Do what George did. Just leave your car parked at work and have your friend take to the carwash every now and again during business hours.
When your superiors come in they’ll think, “Gee, Johnson in Accounting sure gets in early.” When they leave, it will be, “Johnson’s still here? Let’s give that man a raise!”
It depends. I knew of one person who got major kudos because he was always there BEFORE anybody else, including the boss, showed up. When boss man arrived, there he was, coding busily away.
In another case (same company) a slick young thing made a big deal of working late. She worked so late she had to send out for supper, and then was so tired she came in late the next morning. Moaning about how exhausted she was from such long hours. In reality, she showed up at ten, bs’ed for a while, worked a little, had lunch, worked a couple more hours, spent another hour or so having supper, worked another hour or two after that. Lather, rinse, repeat. In reality, she worked LESS than most other people, and the other workers knew it. Completely fooled the boss man, though.
IMHO, arriving early shows initiative and being ready to go. Working late means you couldn’t get your work done on time. But that’s just me.
I think it would depend on your boss’s preference (and, frankly, hangups). My last boss was a big one on staying late. If someone left before 6:00, he’d give them a big old scowl as if they were cutting out early. My current boss is an early bird and if I’m not in before her, she makes sure to leave me emails and voicemails with a thousand silly questions that seem to serve no purpose other than to let me know she was in before I was.
I agree with MLS, so it’s not just you. I also happen to be the boss/owner of my own small (12 employees incl. 8 F/T and 4 P/T) business. The folks I see burning the midnight oil on a regular basis (I’m not talking about working on a big project/new account, etc.) are the ones who were too busy with their personal agendas during the day to attend to our business agendas, FWIW.
It’s commonly accepted around here that no one gets any credit for coming in early, only for staying late.
We know it’s irrational, but people still feel guilty sneaking out the door at 4:30pm, even if they’ve been in the office since 7:00am. Perhaps because you have to say, “Bye everyone!” as you leave, creating some kind of resentment in the people still slaving away at their desks.
Yes it’s silly, but early birds get no credit. After all, if you’re the first in the office, who but yourself knows for how long you’ve been working before the others arrive?
Of course, the truly logical criterion would be how much work you got done, and of what quality, rather than the number of hours you spent doing it. In my observation, much of the work that gets done in the hours after the 6th or 7th hour has to be fixed later. If it’s physical rather than mental work, I’d be surprised if more accidents and injuries didn’t happen at the end of a long shift.
I recall once when I stayed really late, trying one thing after another to solve a problem. After a good night’s sleep, I saw that what I thought was the solution was, in fact, completely wrong, and I found a better way of doing it in about a half hour.
I think it partly depends on your internal clock. For instance, my brain just doesn’t function before 8:00. I make a big effort to get in by 7:30 most days, but then I end up shuffling papers, making tea, and staring at my monitor for half an hour, whereas if I show up at 8:00, I’m ready to start working right away. If you have performance measures to turn in, they’ll shine best when you’re working most efficiently.
A lot depends on the corporate (or company) culture.
In my first professional position, I found that I could move a lot of stuff along if I came in about an hour before the coffee klatsch arrived. And I stayed late, because I found it easier to continue with something at the moment as opposed to reacquainting myself with it again the next day. And, although I didn’t have to, I regularly put in the Saturday time, and thus became a little more familiar with the few boss-faces that did Saturdays as well.
Thus I did work a lot at that job, and the Big Boss (private company) came to know of my long hours, and appreciated it. I survived all the lay-offs, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
So I quit and formed my own company. While I was never entirely happy with my partner’s dedication of time to the effort (which lasted many years), and I spent untold hours at it (including many a 3:00 AM Sunday at the office), I alwys encouraged our employees to bugger out at quitting time. And if they habitually ran late in the AM, that probably stuck in my mind a bit, but if they had a reason and were getting their tasks accomplished, that was OK.
I now work for a company whose chieftans don’t want it to be a salt mine. The big bosses like regular hours, and you won’t earn anything but enmity for stretching the hours. When they hired me, I was used to working until 7 or 8 at night. I didn’t really know what to do with myself when they threw me out of the office at 4:30. Our District Manager has declared the first 30 minutes of the day to be Coffee Time. And we’re a very successful company.
Besides, if you’re busy working before the others arrive at 9am, their MOST charitable assumption will be that you’ve only been in the office since 7am or so. Working late, it’s more difficult to assume an upper boundary: people leaving at 5 may well assume you’ll be working for much more than 2 hours after they’ve gone.
based on past experiences, generally, the credit goes to those who work late. Pretty irrationale. If you’re not an early bird, you never notice who is early on a consistent basis. First guy out the door gets noticed…
Early in, early out. If I could. I’m up at 4:30, start work at 7:30, out at 4:30. I’d like to cut my lunch hour and start earlier, but no dice. If you get out early, you can tend to all the other stuff in your life that closes at 5:00.
Yeah, I do feel weird leaving earlier than a lot of people, but I do get my work done. Plus we’re lucky to have a company (our dept specifically) that doesn’t expect you to work more than 40 hours/week, and won’t let you work more than 50 hrs/week.
I have noticed though that people like to talk about how late so-and-so stayed last night, but they don’t realized they got here a little before 10:00. Oh well. Don’t think they talk about me getting here at 7:00…
When are the supervisors most visible? Where I work, they all tend to be in meetings in the morning, and in their offices late, so I do better by staying late and making sure a few people see me after hours.
It also pays to be holding some papers all the time. This way, it gives the impression that you’re not goofing off.
