I just fired someone who was chronically late.
(Don’t worry–there were lots of other, and more serious, issues.) My first day on the job, I asked that all the keys to the office be accounted for (one of her duties was to open and close the office.) She said she liked to have several spare sets floating around so she could call up her co-workers (i.e. subordinates) and ask them to open up for her in case she got delayed.
“If you’re late,” I told her, “you can call me up. I’ll have the other set of keys.”
“What if I can’t reach you?”
“You’ll be able to reach me on either my cell phone, my office phone [which is in a different building from the office she needs to open], my home phone or my email.”
“Well, sometimes I get delayed in traffic and I can’t call.”
“In those cases,” I responded, “you won’t be able to call anyone else to open up for either, will you?”
“Well, sometimes I know I’m going to be late for some reason, and there are days you’ll be out of town.” [which is true–sometimes I’m not in town.]
“I’ll notify you whom you can call, who I’m leaving the keys with.”
“But-but-but–”
what she wanted, and what I wouldn’t give her, was a way for her to be chronically late and bully her subordinates into being on time for her. This got us off to a terrible footing, resulting in her losing her well-paid and fairly easy job (for which she was in no way qualified, btw). It amazes me that a person woulod rather give up such a job rather than simply be on time for it.
Somewhere (perhaps as part of the discussion above) we had the following exchange: “Sometimes, it’s unavoidable that I’m late–I get delayed leaving the house, or I get a phone call as I’m walking out the door, or I hit traffic…”
“I see. And how often does this occur?”
LOOOOOOONG pause. “Once a month, maybe.”
“Once a month it’s acceptable to be late by ten or fifteen minutes.”
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONGER pause.
“Sometimes this happens more often than once in a given month.”
“That could be a problem.”