Professional jobs generally don’t if you familiar with these types of occupations. Tattle-tailing is not in good character for first graders let alone grown people. When I was in elementary school, tattle-tailing was considered a high offense. If you tattle-tailed on someone, you got the same punishment that they would have gotten if you had not tattle-tailed. Not everything that was reported was tattle-tailing of course but most of it was and kids learned quickly that we couldn’t whine to the teacher anytime we felt like it or we would end up standing in a corner.
I co-manage a group of 10 domestic employees and 40 developers in India. If I received a direct complaint from one of our Indian developers about a coworker, it would not go over well. They have an on-site manager who I manage and it would not be appreciated. I would work with the complaint but also pursue charges for a hostile employee situation against the person that made the complaint. I work for a mega-corp and I doubt that I could get them fired directly but I would work hard to make sure they could never do that again.
aside from working 5 less hours per week, is she doing a good job? I’d rather have a good worker skip out for 5 hours a week than some slacker who steals all 40 hours per week.
If she’s a bad worker, you may want to start with that.
I have a similar problem with a colleague at the moment. She’s forever leaving early, coming in late, and taking lots of sick days off, and I’m sure that she’s not logging them as sick days with HR. I believe this because all the time off she’s taken this year would certainly have run out of sick days (15 a year) by now. There’s only 3 of us in the office and the boss is seldom there, which leaves me constantly picking up the slack and doing overtime to compensate.
The woman is a thief. If she’ll claim hours she didn’t work for her own benefit, she’ll steal other stuff too. Turn her in, let her learn now that pulling this kind of crap is not professional behavior. She knows damn well that she’s stealing…when the OP caught her putting down the wrong hours, she said that she’d have to find the white-out.
That’s a much different situation. The OP isn’t debating whether he should go to the owner of the bank…he could go to someone in a comparable position to the on-site manager that you manage in your corporation. No one is suggesting by “let someone know” that FloatyGimpy let the top person know. Just someone whose job it is to make sure that CSPs do their jobs and that the department stays within budget.
Well, that’s two people in this thread now saying, “Nobody likes a tattletail,” as if it’s true. It’s not true. Some of us do like tattletails.
If your employee is stealing from you, you’d rather not know than have someone else point it out to you? You don’t see anything wrong with that way of thinking?
Personally, I’d confront her myself and shame her into confessing. But I’m old and crusty now.
I’m disturbed by the several questions about whether or not you like the coworker. People will let their friends steal, but not people they’re indifferent towards?
By committing timecard fraud, she’s taking money out of your pocket and possibly putting the company at risk of big penalties. She is lowering your overall productivity and that will show up as less money that is available for your future raises. And another thing. Why would you subject yourself to having to work with someone you think is untrustworthy? It’ll make your days suck, and you don’t deserve to have to work in that environment.
I work in a large company, and for reasons that aren’t made explicit, our yearly ethics class has morphed into at least five classes this year, and I know for damn sure that one of my job duties (as an engineer with no line-management duties) is to report incidents where I suspect that someone is doing something wrong. We’re informally told that the “third rail” offenses are timecard fraud, sexual harrassment and security violations, primarily because the company can assume a huge liability if these are allowed to happen.
OTOH, no good deed goes unpunished. In my experience, when I’ve brought issues to the light of management, I’ve generally become popular in a way I don’t want to be popular.
I advocate that you report anonymously that you think there might be some irregularities in the way some people are filling out their timecards, but since you don’t know all the facts, you want to remain anonymous. There might be something you don’t know about the situation, so I don’t advocate saying, “XX is lying on her time card” or even “Someone is lying on their timecard.” Pulling something out of thin air, maybe she’s taking some sort of class on the outside and has been told she can charge an hour a day for it. Just say that something seems odd in the way someone is filling out their timecards.
I really think an important perspective is: what are your thresholds? You need to be able to respect yourself and your choices, or you’ll be miserable.
I am. I have one. You’re wrong–generally speaking, of course. Doubtless there are companies out there with the attitude you espouse, but I assure you, they’re in the minority; most responsible companies like to know when their bottom line is being fucked with.
As I sighed in relief… Another person that uses up company time spying and then running to the powers that be…gone.
YIPPIE.
Believe me, I have had far too many of those types over the last 15 years. The time and effort to get rid of them for causing bad morale over what they think is unfair is draining on everyone that works with them. Unfortunately, you can’t fire someone for being a little annoying tattle tale. Having them leave on their own steam! It must be my birthday.
Meh, they make $13/hr. Reporting her generates way more than $13/hr worth of unneccessary work.
I’m with **Shagnasty ** on the “Gladys Kravitz” thing. I’ve worked with that person. That person is a pain in the ass, to both their peers and their managers. Nobody wants to deal with that person. Don’t be that person!
And “*but it’s not faaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!” * is not a valid argument. Life isn’t fair. Stop worrying about what other people are doing, and focus on improving your own lot. I’m especially impressed with the people who advocate reporting her anonymously. Wow, petty, spiteful, *and * cowardly. Your moms must be proud.
There is a pile of paperwork that I have to fill out and sign off on every year. Including confidentiality, conflict of interest, and ethics. One line item on the ethics sheet is that I haven’t engaged in illegal or unethical behaviour regarding the company. The very next is that I’m not aware that any co-worker has. If it came out later that I was aware, that would be grounds for my dismissal as well. And as groo so eloquently put it, payroll fraud is a third-rail offense, nothing informal about it, it’s in black and white.
There is even a mechanism in place for anonymous reporting of concerns so these are issues that we take very seriously.
I’d say an anonymous note or email to HR would be the best course.
And what would you have us do, when we have evidence in this very thread of managers who would take revenge on us for saving them money? Your “it’s not faiiir” ridicule is the sort of thinking pressed upon us by those who wish to profit by engaging in dishonesty. While I’m working on improving my own lot, why can’t I work on improving that of the company I work for?
What if this person were stealing from other coworkers? Would it be okay then? But it’s just peachy when it’s the bossman! Maybe you’d like to suggest that the OP push his hours up, too?
My mother raised me to uphold certain values, which include honesty. Would your mother be okay with such a laissez-faire attitude toward actively destructive behavior? Perhaps she was some sort of anarchist, but mine was not. By standing back and doing nothing I am complicit in the coworker’s thievery and, as QED pointed out, almost certainly breaking the rules myself.
For the curious, assuming 5 extra hours per week, she’s stealing $65 per week, $281.67 per month, and $3380 per year.
Or, to put it in terms that Foxy40 might appreciate (re: the thread Yeticus Rex linked about the employees over-RSVPing), it’d be like adding 3.5 extra guests to the party RSVP every single month (or a whopping 42 extra guests once a year).
I find it bizarre that people seem to consider this not a big deal. To the company, payroll fraud is the same as theft. To all the people claiming that this is an MYOB/tattle-tale-type issue, would you feel the same way if this was about an employee sneaking $200 out of petty cash every month?
I’ve worked in offices for 14 years now - I know very well what kind of behaviour is “tattle-tale” behaviour, and what kind of behaviour is “tell your manager because he needs/wants to know” behaviour.
It takes no time at all to find out things other employees are doing that aren’t kosher - like Dellie’s example upthread, a co-worker who comes in late and leaves early frequently is easily noticed. Hearing your co-worker who sits five feet away from you making personal calls for hours every day takes no time away from your work. I’m sure our OP discovered the timesheet fraud just by happening to see the timesheet, not because she was spending hours of her day snooping on other employees.
Floaty, if your bank takes timesheet fraud seriously enough to fire someone over, they would like to know about it. Don’t worry about getting her fired; she is getting her fired, not you.
And for the record, my mom is very proud of me. ::snaps a zed::
What you really need to do is look at this from your own personal viewpoint. What, exactly do you have to gain / lose by doing this? This needs to be thoroughly analyzed and in the end you should only do what is best for YOU. Forget about your company, in the end it’s all business and that’s how you should approach things in your workplace. In the end it’s all about you.
Possibly bad things that happen from you telling:
Get a rep as a tattle-tale
Run into her later in life in a difficult position
She isn’t fired and you have to live with her thinking you’re a snitch.
Possible good things:
Get a reward? (not likely)
If you don’t tell at all you have nothing to lose at all. I see telling as something with very few benefits to yourself. The only possible benefit you can get is the smug satisfaction of doing something “right” which isn’t even clear either. She’s ripping off the company, but who’s to say it isn’t fair? After all, every corporation is paying you as little as they possibly can. It obviously depends on the people you’re working for. I imagine in canada the situation might be better. But if someone were cheating on their time-sheets for a corporation like Wal-Mart, i’d almost call it justified.
From your perspective it’s clear you have nothing to gain and a few things to lose. The only thing that might make you want to re-examine this is “morality” but employers and corporations rarely act in a “moral” way, so why should you return the favor?
Hmm. So, we should only bring illegal activities in the workplace to the attention of a supervisor when it benefits us? We shouldn’t “rat out” a coworker who’s padding her paycheck, because we’ll get a reputation as a snitch? Come on, folks, we can’t look at every situation through a “what do I have to lose/gain” filter, and ignore the rest of the world. IMO, the pervasiveness of that mentality is why society is going to hell.
I am in the IT field. My mid-sized corporation prints a “Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct” booklet, which I am required to keep in my workplace. It lists, among other things, proper (accurate) timekeeping.
In the back of the booklet, the last page reads:
Anyway, my company uses the time cards to bill the customer. If the customer found too many “errors”, my company could conceivably lose the contract, and we all suffer.
Professional occupations can indeed want snitches.
I find that surprising. I would encourage employee feedback, just to insure that the on site manager is handling things properly. (Maybe the manager is engaged in favoritism, or making freudulent timecards themselves, or engaged in sexual harassment activities, and so on.)
If it turns out that the junior employees claims are baseless, than you can address that individual employee (for example, why is that specific employee not working well with so-and-so? Can or should we do anything?).
Yeah, I’m going to unsubscribe to this thread before my head explodes.
In my husband’s last job, he had evidence (as in, the tape from the security camera) that a coworker stole a computer monitor. It wasn’t his personal property, though, so he probably shouldn’t have said anything.