Okay, here’s the story, i’m working for a small (3-man) local Mac reseller/service center, the staff consists of myself (Employee R), Employee N and Employee D…
our business hours are 10 AM-6:30 PM M-F, we’re a casual facility, very laid back, but one of my cow-orkers is abusing that casualness
One of my cow-orkers reliably comes in a half hour, to an hour late every day, and is known for taking 1.5-2.5 hour “lunch breaks”
Employee N and Employee R come in on time (if not a few minutes early) every day, and take working lunches most of the time, sometimes we take a half hour lunch, but never longer than an hour
Employee D has also been known to leave in the middle of the day to “get a haircut”, or go off to buy an updated version of his personal cell phone on company time, sometimes when he goes out to lunch, he comes back with alcohol on his breath…
now normally, this behavior is enough to get anyone fired, but this cow-orker is the boss’s freind, he got chewed out, once, for coming back from lunch drunk, but that was it
neither Employee N or myself want to bring the district manager in on this, as he’s a jerk, and prone to mood swings and has a short temper, the owner has his hands full trying to get us a better retail location, so we don’t want to bother him either
how should we confront cow-orker D with the problems we have with his work ethic (or lack thereof), we have no authority to punish, and he laughs off guilt-tripping
his excuses as to his tardiness and lack of work ethic…
“oh, i live an hour away, and have to deal with Massachusets traffic on 95N”
“this is just my fun job anyway”
(he used to work for a huge company as an advertising exec, but was downsized, he’s obviously not making near what he used to make, so he feels he doesn’t have to take this job as seriously as he should)
i feel that since he accepted the job, he should show up on time, just like everyone else and not abuse lunch breaks or taking off from work for personal stuff like buying a stupid cell phone (which he then plays with for the rest of the day)
it’s irrelavent that he’s making less than he used to, it’s not an excuse to slack off, he accepted the job knowing full well it paid less than the old one, he needs to treat it with the same level of respect and professionalism as his old job, if he didn’t like what this job involved, he didn’t have to take it
ironically, he’s the oldest one here, but has the least work ethic of the three of us, Co-worker N has much more work ethic, and he’s just out of college, if anyone was going to slack off, you’d think it’d be the young guy, right
so what’s the best diplomatic way to tell Employee D to get with the program?