Employer here (yes, I know right?! Sigh). Being on time and punctuality is about respect of other people time not about suppressing workers freedoms. We have no time to arrive for anyone. You can use the office if you like or work remotely from wherever you chose. But being late for a meeting with anyone relayed to the firm (customer or coworker including me) has to stay a seldom occurrence. Having multiple people wait for you 10 min is a pain point for everybody involved. It happens, I get it, but it everybody does not keep it to once in a long while everybody waits at every meeting which is not respectful of their time and its wasting quite some money too (Yes my people earn well above average). Is it too much to ask some basic respectful handling of each other?
BTW: there are employees that can’t handle that much autonomy yet. They specifically ask me to check their working hours and be at the office present for them to help them get their hours in and help with technical problems. But that’s usually new staff which has not learned to keep a routine. With time they usually get it together sooner or later. Surprisingly most make use of the office pretty regularly and just don’t come in if they travel to visit family or need to be at home for family reasons. Its a win all around as far as i am concerned.
You ever ran late to a college class because you had to stay longer than scheduled at your shitty retail job to cover your perpetually late coworker who was supposed to relieve you?
Sometimes running 10 minutes late is no big deal, but sometimes it is. It becomes a problem the moment it causes someone else problems.
10 mins late to an office job where they get their 10m back, AOK.
10 mins late to cashier/sales gig where you’re relieving someone else, not great.
10 mins late to a meeting is bad
10 mins late to class is bad.
Really depends what you are 10 minutes late for. A meeting with other participants, ok if your role is to sit and listen. Not OK if people are waiting for you to start. It’s not OK to be late to relieve a co worker either
My job doesn’t care if I’m late, and my productivity has not changed
Honestly, if I get the job done and do it to spec, managers can shut the fuck up.
It definitely depends on the job. I work in TV and live events. If your late you either miss the pre production meeting, or we all have to wait for you to start. If your later than that you are holding the team up and making people work harder to be ready by on-air time.
If your late
my late
Swipe keyboard and laziness. At least I showed up on time.
Yeah. It definitely depends on the job.
If you’re relieving someone, they might be annoyed if you’re late but nobody is going to die or anything. If your work isn’t extremely time sensitive, nobody should give a fuck…
If things can’t go because you’re not there, and it’s very time sensitive, then there’s a problem. Everyone is waiting on your ass to show up.
“ If your work isn’t extremely time sensitive, nobody should give a fuck…”
Except if Im staying to cover for you and I have other things I need to do or want to do I might give a fuck. The “no one should really care” POV overlooks how being late can impact others.
I had a specific exception for if you’re relieving someone.
I recognised this exact issue in my original statement.
“If you’re relieving someone, they might be annoyed if you’re late but nobody is going to die or anything.”
That’s not how I read this. I read this as you suggesting it isn’t a real problem.
It’s not a serious problem. Needs of the one vs needs of the many and all that.
It’s still discourteous.
But at the same time, people who do that kind of work, generally understand how annoying it is when their relief shows up late, so that kind of thing usually works itself out naturally… Or the chronic late person ends up needing to find a new job.
Do they minder if i stay longer? No? Then why complain when I’m late?
Its about the whole picture, am I always late? Is my work done on time and well executed ?
If so… WHO CARES ABOUT THE TIME OR PLACE I DO THAT WORK IN???
If it’s shift work and someone is waiting on you then arrive so they can go home or start to work and a team its a big deal cause you’re wasting someone elses time.
Yeah, but how many Americans are actually doing that kind of shift work anymore? I know it’s not none, but I don’t think we’re worried about the shoe factory shutting down over this. Those factories already shut down, and managers in places like that don’t hesitate to shitcan anyone chronically 10 minutes late as an example.
More than you’d think. Any facilities that need 24 hour coverage like medical, care and of course corrections. All of which have in common the staff really don’t want to spend an extra 10-20 minutes waiting for a 20s something to show up and take offense when called out. And in my experience these 20s somethings hate any reason for them to be kept late at work.
Aaaaahh, you’re right. I totally didn’t think about medical and care facilities. I was only thinking of factory-style shift work.
How does shift work not account for overwhelming an overwhelming majority of jobs? Customer service is all shift work. That includes everything with a store front or call center. It also includes a lot of workshops. From my understanding, that is the majority of jobs.
“Shift work” in this case is more like the type where someone has to do a specific handover to another human. Not just anything that isn’t salaried work. So the meaning is more in the context of the Industrial Era 24-hour factory type of meaning, where it’s coordinated that 1 entire group leaves and another punch in at the same time. It’s just another meaning of the term.
Also, this is some clickbait garbage hating on Gen Z vs. noble brave smart Boomers with zero tolerance for tardiness - it’s their take on a survey of 1,000 adults in the UK and completely in the context of working in an office.
It depends by the job entirely, and I’ve only once as a lone bartender needed the next person in order to leave, never any other customer service jobs. You mention call centers, and I’ve never seen one that required someone else to take your place so you can leave other than Pig Butchering camps where they may or may not kill you for not performing. Call centers typically let people log in and get in the queue taking calls. Even ones with under 10 people.
Retail. It’s 100% on the companies for doing this, but cashiers, for example, usually have bare minimum staffing. If one cashier is late coming in, that probably delays someone’s lunch or someone getting to go home on time.
It’s not right, it’s not everywhere, and in a lot of places when you show up doesn’t/shouldn’t matter. But people should be mindful of the other people they impact. Slack off all you want at work, I don’t care unless it starts making more problems for me and the rest of the team.
Very true. I do not do “shift work”. So I have no clue there.
Closest for me would be: being on time for meetings because of the same reason. Do not waste other peoples time.
If you are a firefighter?
Hehehe… HEY! IF the fire is out and no one died… Who cares that I just let the fire die out on his own???
You’re also there to please the mentally ill manager.
Because your lateness impacts other employees and that is unfair to them.
Is this post serious or just making shit up? Ive never heard anyone claim that 10 minutes late is on time. Late and on time are mutually exclusive words. Whether your work punishes it or not is a different question, im permitted to be 5 minutes late and it counts as on time for example.
This seems more like a post designed to piss people off and make them fight over a position noone had before reading it.
So many well-intentioned posts in here are licking the boot. Traffic happens. IBS happens. Children emergencies happen. The company should shoulder the cost of contingencies to account for natural human fluctuation. If the job is mission critical, why are you demanding humans be robots?
Exceptions are ok. But what if someone is 10 minutes late every single time?
What consequences does their being late have for the business?
Depends on the business?
A teacher, quite a bit. A bus driver, a lot.
Working retail, depends on if they’re the only one working there.
Random office drone, not much.
Depends on the business?
That’s the nuance I was fishing for: There seems to be a blanket expectation that everyone everywhere need to be at work at the a specific time, usually set by the business owners rather than the employees themselves.
Random office drone, not much.
In that case, I don’t think being 10 minutes “late” is an issue, with exceptions (like fixed appointments) and limits (some shared time frame where colleagues can expect to reach each other or plan meetings in).
Some degree of flexibility with working times should be the standard, where practical. Anything with strict schedules where tardiness screws over others, I’m fully on board with expecting punctuality.
Are they getting their work done satisfactorily? Then who fucking cares
As long as they also stay 10 minutes later, what is the problem?
Depends on the job. On an office job nobody should care, flex hours should be the norm
But if they’re opening the store first in the morning, it’s a bigger issue
A person who cannot be punctual is ill in some way. Do you shine a spotlight on their affliction, sealing their fate? Or do you pull them aside and ask them if you can do anything to support them?
A person who cannot be punctual is ill in some way.
That’s a bit of a stretch
Is it the job of everyone else to assist you in confronting your problem? If we presume we are talking about adults then it absolutely is not.
Not only that, if I’m that crucial to a company my salary should get another zero.
I recently did an essay on intergenerational work ethics for uni this semester. Basically, every generation except for Boomers don’t care about being on time when compared to giving quality output.
Which generations did your research cover besides boomers? Did you cover the ones that came before boomers? I’m asking because the silent generation (1928-45) are already getting rare due to age, potentially requiring different methodology, and it could be that the difference in attitude you observed could be a temporal thing (Everyone older than t thinks one way, and those younger think another way).
It didn’t cover the silent generation since they’re all retired now but i did read that Boomers were strongly driven to do better than their parents, hence they were much happier to do longer hours and have much higher company loyalty.
My essay covered Boomer, X, Y and Z.
Thanks for your reply.
What areas of work did you look into? I have managed a lot of shift work and there’s zero chance no one other than boomers cared in those roles about how others chronic lateness impacted them.
The papers I read in preparation for my essay mainly covered office, studio and healthcare work. My essay related to work ethics between Boomer, X, Y and Z, not tardiness, so I have no clue about the specifics of what each generation thinks with regards to lateness. Perhaps you could put your findings into a paper and get it peer reviewed.
“every generation except for Boomers don’t care about being on time when compared to giving quality output.”
“My essay related to work ethics between Boomer, X, Y and Z, not tardiness, so I have no clue about the specifics of what each generation thinks with regards to lateness.”
These seem to be at odds with each other. Can you clarify how you didn’t look into how generations view tardiness while at the same rime understanding how they view being late to things vs quality output?
As an aside if this kind of thing is your focus, has your university made you read the Pew trust’s post about why they have abandoned generational studies? It’s interesting if ypu haven’t
Here’s some of my bibliography for my essay in relation to inter-generational work ethics, if you’d like to knock yourself out: Wiedmer T (2015) Generations Do Differ: Best Practices in Leading Traditionalists, Boomers, and Generations X, Y, and Z, Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, vol. 82, no. 1, pp. 51–58 Cole, Tamitra G (2022). Work Ethic Differences in Generation Z Employees: An Explanatory Case Study. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Shatto B & Erwin K (2016) Moving on From Millennials: Preparing for Generation Z, The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 253–254
Im not asking what work you did. I am asking for clarification as to your statements that seem to be at odds with each other. There’s a chance that Im missing something that explains this conflict which is why I asked the question I did.
If you are going to put forth your opinion and assert a degree of expertise you should expect people to ask you questions since you are claiming to have some degree of understanding.
So can you answer my last question please?
It’s a very good day when I show up just 10 minutes late.
This is cultural appropriation of italian culture
Unless it’s shift work, yeah. What’s the problem otherwise?
It’s disrespectful of the coworkers or customers thats waiting for them. Have heard so many stories of construction interns that kind of show up when they feel like it. They don’t last long.
Had one blithering man child at my job that came in 3 hours late because “he was tired because he was playing Fortnite”. He didn’t stay long.
If you’re working in a team and they have to wait for you so they can start, sure. If there’s some fixed appointment with others, absolutely. If you can’t get your stuff done on time, definitely. But if your work isn’t that time sensitive, it really doesn’t matter if you start painting the wall or doing paperwork ten minutes later.
3 hours late
We’re talking about 10 minutes.
On the other hand, did that coworker’s work have to be done synchronously? If it’s something he could do on his own at midnight and hand in whenever it’s done, why care when he does it?
Again. If his tardiness results in work not getting done, I get it. I’m just arguing against the normality of expecting fixed working hours from people for no other reason than normalcy.
Normalcy doesn’t really weigh into it for me. I wouldn’t care if you were expected to work 8 or 7 hours a day in a “normal” day. I care about the agreed upon time where i fulfill my end by being on time, the agreed upon time. If you want flex, then you need to be in a job where flex is the agreed upon method.
If we agree on a specified time and you are expected to show up at that time, then it’s on you if it is a repeating issue.
If you ever come to sweden, don’t be late to agreed times. It will not be looked upon kindly.
If you want flex, then you need to be in a job where flex is the agreed upon method.
My argument is that flex should be the norm. If there is no explicit reason for rigid times, they shouldn’t be rigid.
Put differently: Why agree on a fixed time? Why does it matter? If the only answer is “It’s normal to agree on fixed times”, that’s what I meant with “for the sake of normalcy”.
If you’re running a shop and need people to be there for customers, or you’re running some on-call service or whatever, yeah, having people available for agreed-upon time frames is important. But if you’re just looking to put ass in chair from 7 to 11 and 11:30 to 15:30, with no regard for whether their work gets done well in that time frame, that’s just dumb.
My argument is that flex should be the norm. If there is no explicit reason for rigid times, they shouldn’t be rigid.
There is no norm. It depends on the country and their social structure aswell as their laws/agreed upon methods. You can always look for jobs/appointments etc that have flexible times. But good luck arguing with, e.g. a doctor about your appointment being flexible.
I think the other poster covered that by specifically talking about appointments. Reread what they said, its pretty damn valid. My job for instance would have very little consequences if I’m ten minutes late. I’ve told my manager that I may be later dropping off kids and such, they are fine with that. The point is the culture doesn’t change if we don’t push it to change.
Cool. Then you have that flex agreement with someone. If that works, it works.
In a social context, aka not work, the agreement with me would say that the time is the time. If you don’t value my time the same as yours, then we will eventually stop spending time together.
Yeah but swedish people are insane when it comes to be on time. It’s like you’ll go to hell and burn forever if you’re 5 minutes late once i your whole lifetime.
The upfront cost is too high for the benefit IMO (I am swedish, and I’m automatically always on time).
A better way? The french way maybe? Let people arrive 5 minutes late until everyone is present, in the meantime chit chat with coworkers. You get to know people and it’s low stress.
What you’re describing sounds like shift work. Also, 3 hours is WAY different than 10 minutes.
Not at all. It could be a consultant going to their customer, with the customer waiting. That has happened in my line of work. The example of 3 hours was with a waiting customer.
Being late also means you will call ahead to tell them that you are late. It’s simple courtesy that doesn’t require education och skills.
The post says late to work, not late to a meeting.
…and that depends on the work.
If you’re meeting with someone and you’re late that’s rude. If you just need to be in an office at a time but don’t have any specific meetings then it isn’t a big deal. If you’re doing shift work when people need you there at a very specific time then it’s rude to be late. If it’s not shift work and you’re not late for a meeting, I don’t see the problem.
What you call shift work is different from the swedish definition of it. Shift work is typically a term reserved for those types of work where there is a briefing between shifts. Industry, hospital etc. 24-hour kind of operations.
What i think you mean is office work, but that could also mean set times. But you would never call it shift work.
Lets say a call center that has a set opening time, or mechanic that has to open the shop at a given time. Those would not be considered shift work, unless they are open 24/7. So thats where we misunderstand each other.
Yeah, but Jimmy from back-office isn’t going to get anything done in his first 10 minutes wether I’m on time or not.
What does that even mean? If you have a customer waiting for you at a site, you get payed for being there on time, but you kind of ignore that. Do you think thats ok?
How much starting at a specific time matters highly depends on the job at hand.
Yes
if you have people waiting for you the minute you clock in, then you’re on shift work or just in an incredibly poorly managed workplace
Gen X reporting.
Be like Gandalf. Fuck all that other noise.
That has worked well for me. Pro tip: be hard to replace and they’ll have to deal.
I mean it’s really just a ledger of excuses to fire you when needed
Better tip: unionize
Being hard to replace is arbitrary and random.
Eh, not necessarily. Higher skill jobs tend to be harder to replace, especially if you’re really good at something specific to the company you work for.
It’s hard to get there any maybe not worth it (my comment was a bit tongue in cheek, like “don’t be unattractive”).
everyone is replaceable if management is out of touch enough
won’t save my job but lol if they are ever dumb enough to fire me
I consider someone being hard to replace as a problem that may or may not be their fault. If they’re actively hoarding knowledge and skills, it’s better to bite the bullet.
Personally, I try to make myself unnecessary in my roles by empowering my people. If they can’t operate without me being arbitrarily absent for a month, I’ve fucked up.
Surely you’re hard to replace since you do a great job in your role.
I’m in a similar boat, my team can do just fine without me and I make sure they can do well without any of them, but I would be hard pressed to replace most of them because they’re really good at what they do. Nobody works extra hours, and people go home early if they’re not feeling productive, and the work gets done on time almost every time.
I think I’m hard to replace for similar reasons. We’ve gone through 2 others in a similar position as my own and went over a year looking for one before we found the third. I’m not worried about my position going away since my boss seems to like our work ethic.
