Why would a management team switch to "zero-tolerance" on lateness after 2.5 years?

In My Humble Opinion
21

This is so ironic. Throughout the whole ordeal, they have kept saying that they have not gone to HR with this, as though they have been doing me a favor. Considering this may end badly, you’d think HR might want mgmt to be forthcoming about something like this.

Yesterday, my supe threatened me with the fact that the director of our division “knows everything.” “Uh, Phil, it was me who told our director everything.”

For now, they make it look like the ball is in my court and if I start showing up on time (which now I must) that all will be forgiven. If, however, after I start showing up on time they go after me for something else, well, then I’ll go to HR for sure. I’d like to try to salvage this job. So far, everyone I know from this division who has gone to HR has been transferred, which could be good, too.

22

Right on the money.

23

True.

If you’re the only one the zero-tolerance policy applies to, I would think you’d have the basis for a wrongful termination suit. You might check with a lawyer about those rules (employment laws). When you sue and turn the tables on them, they may lose their appetite for concentrating on picky details while ignoring the big picture.

I at least “planted the seed” for a possible lawsuit (bluffing at this point) when the Supe said “We will have no choice but to fire you if you continue arriving late.”

“You know, Phil, you never know what you’ll get when you put something before a jury.”

24

Sad but true.

25

Oh, I get it, now.

26

As for the selectivity–in my experience, workplace misbehavoir (such as tardiness) is extremely susceptable to confirmation bias. Once someone gets it in their head that someone is “always late”, they start noticing every time that person is late way more than they notice the same behavoir in anyone else. Add office gossip to this, and the situation quickly spirals out of control: if someone has a reputation for being late, then everytime they are late it is gossip, it is worth mentioning at the watercooler: “Hey, Bob was late again this morning. Can you believe that guy?” This is why workplace reputations for anything are extremely hard to shake. It’s a long story, but my husband had a deserved reputation for being late at one place of employment. Once he got his act together (and a car avalible–having to walk to work made the situation much worse), he was invariably on time for the next three years and he still had a reputation for having a tendency to oversleep.

What I am trying to say is that if you have a reputation for being late, your tardiness may seem much more extreme than other people’s, even if that isn’t borne out by your observations. THere’s not much you can do about this–confirmation bias is pretty intrinsic to how humans think. The upside is that if you have a positive reputation for something else, confirmation bias works in your favor.

27

…with all due respect-you were late for work by half an hour for two and a half years!!! That’s incredible! Why did you think that was acceptable-and why, now that your employer wants you to come on time, do you think that you were being singled out? You’ve gotten away with being late for two and a half years, you got given two verbal warnings to “stop coming in at 930”, to which you responded " So I shot for 9:00 a.m. and usually hit about 9:10 - 9:15 a.m. "

What your employer is telling you, is get here at 900. “We have given you two and a half years to get it right, we’ve given you two verbal warnings, and you’ve throwen that back in our faces by * still turning up ten minutes late. * If you don’t turn up on time on Monday-you are in breach of your contract and we will have to let you go” is how I read what they are saying to you.

Is sleep apnea the only reason your late? Forgive me if I sound insensitive, but the difference between 900 and 910 is not that great. You say yourself that “at least possibly partially explained by a medical condition?”-possibly partially are hardly convincing words.

Yes, you are being single out, because you have consistantly showen that you cannot, and appear unwilling, to conform to your company’s policy. Yeah, other people are five minutes late, but you have admitted you are commonly half an hour late-and have only managed to reduce that to ten minutes-how convinced do you think your employer is to your sincerity?

Five months ago I was forced to let go one of my staff-one of my best, well trained, loyal staff members you could ever find. The problem was, he had extremely bad exma, which meant that he couldn’t sleep properly which meant he was often either late for work, or he wouldn’t turn up at all. To the person who said "This is an extremely obsolete view of management. ", well, damm it, you try everything under the sun, but when push come’s to shove, you have to refer to your rulebook and do it properly. I work in a time-sensitive industry-which means if staff don’t show up on time I’ve got to leave my sales meeting, stretch my resources, waste my time-and with this particular employee time management was an issue. After countless offers of help-after giving him my cellphone number and telling him to call collect, after letting his behaviour slide for nearly a year-his tardiness was impacting on business. He recieved his two verbal warnings as per proceedure-a written warning followed, followed by his dismissal. The thing was-yes, I did issue him with a “zero tolerance” directive-I had run out of options and I had no choice. (For those who wondered what that directive was-it wasn’t you must be at work on time-it was you MUST ring me on the day to tell me why you aren’t at work. Not you must ring two hours before the shift or anything else most reasonable employers would do and what our policy actually was)

So I ask you Lorenzo, what options have you given your employer? What else can they do to get you to work on time? It looks like they have exhausted all reasonable options and the “zero tolerence” directive is there last resort. It isn’t a bluff on the part of your employer-what are they going to do if you call them on it"oh gosh dang it, Lorenzo called our bluff, we’ll have to let him go back to being late again!"-I don’t think so.

So what options do you have?

You’ve only really got three:

  1. Resign. If you morally feel that you are right and they are wrong-then that is the course of action for you. I’ve done it a couple of times in my lifetime, I’ve only just done this again myself (again!) last month-it’s a bit of a struggle at the moment, but I have a vision out in front of me, and I am confident that I will get there

  2. Comply. Turn up to work on time, everytime. Ignore what everyone else is doing-one of my personal motto’s is “What other people are doing is NONE OF MY BUSINESS.” Have pride in your job, and don’t hold your standards to those that are around you.

  3. Create a Compelling Case. To be honest, and do not take this personally, but if I was your employer, and you layed your case out as you have in this thread, I too would be enforcing company policy standards as well. Get your case together, get the doctors behind you, and then convince your employer (whether it be your supervisor, or his manager) why you, out of all the employees, should be allowed to start later.

…right, that took entirely too long to post! It’s now 619AM here in New Zealand, it’s time for bed…

28

I understand that you have sleep apnea, but I don’t understand why if you can be there reliably by 9:30, you can’t be there by 9:00. If you feel like you’ve only gotten an hour and a half of sleep in 8 hours, what difference is an extra 1/2 hour in the sack going to make? Face it, you’re going to have to make the extra effort to be there. I don’t know in which state you live, but many states are consider “employment at-will” states, where they can let you go for no good reason if they want to. If they perceive a reason, and they want you gone, they may just be going through the motions.

To me, your attitude says that you think you’re so valuable, you can’t be touched. Or shouldn’t be. And while you may not easily be replaced, be assured that you can be. It seems that your company is getting to be a difficult place to work. No plants, no personal items, no radios. Do you really want to work there? Maybe you should find a place that more suits your personality.

StG

29

Do you need to be at work at certain hours? Does it matter?

Is traffic easier to deal with at different times of the day?

We have flex time where I work. My regular hours are 7 to 3:30 I usually arrive at 6:30.

>>After two and a half years in my current dept I’ve received two verbal warnings and complied to the letter of the law on the first one, if not the spirit. #1 was “You’ve got to stop coming to work at 9:30 a.m.” So I shot for 9:00 a.m. and usually hit about 9:10 - 9:15 a.m. <<

Why always 10 -15 minutes late? Sorry, but this sounds like apathy more than apnea. You may not be getting enough sleep, but what does the extra 10-15 minutes do for you?

30

Maybe we need a “Who wants to give Lorenzo the wake-up call today?” thread.

Although I do not have sleap apnea, I have had more than enough nights where my sleep was very unrestful. Without 8 hours of restful sleep, I am a zombie and my speech patterns aren’t recognizeable until around lunchtime. But I still make it to work on time. Why? Simply because my desire not to lose my house and get sued by my creditors is greater than my desire to stay in bed for an extra ten minutes, no matter how spleepy I am.

Now maybe I am just ignorant about the affects of sleep apnea, and it’s not so much that you choose not to wake up when the alarm goes off, but maybe you are literally unable to wake up when the alarm goes off. If this is the case, I can’t believe that this wouldn’t qualify as a disability.

But don’t make unsupported claims to your boss about what you think you might have. This will sound like desperate last-minute rationalization. Go to the doctor. Get diagnosed.

It shouldn’t be a zero tollerance policy applied only to you. If you can’t be ten minutes late, nobody else should be able to get away with persistent tardiness either. I work in a union shop, which has resulted in two unfortunate things:

  1. The guy next to me nods off periodically through out the day. Granted he wakes up when his phone rings and does his job (half-assed), but it still cheeses me off. People like this are next to impossible to get rid of because of the union.

  2. Apparently, somebody else in the shop complained about the unequal treatment with regard to tardiness rules. “How can you yell at me for being a few minutes late once in a while, when Lorenzo is almost always late!” That person would have probably been justified in filing a grievance for being singled-out for punnishment. In other words, if they don’t come down hard on you, they can’t come down hard on anybody else.

And finally, I don’t think I need to point out that getting paid for 8 hours and only working for 7 hours and 45 minutes is tantamount to stealing. Unless you have been getting docked for the time or staying late to make up for your tardiness, you’ve been paid for over 150 hours (assuming a 40 hour work week and 2.5 years) that you didn’t work.

Related threads:

How to get up in the morning

I hate being an insomniac…[long]

What’s the most effective wake-up device?

31

Your underlying “this is unfair, you can’t make me, I’m going to show them” tone evident in this scenario may have some small justification, but in the end if you start playing games and jerking them around to make your point (or if they perceive that you are) they will most likely regretfully fire you, and given your history re tardiness your chances of prevailing before an adminstrative or judical authority are most probably going to be slim and none.

Work situations often change and successful people adapt or get out. This is not about them, this is about you, and you really need to put your sensitivities aside and decide if this is really where you want to work. You keep wanting to make your apnea their problem. It’s not, it’s your problem. Dump the apnea crutch you seem desperate to lean on and the childish attitude.

You’re a good worker, but you need to fix one part of your performance. They simply want you to get to work on time. That’s all, it’s not an indictment of your character or your soul. You’re quite intelligent and you’re a grown man, make arrangements to get to bed on time, wake up early and get to work on time.

32

A second for that one. If asked to stay late, You should say only if I can come in later the next day to make up for the extra time.

33

I’ll also add lawyers consultants and anyone else who tracks “billable hours”. The professionals have more flexibility as long as they are putting in the hours but productivity does in fact equal hours worked.

My view is not obsolete. You do what they tell you to do at work or they find someone who will.

Did I forget to mention that you are not the boss and you don’t dictate company policy?

How about if your manager said stay late and come in regular time for the rest of the week (or whenever I tell you) or come review time I’ll either give you a %0 raise or maybe just lay you off altogether?

Look…unless you are in a union, a salesperson, the big rainmaker at work, or posess some rare and wonderful talent you have very little leverage.

34

Company policy requires you to work late? Isn’t this like the big hub-bub with Wal*mart being sued?

35

No, it’s about hourly workers being told to work late off the clock, so on paper they don’t earn overtime rates.

Even for hourly workers, management can tell them to work sixty hours per week, so long as they track the time accurately and pay them time and a half for hours over 40. If the workers say no, they can be fired (except where unions have a contract precluding this behavior).

36

Well said.

So, go to bed earlier, get up earlier. Being late to work has nothing to do with not gettting enough sleep, its all about getting your ass in gear.

The rest of us do it every day.

37

Pardon the bad pun, but all of these posts have been an excellent “wake-up call” for me. The consensus seems to be either follow their rules or move along – it’s not worth fighting and is most likely unwinable.

So now I see the errors of my ways and have to make a decision; either grow up or suffer the consequences. There really is no middle ground.

FWIW I would not mind seeing this thread closed.

Thanks to all who were forthright without resorting to namecalling.

38

Moderator’s note:

Glad the thread helped, Lorenzo, and good luck to you. I second the thanks to all who responded helpfully and honestly, but civilly as well.

Thread closed at request of the OP.

TVeblen,
IMHO mod

39

Thread closed per request.