And not everyone can call, even if they know they’re late. When I was in college, and worked at KrapMart, once the car broke down at the side of the road. At the time, neither my mother nor I had a cell phone, so I wasn’t able to call until I got home, after the tow truck arrived. At the time, I was only working a four hour shift, so it would have been an hour before my shift was over by the time I managed to get cleaned up enough to go. I called two hours late into my shift, almost. According to you, I should have been fired, for that one time thing?
Accidents happen-I highly doubt it’s advisable to fire every time they do.
Hmm - okay, not fired for being two hours late without calling once, but if there wasn’t a good reason (like sickness or car broke down), I’d definitely make it an official reprimand. The thing about being an adult and having shifts that start at a certain time is that it is up to YOU, the employee, to either make it to your shift on time or have some way of letting your employer know if you can’t make it. I’m old school that way.
If your car kept breaking down and you kept missing shifts over it, I’d fire you for that, too. An employer needs employees that he can count on to work their shifts.
I called in a couple hours late to my college job once and got suspended for two days. This is a job with other students as coworkers and supervisors, so we’re all sort of in the same boat as far as studying/work/sleep goes, and I was in an assistant supervisory position, and it didn’t really hurt them at all (when I called, they said they didn’t need me to come in since they were pretty much done for the night – an hour or two early) but the rules are the rules.
As it turns out, it didn’t bother me all that much either, since I’d asked for and been declined those days off earlier in the month. So it was sort of a win-win.
If they were going to worry about you, the best time would be the first 24 hours.
There’s a lot of talk about missing people and how the first few hours are critical, so I don’t thing they went too far.
I doubt next time you will be so lucky.
Just last month I was locked in a basement garage overnight and had to wait for the place to reopen. No phone service down there, but fortunately there were restrooms.
Not sure if the sheriff would have found me, but I had plenty of time to wonder.
Ya know, I am very complimented by this situation, just kind of freaked out. At no point have I really been upset over it, just find it bizarre that the VM wasn’t checked before the cops were called.
featherlou , I brought a book to read. The DMV is notoriously slow and I had a couple hours before my shift to get this done. I had just had to be there with my husband 12 days prior and we were in and out in less than 15 minutes, but I know how it can be. I don’t know how you are, but when I get involved in a good book, I could literally read a 500 page book without noticing how long I’d been reading so long as no one interrupted me. And that is precisely what happened. When I finished the book, I realised how late I must be and immediately asked a total stranger for use of his cell phone. Believe it or not, while I may be a completely thoughtless and hostile person, I actually have a great work ethic. To which point, I have to say that I would have at the very least written me up over the situation.
My point in this post, I suppose, was to find out if my company is just beyond the pale in the touchy-feely category. Or if it is just me. Whatever. I appreciate all the feedback, though.
Oddly enough, the same exact thing happened to me. I skipped work to get my license renewed. Except for some reason everyone thought I was going to represent the company at this campus job fair we had signed up for. Well, apparently when I didn’t respond to the dozen or so voicemails and emails on my Blackberry (which I left at home), everyone thought something terrible must have happened.
They didn’t call the police, but when I showed up at noon everyone was all like “thank God your okay!” Well, I just played along since it seemed the easiest thing to do.