and relatively tidy, I’d prefer you to be here on time, thank you very much.