Yes, but he is often out of the office at meetings
I stand by what I said earlier; I think it should be reported to the anonymous ethics hotline. If your supervisor had made some kind of legitimate arrangement to take many days off and work (what appears to be) shorter hours, people would know about it already. This kind of arrangement isn’t usually a secret; people always talk.
If she was staring out the office window and noticed an employee next door always left at 2 and decided she needed to report him, that’s being a Buttinski. But this is someone who effects her job directly. Of course it makes it her business since it effects her work. If it were a coworker of equal level I would say that the first step would be to ask the person politely what is going on but since it’s a supervisor, that would not be possible so you go to HR (anonymously). That’s what HR is for!
If it’s an innocent situation so be it but it’s crazy to say you would fire the person who is picking up the slack for someone else for “tattling”.
My experience has mainly been at companies where “salaried” is code for “you have to work 40 hours”. I think there are companies out there where “salaried” really means “get your work done - if you finish it all Tuesday afternoon, good for you, enjoy the rest of the week!”. Is it possible that your company is one of the second? Is your supervisor missing deadlines or causing you to miss deadlines or produce work below the acceptable quality standard due to their unavailability? If the supe is salaried, “salaried” means “get your work done, however many or few hours it takes”, and work is getting done on-time and to the applicable minimal quality standard, then there really is no problem - you could figure out how you could cut your hours too by learning to work smarter or more efficiently. Maybe take a subject matter class to reduce the amount of time you have to spend looking stuff up? Take a typing class so you can type reports faster? Write software to automate some of your work tasks?
That makes it easy then. How about this instead? Send an e-mail to your supervisor and possibly cc his manager. Simply say,
"Hi Supervisor,
Can you let our team know the correct procedure for obtaining sign-offs when you are out of the office or unavailable? Much of our work is time sensitive work and we wouldn’t want to miss any deadlines if the signoff gets delayed. Please let us know the correct escalation procedure if the people that normally do the signoffs are not available.
Thanks,
Birdlegs".
Do you see the difference? It is way more professional, constructive for both of you, and doesn’t even require any binoculars or wacky hijinx.
A workplace that requires an “ethics hotline” has more problems than a boss playing hooky.
Shouldn’t the employees report it anyway and let the agency investigate? Otherwise, if people just assume nothing’s up, nobody will ever be reported.
It is possible that companies like that exist, but I have yet to see one. In my experience, “salaried” means “we will get as much work as possible out of you and not pay one cent more whether you work 40 hours or 60.”
Well, there is that, too.
I guess my question would be- does this largesse extend to the rest of her team, or is it just reserved for her, and you only get 2 weeks and have to work 8+ hours a day?
I say that because I’ve had bosses like that, but there wasn’t any expectation that we weren’t to do the same if we got our jobs done as well.
Now if it’s a problem and it’s a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do situation, and it’s escalating, I suspect it’ll take care of itself before much longer; there’s only so much slacking and not being around that a person can reasonably get away with.
Plus, you don’t know what’s going on with her; it could well be something like a sick relative and some kind of child-care issue that’s requiring her to be out of the office so much, and upper management may well know, and not care so long as the job gets done.
[QUOTE=Birdlegs]
Yes, but he is often out of the office at meetings
[/QUOTE]
Can you get authorization to sign it yourself “by dir”?
+1. Constructive for your real issue (and even if it’s not constructive at least partially covers your personal ass when the boss or supervisor starts complaining about late deliverables-- it shows you tried to do something about it)
And if that doesn’t resolve it - its time for that skip level.
But again, try really hard not to seem like a busybody - what you want to seem like you care about is doing your job and making sure you can do your job - not whether the situation with your boss is “not fair!” If the result of this path is that your boss gets talked to, or has her ass walked out the door, well…
(And it is possible that there is something going on that you don’t know about. My husband missed a LOT of work a year or so ago when his brother was dying of cancer - there were doctors appointments and chemo - and just spending time with his brother - and then grieving and days when “fuck it, I’m staying home today because I’m an emotional basketcase.” My sister had a very long rope during her struggles with alcoholism - eventually she ran out of rope, but her boss (who happened to own the company) let her have as much rope as he could give her - he valued her and her health - five years later, he flew across the country to go to her wedding. I would hope that if such were the case with your boss that you would want to be supportive - because chances are everyone is going to have times when they need more flexibility in a job.)