Carl works in a small (15 man) department of a large corporation. Carl is paid hourly and punches a time clock at the beginning and end of every shift, as do all his co-workers.
Carl is not a good worker. In a typical 8-hour day he does maybe 2 hours of actual work. Some days even less. He also arrives late for work – usually 10-15 minutes or so - probably 2 or 3 times a week.
Carl also leaves early on occasion, with no notification of management and often with very little warning to his co-workers.
Now here is what’s going on. When Carl leaves early, he “forgets” to punch out. Come payroll time, the secretary who enters the work time notices that Carl has a missed a punch or two and asks Carl if he left at his normal time those days. Carl, of course, says yes (even though he had left work an hour or two early). So he gets a full day’s pay even though he left early.
All his immediate co-workers know this is happening, and has been going on for some time. Management is rarely present and certainly has no clue.
All co-workers complain about this to each other but are afraid to speak up; they fear retaliation from Carl. Virtually every other worker is a hard worker and puts in a full day’s labor.
The corporation has an ethics hotline designed to receive concerns of blatant or suspected ethical breaches via phone, email, fax, or USPS. The reporter may remain anonymous.
You are Carl’s co-worker. What, if any, action would you take?
I once reported someone for abusing over time, leave work at quitting time then coming back a few hours later and punching out. He lost his job over it. No drama over it, he apologized to the crew as he was being walked out. He knew he screwed up and accepted the result.
There is a part-time employee who reports to me who is even worse than Carl. This is an analytical lab, and he doesn’t do any testing, analysis, report writing, etc. - nothing. All he does is talk all day. Sometimes he gives technical “advice” on things, and his recommendations are completely wrong, because he no technical experience in what we do. And then he goes back to… talking, and playing on the computer. And did I mention he is the highest-paid person in our group based on $/hour?
This has been going on for five years. Last year I tried to get rid of him. I argued that his employment is wasteful & fraudulent.
I almost lost my job over it. I had to take “management training” classes as penance, and I doubt I’ll ever get a promotion. I am still licking my wounds and laying low.
I’m curious as to why. Was he the boss’ son or something?
We had the same kind of employee. He eventually got fired for time card fraud (took a while - HR had to document etc). Everyone else is still here, no recriminations.
There are so many stories of the whistleblower in situations like this getting burned that I probably wouldn’t do anything. If Carl’s performance affected me directly, I might say something in that case. But if Carl is just some random coworker cheating the company, I wouldn’t say anything.
Just a reminder that the whistle can be blown anonymously.
Also, you work with Carl in a fairly small group. His slacking does not directly create more work for you, but you are affected in the sense that group morale suffers from Carl’s shenanigans.
35-ish years ago, I had a coworker who would get overtime hours approved, then sit at her desk and read magazines or do her taxes or other non-work. Meanwhile, I was busting my butt on OT because the work had to be done and, frankly, at the time, I needed the extra money.
I went to the boss and said “Would you want to know if someone was abusing OT?” and he said yes. I told him what was going on - he said he’d suspected as much. Coworker no longer got OT and I heard nothing else about it.
I’ve been lucky enough to have bosses who trusted me. It probably helps that I have a pretty strong work ethic and I’m willing to take on extra stuff when necessary.
So I’d likely make use of the anonymous means of report unless I felt I had a good enough relationship with the boss-folk.
I wouldn’t do anything. Besides the fact that lifting a finger requires precious energy, I wouldn’t feel comfortable making such a report without solid evidence, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable setting up the sort of recording equipment that could collect such evidence for hopefully obvious reasons.
I’m also curious about retaliation from Carl. All the other people could confront him together.
I also don’t see how other people’s work is not affected. If he has specific tasks to do, it should be obvious that he is falling behind. If he is so brilliant that he can do a day’s work in 4 hours, that’s something else.
Unless the boss is a real jerk, you might go together to see him or her and say that they might want to check up on Carl every so often. Word to the wise.
I’m not sure this really counts as whistle blowing, which involved malfeasance by those in authority. So I don’t think the hotline might be the right way to handle this.
We hired the son/stepson of a prominent local physician and PA-C as a pharmacy technician at my local hospital. Our department management didn’t want to, but they were basically given no choice so we reluctantly welcomed him aboard. It was obvious from day one that he wanted the job so he could get drugs, and another technician, a long-term one no less, went to her boss and said, “This guy’s coming to work wasted.” You guessed it - she was written up for being disrespectful to her co-workers! :smack: Eventually, he was fired (and arrested) for stealing drugs; it’s a doozy of a story but any further details would violate his confidentiality. I found his LinkedIn page a while back, and it didn’t look like he’d had a job since, about a decade later, despite somehow graduating from college.
One of our pharmacists lived down the street from them, and said there was a lot of in-and-out traffic around their house; if he and his brother were selling drugs out of that house, not only could it get them in trouble, but their mom and stepdad could have lost their licenses. (When their parents divorced, the dad initially got custody, but in their late teens, they moved in with their mother because she didn’t make or enforce rules. Sound familiar?)
As for intimidation, “Carl” might belong to a protected class, or he’s one of those people who is immune from disciplinary action for reasons other co-workers can’t figure out. It seems that every employer has one of those.
Don’t you have performance review in your place?
But that wouldn’t be the answer. Getting in his face is the answer. Assign him stuff to do with deadlines. Give feedback. Document everything (as important for bosses as for employees.) Make it so it is easier for him to work than slack off. Start nice, but escalate. And be ready to back it up if he complains.
It sounds like management training classes were necessary - but I’m not sure you got anything out of them.
Co-workers get to complain about people because they can’t do anything about it. Managers don’t get to complain, managers get to manage. Why aren’t you managing?
He has few tasks that are specific to him. The majority of the tasks belong to the group and are tackled by whomever “picks up the ball”.
The boss is actually pretty cool but is overloaded with responsibilities. It would be very difficult to check up on Carl regularly. Most days he is not even in the same building.
I think it does, at least based in Wikipedia’s description: