If you start work at 9 am, is it OK to walk through the door at 9 am ?

[mmhhhkkkk]

Or is that a bit ' late ' ?

I think you need to have turned your computer on by 9am. If it takes ages to warm up, that’s not your fault

Depends on the job. Mine would be fine but would also assume you'd finish when you were done for the day and not begrudge ten minutes to finish up a call or something at the end of the day.

Alternatively, I think it's fair that some places are very strict about wanting people at their desk and ready at 9 am but would expect to down tools on the dot of 5 pm. I hate places where the employer expects it to win both ways - gets pissy if you aren't at your desk and working at 9 am but assumes you'll be happy to hang about at 5 pm to just finish that piece of work or something.

IANAL but would think that in terms of employment law booting up your computer would be considered work. Going to make porridge before you've even started obviously isn't. If you have a 9am meeting or need to be online then obviously you need to arrive before 9 but that should be paid time.

Late. It takes a few minutes to put your stuff away, go to the loo, get a drink, and be ready to do your job at 9. I work in a school. Teachers are always early but I expect support staff to arrive before their start time of 830. 830 means be ready to supervise children at 830, not coming in the door.

"The toilet, coffee etc should have been in their own time."

Well, employees often get toilet and coffee breaks...
The kind of petty clocking in attitude encourages this kind of thing though.

Depends on the job. Shift work/retail/service kind of thing, in early, stuff in locker, uniform on and hands washed etc, ready to clock on and get on the shop floor/behind the bar/till for 9.

Offices IME (excepting Soviet-style call centres and the like with little Hitler managers), show your face/put on computer/dump bag and coat at 9 ish, amble to kitchen, perhaps pop back out for a coffee/some milk/baked goods, come back and stand about chatting to whoever you see…
I may have just been lucky/lazy with jobs. But in my defence this has always been the general culture, certainly not just me!

Our phone starts ringing 9am. My PA gets in at 8.50 usually. I'm in at 7....

I think if you arrive at 9am and start straight away as I know people who do that and will often work a good few minutes after so no issue . Saying that I work with someone who’s in at 9am then makes a brew then a chat so can be 9.15 before any work started that . I’ll be anything to 10-15 minutes early to arriving on the dot depending on traffic but I’d start work as soon as I arrive even if early .

I used to do a job where there was a handover, but they had shifts overlap by 15 minutes to cover it. They didn't expect us to do the handover in our own time. Ditto toilet breaks 🤣

When I was young, I would have said 'ooh, no, that's taking the piss that is. We should all be good little workers, present and correct at 09:00 and ready to do the boss's bidding'.

Now I am old, I say 'do you know what? Who fucking cares. It's only work. I'll do as little as I can get away with and if you don't like it, do feel free to dob me in - it won't make any difference because the bosses are all skivers too - hadn't you noticed?'

I've never worked in an environment like that, and would absolutely hate to start now! Luckily I've only really worked in "task-focused" places, rather than "clock-focused". As long as i get my work done, the hours are flexible.

I think you should be ready to work at 9am. Not hanging up your jacket or putting your bag down etc. For example if you were meeting a client I would expect you to be greeting the client at 9 am. Not walking in the door.

You should be ready to work at 9am, so late.

@Wagglerock

Every work computer I've ever had has needed at least a couple of minutes to start up so yeah getting through the door at 9am would make you late.

Why does it have to start up on your time though?

I start my flexi clock from the moment I switch the ‘on’ button of my laptop!

How can anyone possibly answer that?

You do realise that every job Is different and every workplace has different cultures

What are you hoping to get from this thread?

Contracted hours should be you are there ready to work not just walking in. End of day, tools down at the specified time.

Just one person can cost a company 50 minutes a week. Spread that cost over several staff, and over a year that's a lot of money people are paid to walk in, take their coats off etc.

Had one company that started docking those unworked hours over the month.

I was once hauled into the boss’ office for arriving at 9am (job was 9-5).

I had to catch a bus to get to the office - and I could either get a ridiculously early one which would get me in for 8.10, or a later one which should have got me in for 8.45. But this one was often a bit late. I was always happy to stay later if needed but this wasn’t good enough

I wasn’t kicking about in town for 40 minutes waiting for the office to open - I used to risk the later bus. Usually it was fine. I now have a job with flexitime which suits me perfectly

I tend to walk through the door with less than 5 mins to spare as otherwise a bunch of my own time gets commandeered by my colleagues wanting offload all their leftover shite onto me. The fanciful ideas I have about logging on and making myself a nice coffee to calmly get started never come to fruition.

I worked somewhere where the computer took 10-15 mins to boot up. Sometimes longer if they crashed and you had to reboot. They didn't want to "waste money" on new ones. I counted my start time as when I was at my desk ready to work, not when the computer finished loading. I wasn't going to give them 50-75+ mins of my time each week for free because they were too cheap to buy computers that actually worked!

you should start at 9 - so if that means a few mins early to make sure you're ready to go, that's all.

@Jasmine11

I think 9am walking through the door and that has been the norm at every job I've worked, admittedly all office based, I'm sure there are different expectations for some jobs say for example a shop floor worker, a call centre or somewhere where perhaps a handover is needed. But for office based jobs with no public facing role, if it takes 10 mins or whatever for your computer to be ready to login then surely that's part of your work day and shouldn't be worked as unpaid time..

Exactly this. My work laptop will randomly decide, having logged on and started up, not to connect to the internet. The only way to fix it is to shut down and re-start. They have another think coming if they think I’m going to spend my personal time hanging around for their shite computer!

For example if you were meeting a client I would expect you to be greeting the client at 9 am. Not walking in the door.

Oh, I totally agree, for meetings etc you arrive early to sort out yourself, and the meeting room if that's your job.
But as others have said, it depends on the job. In my old jobs, outside of fixed meetings it really didn't matter much if you were a few minutes after the official start time.
And I'd often work through lunch and stay late, or come in early when really busy, to work when it was quiet.

Also, organisational IT issues that take 15 minutes to log into a PC and all required systems aren’t my problem to eat into my own time.

Mist teachers I have worked with are in school an hour or more before classes start. I can't recall anyone who would arrive on the bell, unless there had been an emergency of some sort. Staff arriving at the Junior school to find there was a last minute closure due to flooding bundled their kids back in the car and brought them with them.

Walking in the door at 9 is not starting work at 9. As others have said, at your desk and actually starting to work at 9.