WWYD? Colleague skiving off early.

Anything like this is risking responses about tea breaks, efficiency, amount of bog visits, sick days taken and the like. If for whatever reason this colleague's departure time bothered me, I'd still want to be very sure nothing could be said to me about my behaviour in work before bringing it up. Either by her or anyone in charge.

This!

You could all decide together to leave early when she does. If it’s questioned by management say well xxxxx does it so we thought it was ok for us too
id probably just ignore it

Look it up if you don't know.

Colleagues of mine have tended to know if I have children/a bit about what my home life looks like etc, but I probably wouldn't tell colleagues, possibly very close ones/deskmates, if I agreed with my boss to leave a few minutes early to catch a bus, or go to a regular appointment or something.

You very much do come across as though you think you have the right to know things about your colleagues; you say that if they told you the details of their arrangements you 'would be understanding and sympathetic' and that if a colleague told you about their situation you 'would obviously think it was fine', but you say that, if it was 'hush hush' as you say (or, as reasonable people would say, not their business or their concern), then it would irritate you even if it didn’t impact you.
Which very much comes across as though you think you're entitled to know about it and also to judge them for it.

I've no idea what the kind of job is we're talking about here; you'd have to ask the OP.

Don’t say anything. Don’t do her work or answer her phone or anything to cover her early departure. Agree with many posters there may be something in place with management to allow this. This was me in a previous job. I left 15 to 30 min early due to obscene construction traffic. All and i mean all work was done. These are highly educated medical professionals sitting around talking and looking at their phones doing absolutely nothing just clock watching. Eileen-didn’t like it so she complained and she took Colleen as back up to complain to our director. Fine I said I will take my 15 min break at the end of the day. Didn’t like that either. I left the position and they have had three people since me who also didn’t like the micromanagement. Eileen and Colleen who don’t have the same skill set are much busier now. And it made me realize Eileen and Colleen didn’t really value me as much as they valued conformity and clock watching.

What’s an ad hom?
No I don’t think I have the ‘right’ to other people’s information, but realistically how much ‘secret’ information do people have? Do you not tell your colleagues you have young children, an ill mother or problems with you back that are causing you pain?
If the ops colleagues has a job where she works totally independently and never has anyone ringing her for information or popping into the office to ask her something (both of which the op may have to deal with), why is colleague even in the office? Surely that would be a perfect job for wfh and so wouldn’t need to leave the office early.

No actual counter-arguments then, just an ad hom? Interesting.
I'd be interested to hear your response to No33's question about whether you think you have the right to other people's information.

Glad to see you are also ‘rowing back’ at your foul language to strangers on the internet who disagree with you.

You have no right to that information though. It could be reasonable adjustments due to any number of things, disability for instance. Do you think you have the right to that knowledge?

Because you don't.

Well, how magnanimous of you to understand

You said earlier 'yes it would irritate me even if it didn’t impact me at all', which you seem to be rowing back on now. The OP has also not said whether this colleagues actions affect her or add to her workload.

Are you working on the same assembly line in a factory together and her leaving ten mins early means you can't do your own job? That the only kind of scenario I might get veeery slightly annoyed by this but even then it's not your job but the manager's to notice.

We all have times in our life when we need flexibility, eg you might have young children that you need to fetch from nursery. If you told me that I would be understanding and sympathetic and probably encourage to go even earlier.
However if you just regularly go early never mention anything and the manager never says anything then there is a possibility that you are just skiving off. Realistically it may well affect me in my office job, answering the phone or doing a small job that was really part of your work.
I am happy for a bit of give and take and will help out colleagues but is it fair I take on extra for people who are lazy?

I am so glad I and my team, and our wider team aren't like this.

Many in my team have adjustments for various reasons. We don't shout about them to others. We just get on with our own work.

A new colleague once made comments about me "having my feet under the table" because I rolled in a bit late. My manager was fine with it; I'd worked till well after midnight a couple of nights that week already so we could hit our deadlines for the financial close (on a nominal 6pm finish) All my colleague did was make himself look a bit silly.

Something like this is totally reasonable and obviously agreed with manager. However I am always amazed at how little people communicate. If a colleague told me about the above situation then I would obviously think it was fine. However if it was all hush hush, then yes it would irritate me even if it didn’t impact me at all.

If I didn't have to pick up their workload over those few minutes I'd not be fussed. I'd take it that I could do the same.
Either the works being done to the standards managers want or it isn't. I guess you could say, 'hey Barry, before you go can to just help me with this...' and give them then minutes worth of your work. If they're meant to stay til a certain time they can't really refuse?

What about smokers/vapers who take 15 mins (or more) every hour/90mins throughout the day? Or people waiting for the kettle to boil.Are you saying anything about that?

That’s a clear management failure. The correct response would have been to tell people in no uncertain terms to focus on their own work and stop wasting time judging colleagues and questioning management decisions that had nothing to do with them.

Good for her. What on earth is wrong with some people?

You don’t know that she doesn’t have a genuine reason and an arrangement in place. Last year I got permission from my boss to leave early for radiotherapy, but I wasn’t required to tell the whole staff about it! So I’d probably keep my beak out of it if I were you.

Of someone else's money, who might very well not be bothered.

As a person who had to leave ten minutes early to get the once an hour bus at 4 minutes past the hour, you are being unreasonable. Management most likely already knows the reason. I had an understanding with my manager that I could leave early if I came in slightly earlier or had a slightly shorter lunch.

I can only say it again: you presumably have a bit of time on your hands, and are quite possibly understretched, to be able to put all this time and thought into it.

It’s not just 10 minutes though is it? It’s 30 minutes x 4 per 4 week period = 2 hours. So for argument sake, lets say OP on £15 an hour, that’s £30 per 4 week period.

Unless of course, like pp said they have an arrangement for this and it’s taken in to account.