To leave work on time?!!

[skyblueeee]

I find working full time (9-5:30) quite hard, I feel tired and restricted, which is why I can't wait for the clock to strike 5:30 and I can walk out the office, drive home, eat dinner and relax....

But the problem is, no one ever leaves at 5:30 I look around and everyone is still working while I walk out the door, I even get a few judgemental looks from colleagues. I'm usually the first one out, if not I'm one of the first.

Does it look bad to leave work on time? Obviously if I had something urgent to do I would finish it, but I don't want to stay just to look good. I already get home about 6:20pm depending on traffic and not keen to have an even longer day....

I worked with someone who always stayed up to 2 hours late each day and then worked at home. Turned out they did bugger all during the day so needed to make up for it.

I work 9-5 with an hour for lunch. I don't start shutting down till about 5.10 unless I have somewhere to be. I've been bother the first and last to leave and never get any judgement.

If you've finished you're work I wouldn't worry about it.

Calf if you don't open the doors until 5.01pm every night then you owe the employees approximately 3 hours a year. FFS people actually do this to people they employ? They're paid to do a job not bloody slaves to a clock! As I said on a different thread, some people are control freaks in the workplace. DH and I own a large Company and would never dream of treating employees the way some people do on here! People need a work to life balance for goodness sake.

The idea of being able to 'finish your day's work' is completely unrealistic in the professional jobs I've had. No one is really giving you 'jobs', you look after cases, clients, stakeholders, programmes etc... We're lucky to get about 40% of what we need to do, done. Therefore there is always more work that needs to be done. In the Civil Service there's no overtime pay in the more senior grades, and there's often an expectation you will work extra hours - sometimes double or more. Best you can hope for sometimes is to work enough extra to avoid a work catastrophe, and still avoid a divorce.

Also, what is this "lunch hour"?

If you're in the kind of job that pays by the hour, you have set work to do, and would be twiddling your thumbs then I think it's more normal to just work your set hours. When I was a student and worked in a shop, no one, even the permanent staff, felt it was necessary to stay for an extra unpaid hour to put things through the till or tidy the shelves.

My contracted hours are 9-5 and I get a pretty measly wage. I am most days in at 8.30 though because my workload is massive and I like to get a head start before the phone starts ringing.

Having said that a colleague said something to me today that made me think.....when you are off sick (rarely in my case) they don't pay you so why should you give them your time for free?

Something in that.

@Locasta

It takes the staff time to shut down their PCs and go to their lockers to collect belongings. The one minute gap is to account for that and to ensure those tasks aren't done during work time.

Except the fire exits exist as 'extra' exits. What if the fire blocks those and the only way out is through the other door?

And schools have locked doors from the outside than can be opened from inside the building ime. It's not to keep staff in - it's to stop strangers wandering in for safeguarding reasons.

Anyone that leaves bang on their finish time has been faffing about for the past 5 mins before hand getting ready to go. Really poor work attitude, usually the ones that get in bang on start time and spend 15 mins cunting around making coffee, take multiple "loo" breaks and generally arse about. If the time spent slacking was calculated their hours are so much lower than others. Luckily none of my colleagues have this attitude, the ones who did were quickly P45'd. You finish at 5.30, you don't leave at 5.30.

"The staff retention rate is probably not sector- leading, but we have at least 100 applicants for every post so it's not a huge concern."

Calf There may be 100 applicants for every post, but you still have to train all your new staff and there is a cost to that and therefore a cost to replacing staff.

However, employees are just a number to you. It us very sad.

Locasta as I've said, it's a care home. Spending those few (paid) minutes packing away instead of potentially making a difference to an individual's day is morally questionable imo.

You're clearly not a very capable manager if you don't understand what staff retention is. You can have 100 people applying for a role but its not an indication of how pleasant you are to work for and it especially doesn't mean shit if it's the same role every fortnight because your horrible attitude towards your staff means you can't keep any of them.

We are going through a lot of problems at work which means a lot of shift changes and stopping about. Our man angers are tearing their hair out trying to sort issues out.
Every member in the staff team has offered to extend their hours , stop on a little longer at their end of their shift or swop rest days around.
Despite all the problems our managers are very mindful of the teams work life balance. If we end up staying on longer than we should ( e.g. A court case, a family meeting etc) we are reminded to make sure we put our time owed in the book to claim back later.

Calf123 Your management logic is really quite strange. Surely you should employ people that you trust enough that you do not have to lock the doors. If they work in an environment where the doors are unlocked and can't be trusted then you manage this through the proper processes and ultimately exit them from the organisation if needed. End result is an office of unlocked doors and trusted employees.

I am shocked that in 2018 there are any work places that adults are "locked in".

we have at least 100 applicants for every post so it's not a huge concern

HAHAHA 100 applicants per post is nothing nowadays.

Once you remove the ones unsuitable geographically, the time wasters, the ones who fill none of the criteria and so on.. you must be left with 0.25 of a decent candidate. If you are lucky.

@Red I understand the care home scenario, of course that setting is different to what Calf is describing.

@Calf you're an arse tbh and you will STILL owe the employees time, if your scenario is real their working day finishes at 5pm not 5.01pm.

To answer to the OP, there's no answer without knowing your industry, your role and your performance.
I would be more worried that you let on more than you think in your attitude, with your dislike of work and your impatience to leave. That could be more of an issue for you.

If you are that unhappy at work, you should look around for something better for you. If you are already employed, there's no rush but life is too short!

What about those of us racing to nursery and school clubs for pick up? I have no option but to leave dead on time. I come in early when I can.

I today that the guy who sits behind me spent about 3 hours internet shopping.. yet he stays later and looks better

@Locasta

Nope, all employees are technically contracted until 5.05pm with the final 5 minutes being unpaid breaktime. Technically, we're not obliged to open the doors until 5.05pm(and don't if targets aren't met).

It doesn't take me 5 minutes to pack up. i don't work set hours but should I clock out and then tidy up? Because that seems to be the reasoning behind 'leaving on the dot'

Tonight I worked late, something hit the fan and I had to deal with it before I left, it is amazing how far 'give and take' gets you. This was at quite a large inconvenience to me, but I dug in and just got on with it.

CalF runs a call centre. Bet you anything.

Don’t rise to it, it posts for attention.

As for the OP, I think it’s fine to leave ‘on time’ as long as you don’t ‘down tools’ to get ready to leave, for ages before you leave.

I have a job and not a career. I work to live, not live to work. I do my job during my contracted work hours then I'm out the door. If I have too much work, unless it's exceptional circumstances, then tough. Overtime is a dirty word to me. The company needs to employ more people if there is consistently too much work for one person to do.

At the end of the day large corporate companies (I've only experience of the private sector) only care about their shareholders and will bin you off without skipping a beat if it suits them. I've seen it happen on more than one occassion to the mugs that lived at their desks for 12+ hours at a time.

If that gives me a "bad attitude" then so be it. I do my job, do it well, and always meet my targets and get my bonuses.

CalF runs a call centre. Bet you anything.

I'd say an illegal boiler room in some union and godforsaken country

In the office I manage, the exit door is locked until 5.01pm when it is opened to allow staff to leave after they have completed their contracted hours. Me and the rest of the management team also closely monitor all staff at the end of the day to ensure there is no surreptitious 'packing up' or 'washing cups'.

Is it even legal to lock staff in?

Sounds like a joyful place to work .............

Do you work in a jail?!