Aibu. ahhh boss quibbling over 1 minute.

[Peterbear]

IWork for a council in E England. NEw boss has just emailed to say that she has checked my time sheets - on a couple of days last month i have written start time as 8am. ( work from home since covid) I did not however send in my 'log on' email till 8.01. I am being asked to go back and amend my time sheet.
Wtf?? Do I say don't be ridiculous that is a complete waste of taxpayer money or do I just play along? Worth saying that I often work a bit over and don't log this as feel it's petty to put for example 5.07 on a time sheet. Wwyd? Aibu to think jesus get a bloody life??

@FishyDuck

Tbh I can see why your boss is annoyed- if your start time is 8am, that is the time you should be at your desk working, having already logged on. It doesn’t mean you saunter in the door at 8, make a cup of tea and log on at 8.15.

I’m a senior manager and director of a medium-sized company and we expect our employees to be working throughout their contracted hours. So if they are employed from 8am-5pm, they should be logged on and working at 8 and should log off at 5pm.

Staff should not be making cups of tea during working hours and they should not be logging off their computer before their finish time.

Bet your staff turnover is through the roof. And I bet none of them do anything they’re not contracted to.

@Alsohuman I guess it depends on the business that fishyduck has. We have to be in and working for our start time and can't finish early. Although we can make cups of tea providing we put ourselves into unavailable!
On the plus side though we never have to do overtime or stay late, but we do have to work exactly our hours including timed lunch and breaks

Thank new boss for reminding you of the all important minutes owed then send all the logs where you have worked a couple of minutes over. Tally them up until you have enough to claim for overtime. But don't forget to mention how mildly irritating it is when the internet is so laggy it makes you look like you're slacking.

Even my manager at McDonald's will let us get a hot drink if its cold. How miserable you sound fishyduck

It's not about being miserable @QuestionableMouse.

As a company, we expect staff to be spending their working hours, well, working. We simply cannot afford to have people coming in at 9, chatting to people and making cups of tea.

Staff should be logged on and ready to go by their start role and they should be working right up until 5pm. They are perfectly free to get drinks during their lunch break.

Senior managers do patrol the office every so often to ensure our policy is being followed, but thankfully most staff comply.

'patrol the office'

Fuck me you sound like the stasi.

If you literally 'can't afford' to treat your staff like humans then your business deserves to tank.

My old micro managing boss in the NHS used to do this. She's ring me at 4.59 to check I hadn'y gone home early. Fat chance of that I never went home until 6 due to workload then she's ask me why it was that I wasnt coping with my workload.
She made me so stressed my hair started to fall out.

Senior managers do patrol the office every so often to ensure our policy is being followed, but thankfully most staff comply.

I don’t imagine they stay long though? @FishyDuck’s company sounds awful.

@FishyDuck are they allowed to go to the bathroom during "work" hours or is that restricted to their lunch break as well?

Where I work, senior managers are too busy to patrol the office looking out for members of staff hiding illegal cups of tea on their desks. If you're not pulling our legs then that sounds like a deeply toxic work environment, and it's no wonder that a snatched cup of tea could cause the entire company to fail.

@BoxAndKnife

'patrol the office'

Fuck me you sound like the stasi.

If you literally 'can't afford' to treat your staff like humans then your business deserves to tank.

Completely agree. It’s unbelievable that anyone would think this was remotely acceptable. I’ve had some shit micro managing bosses but this makes them all look like paragons.

I know someone who decided they weren’t going to give their workforce the extra day off for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. They then pretended to be surprised when 50% of them found other jobs within the next six months.

Unfortunately, employers like this will get away with it more as unemployment rises.

@k1233

Of course sometimes going to the bathroom during working hours is sometimes unavoidable. In these cases, staff are asked to record this as 'personal time' on the system and we ask that this comprises less than 1% of their working hours.

[quote FishyDuck]@k1233

Of course sometimes going to the bathroom during working hours is sometimes unavoidable. In these cases, staff are asked to record this as 'personal time' on the system and we ask that this comprises less than 1% of their working hours.[/quote]
Ok, now I know you're taking the piss. Nice one, you had me there for a minute

In these cases, staff are asked to record this as 'personal time' on the system and we ask that this comprises less than 1% of their working hours

You're not serious . If they work 40 hours per week, which I doubt because you sound like one of those piss taking employers who expect their employees to devote every waking hour to work, that's less than 5 minutes per day. The average person probably needs more than that, let alone anyone with a medical condition.

Is 'fishyduck' 'calf123' in disguise? As in the staff are locked in til closing time?

Fishyduck has got to be taking the piss

@sparklefarts

Fishyduck has got to be taking the piss

I hope so!

Wow, there's some places stuck way way way back in the dark ages isn't there!

Where I work flexibility and socialising are encouraged. Getting a cup of coffee and a random chat in the kitchen can actually lead to some great collaboration. It's all about building good relationships between staff.

I suspect Fishyduck is that same poster who claims to be a senior manager in a firm where they will discipline people for calling in sick. And if you are unlucky enough to be taken ill at work, you have to email one of the directors and they will debate whether you need to go home or not. Oh, and the doors of the building are kept locked so you can't just go out of your own accord.

Some of us have previously questioned whether it's a Victorian workhouse rather than a made up firm

A union rep in an NHS trust told me a tale of when the former manager of the Operating Theatre department noticed staff leaving early when their list had finished and telling them to make the time up or take it as leave.

The staff all started early every day to get the theatre ready and get all their kit out ready for the list to start at 09:00, the next day they all got changed into their scrubs put instead of going straight to prep for their lists they all went to the coffee room and made a brew, the Theatre manager came and asked what they were doing but they pointed out that their shift hadn’t started yet, they all sat there until the time their shift officially stared with the surgeons going nuts at the Theatre manager, all the lists were late starting that day.

He got the point and I always remember that when managing HCPs whose goodwill goes a long way.

[quote FishyDuck]@k1233

Of course sometimes going to the bathroom during working hours is sometimes unavoidable. In these cases, staff are asked to record this as 'personal time' on the system and we ask that this comprises less than 1% of their working hours.[/quote]
Hold up is @fishyduck a reincarnation of a previous poster who claimed their staff were 'patrolled' by senior managers etc. Am pretty sure the previous poster claimed to lock the doors on the staff too... I thought their name was 'yell" something but its not coming back to me yet...

and I see I'm late to the fishyduck/calf party

yellowfish123 was the name I was thinking of

I remembe a few years ago when the big lunar eclipse was due across southern England , a senior manager insisted on booking a meeting with her team at the same time and denied leave or time out for anyone to see it ...the meeting was drivel and again it was all about power plays ...I took the day off and took my son to see it from high on the South Downs..was a really memorable experience and I took the disciplinary and found a new job v quickly ..you could in them days 😬

@myrtleWilson yes I think you're right. A most unlikely-sounding director based on my experience. In fact I can't think of a single c-suite director I've worked with over the last 20 years who would behave like that! All of the directors I know are far too busy to bother about whether an admin assistant has a dicky tummy and needs to go home.