To be very glad I don't work with some Mumsnetters

[sootyisback]

You shouldn't take sick leave unless you're practically at death's door.
As soon as you're capable of crawling out of bed you should be back in work.
You should never, ever be even 5 minutes late no matter what the circumstances or how flexible you've been re working extra time.
Unless there's 20 ft of snow blocking your front door you should get yourself into work.

Honestly, I'd have been sacked long ago if some of them were my boss.

Agree 1000%. I also don't buy into the concept that being a loyal employee will save me - if ever they should feel so inclined a company will bin its employees and no amount of loyalty will save you. I've seen the harsh lesson in my own family of my DF being made redundant after 20+ years of employment at the same company. Make no mistake, anyone is expendable. I do my best by my employer and they are good to me in return, but I have no illusions whatsoever of my own importance.

I honestly think it's a trick of our capitalist system to make people tie their worth to their ability to be a cog in a wheel and unfortunately some people have bought into this.

I phoned in sick this morning because after having a cough all week, last night I was coughing so much I was sick. When I phoned our (strict) HR Manager, she said 'Oh good, you've been poorly all week and I can't believe you lasted this long' Now I feel guilty that I've been a work martyr all week

Agree. Some people can’t resist an opportunity to sneer. There was a thread recently about a woman getting grief from her boss for being back late from a retirement lunch and the way people reacted you’d have thought she’d defrauded them out of half a million pounds

My mother was a senior manager at a huge financial company you would have heard of, they have television adverts and like to pretend to be caring.

Over the years she had put in many hours of unpaid overtime. On her last day she left two hours early. Her manager had her final pay cheque altered to deduct two hours pay! The money didn’t matter. The pettiness did.

And you know what, as soon as she walked out of those doors she was forgotten. Did she make a difference? Nope. Did anything she did actually matter? No? She’s retired now but says she regrets spending so much time at work.

I was always loyal and flexible to a point. An old manager would give me time off in lieu when I worked overtime, or tell me to put in for overtime.

Then a new manager came along. Time off in lieu stopped, wouldn't sign overtime sheets. Yet would bark orders and give tasks 10 minutes before finishing that would take hours. Had I listened and done this like my predecessor, I would have worked an average of 15 hours a week for free. I was split across 2 departments. Another department reasonable and appraisals always excellent, but that cow often commented about lack of teamwork, poor work, deadlines missed etc, comments to others about my performance. Hence the grievance in the end.

Years ago I worked for someone who was completely unsuitable to be a manager. I recall someone called in sick and my boss said she was going to drive to her house and drag her into work by her hair.

She also said that we all had to start bullying this other woman to get her out.

They were just two of many ‘eh?!’ moments at that place and she wasn’t the only one with that attitude.

swing
Sadly, its this growing attitude that means that employers are also showing less and less care in people's individual circumstances.
I’ve had some lovely bosses, who’ve loved me and valued my work and they’ve been laid off at the same time as me. You can impress your boss and still not be valued by the corporate big wigs.

I’ve been laid off several times and not once has it been anything to do with anything other than corporate restructuring. So no, not much loyalty from me.

A lot of organisations nowadays are so large that the people who make the HR decisions are totally disconnected from the employees who they're making decisions about. They just see them as names on a spreadsheet and will quite happily move them to totally unsuitable positions or locations or make them redundant at the drop of a hat.
They are usually the same people who impose rigid, computerised HR systems on staff within which there is no leeway whatsoever.

I blame the Blitz.

These rigid workplaces must be hell to work in. I had an horrendous year in which I had no fewer than three family emergencies in three months, I had a total of four weeks off in that time. My NHS employer was fantastic, told me to take as much time as I needed and the team sent me flowers. Now that's the way to get the best out of people.

Sadly, its this growing attitude that means that employers are also showing less and less care in people's individual circumstances.

You have it the wrong way around. It's not the lack of loyalty that causes employers to show less care. It's employers trying to wring every ounce out of their employees for as little pay as possible, treating them as disposable, and refusing to accept that their employees are human and not machines that results in people having no loyalty to their employers. Why on earth should they?

I love my job too and hope that when I lie on my deathbed, I will look back and think that what I did mattered and the people I worked with mattered and I did to them. I have friends from nearly all the jobs I've worked in and if I died tomorrow, I think they'd come to my funeral and equally I'd go to theirs.

Some jobs I've done have had more personal meaning than others, but to a greater or lesser extent, they've all contributed in some way to society. Even as a shop assistant when I was a student, I felt I was doing something useful!

As for weirdo nutters who think you need to be a superhero, drive your own snowplough, never have sick children, never perform at anything other than 100% optimal, I have to wonder if they actually work at all, because none of the workplaces I have ever been in have contained any superhumans - just normal people like everyone else!

It's interesting that no one has come onto this thread to defend these rigid practises. Yet whenever anyone starts a thread about a specific work issue they're all over it, ticking everyone off and supporting the actions of unreasonable managers.

My work is really strict about lateness and many people are pulled up on it, have disciplinaries pending.
It makes us feel like we’re children and work to our exact hours ie, not doing them any favours as so inflexible.,

And I have some great friends @ work - it’s what makes me reluctant to leave as my actual job and the treatment of staff is dreadful!

Flying Giraffe beat me to it - said what I was about to.

Loyalty may count for something in small businesses, but in the corporate and public sectors it means nothing. Employees are disposable.

I used to show loyalty at my old job. Did my best.
Then I realised that the bods in head office didn't give two tiny shiny shits about anyone on the shop floor. They demanded we did more and more and in return they took away our sick pay.
Loyalty? Yeah right.
I remember a new supervisor we had. He felt like the subjects of this thread. Worked hard, gave his soul to the business.
I also remember the day he woke up and realised that no matter what he did, someone higher up would always take the credit and he'd get jack shit in return.
He went from berating everyone for not being dedicated enough to not giving a stuff. Sad really.

I have seen several people, coming towards the end of long careers with the same organisation, being treated like shit when new younger managers move in. I'm not saying all older Managers are perfect, or all young ones are sharks, but there does seem to be an increasing number of people getting up the ladder very quickly, and before they've developed the judgment and empathy that's an important part of being a good manager.

I have a theory that threads really seems to reflect what the first 5 posters say, if they are the troll type ones who state things like your employer doesn't pay you to be sick the thread tends to be full of it with lots of other poster just following the tread, occasional it can be brought back round but it has to happen very quickly in the next 20 posts and if it is a fast moving thread these I find tend to have a variety of thought as the posters haven't had time to feed off each other.
Sometimes I open a thread and it is pretty clear that it is a group of people have decided to gang up on a poster they may or may not know each other but a mob mentality goes on. Sometime I have literally though sorry OP it's too late for you and just moved on to a post where people might not agree with each other but are at least being kind. The ones I really admire are the lone I am clearly pissed off with the world so I am going to be a complete knob for no reason those people are very special and we should acknowledge their superiority... I mean fuckwittedness!

I agree that a lot of people are getting into Management positions quite young and some of them just haven't got the maturity for those posts. They might have a string of degrees, and an impressive CV and be able to play a blinder at interviews, but if they haven't developed a bit of wisdom and empathy then they're going to be lousy managers.

I posted ages ago as I was at the end of my tether.

Working full time with two toddlers in full time nursery. Working evenings and weekends to make up time when kids were sick. Working in a satellite clinic with a commute that was getting longer each day due to road works and I just couldn't get there on time.

MN: get up earlier, get your kids up earlier, batch cook, buy a tumble drier, LTB...

My actual manager: "you're a highly valued member of the team, don't sweat it. As long as you're getting your work done and managing your caseload I don't care if you're 10 minutes late"

goes both ways. (and all businesses are different anyway)

I found that when people are efficient, don't whinge about 10 minutes unpaid overtime, they get away with a lot. The ones who take sickies all the time, arrive on the dot and leave on the dot can't ask for anything, can they.

Some people also abuse the flexibility and management gets fed up. Say people start taking 25-30 minutes long "fag break" then you have to stop that.

Also depends on the context: if clients expect to have someone answering the phone, then even 5 minutes lates is not acceptable. Parents moan if the school opens 5 minutes late, and no one is happy about a train running 5 minutes late.

If the manager arrives late and people think it's an open door to be late too, then you have to cut down on that too.

If there are no business requirements for strict timekeeping, then people should be treated like responsible adults. The problem is that many employees do not!

I’ve almost always worked places with flexi time and working from home. I can’t imshime working somewhere with rigid times. Of course some industries like healthcare, retail etc have shifts. But I don’t apply for those kind of jobs.

It does usually come from the top though. I worked for a company and my team regularly worked at least 1 hour, unpaid overtime every night and lunch was supposed to be an hour but was usually 10 mins to get something to eat and eat and work at your desk.

Being central London, it was a rare day when the train and tubes run on time. A few of my team were late once or twice a week and my boss insisted that I have a word with them about their timekeeping. I just couldn't do it. I took them in the meeting room and explained that the boss wanted me to chastise them about being on time. I told them I wouldn't as I thought it unreasonable and just told them to look a bit pissed off when we left the meeting room.