I’ve been at my current job for 17 months and they’ve done some things that just doesn’t seem kosher to me. For example, I started in July 2009 and in September, October and November I was hospitalized on 3 separate occassions. I provided my work with all hospital and doctor documentation. Unfortunately, I had to miss 3 other days during my first 7 months and had 1 day of pre-approved leave right after I started. In January I was written up for my attendance and both the pre-approved day as well as my hospital stays were included as unexcused. This write up, I might add, was a final warning stating that any unscheduled miss time in the next 90 days will result in immediate termination. This was my first disciplinary regarding attendance! I had not missed any unscheduled time until June (1 day). I was then out 3 more occassions due to my children being ill. On the 4th day, I contacted my boss in the evening asking if it would be okay to take the next day off due to son puking everywhere and offered to work from home. She was not okay with me working from home but said it would be okay to take the day since I had leave available. When I returned to work the day after my leave I was presented with another final warning regarding my attendance. I argued that she approved my leave, how can I be written up?! She said her boss had a problem with me taking the day - I might be crazy, but shouldn’t she get a disciplanry from her boss if she made the wrong decision? Anyway, since then my boss has been giving me a hard time about my arrival time. In July, my schedule was moved to 7am to 4pm. I ran late last week and because of that she is now requiring I send her an email when I arrive. I was 13 minutes later yesterday and she required that I either make up the time during my lunch or stay late. Now, none of this would be an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that for the past 16 months this has not been a problem. She acknowledged that I was a great worker and and doesn’t mind if I run a few minutes late. As a matter of fact, she even said that she’s never on time and can’t really give me to hard of a time about it. My performance has not deteriorated nor does my arrival time impact her work load. I’m just so frustrated because I feel as though she’s picking on me. The company policy regarding tardy is: arrival within 5 minutes of start time is not late, anything after is. Policy wise, I know I don’t have a leg to stand on - however, it just doesn’t seem right that all of sudden I’m being given a hard time about this. Okay, maybe I just needed to vent, but it’s just so stressful!!! I used to love my job and now all I can think about is what am I going to catch shit for today??? I really can’t wait to find a new job, which I am actively looking for. I just pisses that she’s pushing me right out the door? She’s not the most experienced manager especially with her people skills, but seriously, you have to know your killing my morale. It really comes across as though she’s trying to get brownie points with her boss at my expense. I mean, seriously, WTH???
Probably legal, workers have few safety nets.
The whole things sounds a bit slimy. Sounds like they spend a lot of energy on stuff that shouldn’t matter in the big picture. Also the org chart sounds like it needs to be revisited.
But then maybe they feel like they have to be this way because of (others’) abuses in the past?
I think you answered your own question.
Severe lack of communication somewhere. I had to take a day off but I was not sick so I put it down as a personal day. Everywhere I have worked it is simply a different code on the payroll for but at my new job, a personal day needs prior approval so I got a “Don’t do it again.” warning.
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You have to look at a few things here.
First of all your company sounds a mess, which is like 95% of all other places 
You can be written up for unacceptable attendence even though your absences are excused. That just means the company KNEW about it in advance. There are some jobs where attending daily is paramount to the job. Excused does not mean “overlooked,” it means you went within company guidelines and followed the absentee policy.
For example I had a reservationist Mary, who wanted to work the first shift. This started at 6:30am. She was always late. I told her, if you want to keep this shift you need to always be on time. OK I understand that doesn’t mean never, ever, ever being late, but she was late 4 out of 5 times constantly.
I explained, when other shifts are late, other people are in the office to cover. We help each other that way, but no one is in the office till 9am except for that shift, and the hotel business depends on you answering the phone at 6:30am. You HAVE to be in that seat and ready to go. There’s no one to route the calls to.
Now this hotel had shift choice by seniority. But I wrote her up for this, approved tardy and not approved. Why? Because this way I had enough back up to require her to move to the 9am, 10am or noon shift. I liked Mary, and she was great except for getting to work at 6:30am.
It’s H/R that makes policy and it’s the managers that enforce it. It doesn’t matter if your boss fails to follow policy you suffer for it. In your case your boss said something was OK and it sounds like it wasn’t OK with H/R or company policy. So it doesn’t matter if the boss OK’d it. It’s like if your boss said “It’s OK to use the petty cash to pay your Visa bill, as long as you put it back before anyone knows.”
You’d still be written up if you got caught doing it. You’re boss would probably be written up for telling you, but regardless of what your boss says, you have to follow the company line.
It doesn’t sound like you punch a clock but it’s perfectly acceptable for an employer to have you time stamp your arrival and departure times and it certainly is acceptable you make up missed time.
It’s sounds like they are trying to make you miserable enough to quit so they don’t have to pay unemployment or if they fire you.
Now is this a law violation? Possibly it could be “creating a hostile working environment,” but it’s very hard to prove that, and you’d have to go to court and when you say things like “I was late,” the judge is gonna hear that before anything else.
The thing is, are these company policies just applying to you? Does everyone have to send an email to their boss with their arrival and depart times? If not, you may have a case to go to H/R and complain. Of course that could backfire in that H/R may have non-punch people start punching to prove a start and end time. This isn’t going to make you popular amongst people who would now be foreced to do this.
It sounds like you had some bad luck, but unfortunately companies don’t care about your health or personal issues, they have to answer to their stockholders.
Whether or not your performance has suffered is not at issue, you don’t judge your work, your boss does, so it’s unfair but that is how it is.
It’s good your smart enough to realize to start looking for another job,
Since this is about a specific legal issue, and the OP is seeking advice, it is better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Thanks, everyone, for your insight Just hearing that I’m not the only one who thinks this is just crap is awesome! Again, the part that burns my ass the most is the sudden flip from everything being copacetic to micromanaging. I know I can’t work like that, and I’ve had to accept this place is just no longer a good fit. Thanks, again, to those who took time to respond. My sanity thanks you 
Just coming at this from the employer’s perspective: is it possible that you’re being clamped down on because the feeling is that you’ve abused the lax environment?
Being late occasionally happens, but if you’re doing that more than occasionally, plus missing a lot of time (even for excused reasons), it can come across very poorly. Clearly the employer thinks that your attendance is becoming a significant problem and that’s why they’re tightening the leash.
Believe me, I have heard the “my children are sick” excuse a thousand times, and it’s true a very small portion of that time. Note that I don’t disbelieve you, but unfortunately there are a lot of liars out there and it’s a simple excuse to make that sounds better than “I’m super hung over”, “I spent my gas money on cigarettes”, etc. You’re a relatively new employee in the grand scheme of things, so they don’t have experience of a time when you’ve been more reliable. They assume that this is the way that you operate, and that it’s not acceptable to them.
From my perspective, it does sound like attendance issues are going on in your case. You were given a written warning for attendance, but you continue to be late routinely (at least, I presume so when you say you were “running late last week”, that it is a usual occurrence).
Being hospitalized three times in a short period really sucks, but it does still hurt the office when you’re gone. Doing that, and missing a bunch of other time, and being habitually late all add up to being gone quite a lot - especially when you’re grousing about not getting paid for when you’re not there.
Put it this way: if your employer had lots of emergencies and problems that caused you to have to work late and on your days off a bunch of time, you’d probably be tolerant for awhile. After awhile, you’d see it didn’t seem to be just critical stuff, but was routine practice. If on top of that you weren’t getting paid… would you be happy?
Non-sympathetic perspective: You’ve missed a number of days, and they tolerated it for some time, but now now you’re starting to come in late which means (to them) things are getting worse. They don’t want to tolerate poor attendance habits any more. You can solve the problem by not being late.
OP, you sound like terrible employee. It doesn’t matter how well you do your job if you aren’t reliably there. You are on extremely thin ice regarding attendance, so you come in late? Instead of looking at whether what your company is doing is legal, I’d be spending more time getting a good support system in place so that your attendance becomes exemplary.
What you’re “catching shit for” is not showing up for work or showing up late. Show up on time and you won’t catch shit. Pretty simple.
Look for a new job if you want, but they’re going to expect you to show up on time too.
QFT unfortunately
If you’re in the U.S. the short answer is: Yes! You’re in an at-will situation as far as I can tell, and that means that you can be fired for pretty much any reason. As long as you’re not being threatened with physical harm, or being sexually harassed, or being discriminated against for being in a protected class, you don’t have a leg to stand on. The best you can do is find another job that is more compatible with your schedule. That’s the good part about at-will employment: you can quit when you want.
“Hostile work environment” does not mean what you think it means. It does not mean that they are mean to you, or even that you are singled out for them to be mean to you. It means that they are mean to you because of your membership in a protected class (e.g., sex, race, age over 40). Even if they were actually being mean to you because of your race or sex, you’d have a hell of a time proving it when they can simply point to your attendance record. Clean up your act and/or look for another job.
Since FMLA doesn’t kick in until after a year of employment, frankly you’re lucky they didn’t kick you out on your keyster for your 3 hospital stays in the first 4 months.
Stop being late to work.
Wow, I’m glad I don’t work for you. I can’t imagine how you can rationalize your thinking.
I’m not sure if I’m following your story. Also, I’ve mostly worked in consulting firms where no one really cares about what you do or where you do it so long as you bill enough time. My directors frequently asked me “are you in the office tomorrow?” Um…ueah. It’s a work day, isn’t it?
When I did a couple of brief stints in corporate America, it does seem like they are a bit more into “attendence”. Then again, one place had flex time and the other didn’t seem to give a shit.
Anyhow I digress. Typically, corporate policy at most companies is that you have a certain number of sick, vacation or PTO days. If you can’t come to work for some reason or another, you call up your manager and let them know as soon as possible. You then have used one of your sick, vacation or PTO days.
Speaking as a manager, it actually pisses me off when an employee decides simply to not show up (assuming the company doesn’t have a work from home policy). Because then I’m put in the awkward position of explaining to some asshole VP that I have no idea where you are.
Now, if you have called in sick or have approved vacation time or whatever and are still catching shit, you need to send a message to HR and explain the situation. That is what they are there for, especially at larger companies.
Still, we managers do get pissed off by lots of random last minute sick days and “doctors appointments”.
I actually had one of my staff ask if she could “just go home” because she “just couldn’t work anymore today”. I’m like “can you at least do me the courtesy of faking an illness or something?”
I only got about 1/4 way down that OP and decided I would have fired you long ago if you worked for me.
Yeah - it sucks that you ended up in the hospital, but being late when you knew damned well you were on thin ice?