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??

Less than 1%...
8x60 mins=480minsx 0.01= 4.8 mins.

I’m truly taken by your generosity, not sure if I’d manage to use the whole allocated time slot

This thread perfectly demonstrates that some managers have been promoted above their level of leadership competence and that too many companies do not provide their staff with any form of leadership/management qualification.

I remember when doing a substantial leadership course at university how the difference between a democratic and an autocratic leader was impressed upon us. That a good leader will get staff to do what is required because the staff will want to do it. So no patrolling required. These staff will also feel valued, go the extra mile and your Staff turnover is less.

A crap leader will generally get their staff to do what’s required, but they do it through fear of retribution. The staff are unhappy, do the bare minimum, won’t go the extra mile, management time is wasted keeping a close eye on staff and the staff turnover is high.

I’ve had some shit managers in my time and I know that I haven’t been the most productive, innovative employee for such managers. Thankfully I now work somewhere where I’m treated like an adult.

God forbid you're on your period and need time to clean-up. I was also going to say you'd be stuffed if all of the cubicles were occupied when you got there, but I suspect in Fishyduck's firm, requests to visit the loo are strictly controlled to avoid congestion - because heaven forfend that staff might loiter!

At FishyDuck's workplace all the office chairs are actually working toilets, and staff (wearing blinkers to reduce distractions) do their business as they type, to maximise efficiency.

For the next phase of the efficiency improvements, staff will be required to wear a nosebag, to reduce time being lost at lunchbreak.

That's made me genuinely lol

@FishyDuck. ... Seriously?

Naaaah....

I remember about 35 years ago, starting to work as a graduate recruit for ICI at Welwyn Garden City (no manufacturing on the site any more at the time; it was primarily middle and senior management, sales and marketing departments and computing staff).

They worked a form of informal flexitime: in my part of the busness, the senior manager explicitly said that if they didn't trust you to work your hours, then they shouldn't have employed you. As a graduate recruit, I was expected to work more than my contracted hours on occasion, but my immediate line manager always said to me that if I was excessively working long hours and was nevertheless working efficiently, then all I was doing was masking the need to for extra resource.

Some areas did official clocking in, while others didn't (depended on the role).

Colleagues told me of the story about the time that a new Jobsworth started (I think in HR) who took it upon himself to monitor the time that everyone came in and to let their managers know that their subordinates should be disciplined for coming in "late" .

That night, for the first time forever , there was a traffic jam of people leaving at 5pm on the dot. Up until then, most people left some time between 5.30 and 6 - but if "they" were going to quibble about 5 minutes here and there, when most people worked significantly more than required, then they sure as hell weren't going to work a minute more than required.

That particular Jobsworth was moved elsewhere

That particular Jobsworth was moved elsewhere

Yes, to Fishy 's firm.

In my view (and I am not particularly natural at managing - I find spreadsheets far easier than people!) the most important thing you need to do is ensure that people understand why what they are doing matters.

We have graduate trainees in our team. Some of the work that we get them to do is quite dull and repetitive - often just updating spreadsheets over and over. I suspect that there are times when they think that this isn’t why they slogged through 3 years at Oxford and beat off 30 others to get the role. So I always try to ensure that they see what happens to their work.

Once you have been in a meeting where you listen as multi million pound decisions are made on the back of your work suddenly that work seems a lot more interesting and a lot less repetitive. And it is win/win for me as if someone queries a number then the person who produced the numbers has far more chance of explaining the number than me.

@Mumoftwoyoungkids, you've got it all wrong, i start everyday with my minions scurrying about getting my coffee, then i say "welcome to another day in the gulag", then they have to type in time to the beat of my best slave ship drum, and if they don't keep up i throw them overboard

Mind you, i did get my diploma from the @FishyDuck school of business

I worked in a job where we could only start on the hour or half hour. So if we were in at 9.01, we couldn't log on until 9.30. They kept a tight eye on our swipe card logs to ensure we weren't lying about our time in.
We were frequently minutes late due to traffic on the bus, so we just started getting the bus 15 minutes earlier

Drums are very important for motivating the wage slaves

Fishyduck is a troll. I have seen him/her on other threads, just a stirrer. Ignore.

I used to work somewhere like this. I’d be stuck on a call for 20 minutes after my finish time but couldn’t log it and was also expected to log in 15 mins before I my start time but not log it. So in the end I started play lying them at their own game and refused to work until my start time etc.

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

Hahahahahahaha

I think in the OPS shoes I would log the extra minutes after 5, at least for a while.

The general comments about managers ring true, people over-promoted either because of their technical ability, or I suspect in some cases either as a reward for long service, or to get them out of the way from some other part of the business.

@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.

Oh that's fucking hilarious.

My start time is 8am. Sometimes I'm there on time, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I'll go and get a cuppa, sometimes I won't. Sometimes I get up and wander on over to the Costa concession for a sit down and a hot chocolate whilst I try and think through a problem.

If I need to go and get the kids early I just go and get the kids. If I'm late in because they were playing up before the school run then I'm late in.

Last week I had to sign off early because I felt ill. I emailed my boss and he sent me back a picture of his new puppy with the caption "to help you feel better, rest up".

My boss doesn't give a shit. Do you know why? Because he treats us like adults. And in return we are all more than happy to work extra hours/weekends if needed. Our team is motivated, happy and efficient.

Oh, and I work for a multi-billion pound global
entity.

@NinkiNonkiNikau, you know what i'm talking about

Very petty.

You know you can just set your Skype too busy for the day?

@LadyFlumpalot that's fine in your job
But if you ring 999 and there's nobody there as it's shift changeover.. plus you are relieving someone else from their shift, you can't just wander off and get a coffee and be late!
or a bank or a supermarket contact centre or any of those. Sorry I had to go and get the kids doesn't work for those jobs, your hours are the hours you are logged on and working

Our organisation is a lot like @LadyFlumpalot's employer. Consequently we have really low staff turnover and nobody takes the piss. I don't police my team to make sure that someone's covering at 8am because they do it between themselves.

However I agree with @QueenCT that this approach won't work for all jobs. I do think there are a lot of firms that get needlessly upright about presenteeism though, and that could change their working culture if they wanted. My employer used to be like this but we had a change of CEO. HR recently shared the results of some analysis they'd done, which showed that since the change of culture was implemented, staff turnover has dropped, employee satisfaction is up, our NPS score with our customers is up, sickness is down and productivity has improved.

I think everyone on this thread realises that if you're working an emergency response phone line or similar, different rules apply.

I worked in the NHS for years. If course you make sure you're on shift on time, because other people are genuinely disadvantaged if you're late. It's not petty or jobsworth-y to expect punctuality in that workplace scenario.

But the OP isn't talking about that. I am willing to bet a year's salary that absolutely no one and nothing is inconvenienced in any way even if OP does indeed log on 1 minute late.

Covidisdrivingmecrazy

You know you can just set your Skype to busy for the day?

It will switch to "away" or "inactive" if you're not doing anything though.