Not so much an AIBU, but is it possible to check out this story?

[narisha99]

Is it possible to look up historical traffic data?

I have a colleague who blames her absence from an important teams meeting due to a 'at a standstill for 2 hours on the M4' on Friday afternoon (she had a lunchtime appointment, but says she got home at 5pm instead of 3pm).

Quite frankly she has form for lying, and I think this was an excuse for not attending a meeting :-( .

Is there anyway I can find out if this big accident actually happened or not?

Also worth noting - the M25 queue I sat in was reported as trouble between junctions 24 & 25, but queued /slow from j21.

the queue on M4 May we’ll have backed up a long old way.

bur you can reasonably talk about how she reacted - not calling in to say she wasn’t home to join the video meeting (if she can call from her car hands free), did she try to contact you as soon as she got home at 5, if not, rather than just leaving it all weekend to discuss this morning, set out an expectation of how she should have responded.

that said, it does seem likely she’s telling the truth.

I actually thought it would be an easy thing to look up on google maps, or the like, it wasn't mean to be so contentious.

Thanks for those that have suggested twitter, FB etc. Have done some more googling and can't find anything that suggests that there would have been a big enough traffic problem to cause a '2 hour standstill'

I will be having a discussion with her about this, it's not about 'catching her out' it's about going in prepared and fact checking as best I can to guide the conversation.

If I were you, I’d ask for this thread to be deleted. If she saw this she would recognise herself instantly and would probably not be too happy that you’re disclosing work business on a public forum, or asking for advice on the best traffic apps so you can catch her in a lie. I’m pretty sure HR would agree with her.

I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favours here. You’re potentially tying the hands of your HR dept if they want to either take disciplinary action or get rid of her, and you could also get yourself into a bit of trouble. My managers would be horrified if I’d posted about one of my team, even if one or two are a right pain in the arse on occasion.

It’s just a waste of time.

You can’t prove that she wasn’t stuck in traffic. Even if there isn’t any record in the news etc that isn’t proof of anything.

You can accuse her of lying but it will just be an unsubstantiated accusation, not something that can be acted on.

If she has her Google timeline on she could prove her journey time to you.

If I was in doubt I'd be happy to show mine as evidence.

There was an accident on the M4 on Friday but I can’t remember exactly where and unless we got there before traffic got really bad I’m not sure there was much of delay.

Op could ask, but she might well not have on, which won’t prove anything.

If she is lying and she did happen to have it on, she will obviously say she didn’t, which also won’t prove anything.

I used to have a manager like this who thought I was lying about a particular journey I did semi regularly from the inner city out into the sticks- he decided I was lying about how long it took and claiming too many hours… so he decided I had to ring him immediately I arrived home every time I did that journey- he genuinely thought that this ‘proved’ when I got home 🤦‍♀️.

So I read this amazing work page - ask a manager- I highly recommend it as it is full of amazing advice about handling crazy employees.

They had a similar problem with someone who doubted a relative dying story was true and wanted to check. The advice basically was, don't go down this rabbit hole. Address work problems as you see them, if there are problems there address them, if there are patterns name the pattern and ask for ideas how to stop them recurring. Believe your employees. Noone wants to work for this distrustful snooping manager, even if you are right, this is not a good way to manage.

Try contacting national highways, they would have the information and I think they provide details on delays for insurance claims if someone misses flight due to long delays, for example.

OP, who do you think is going to get into more trouble with HR, someone who has missed a meeting maybe without a good reason, or someone who has posted identifiable information about an employee on a large public forum? 🤔

"Going in prepared" doesn't mean coming with a list of receipts to A-HA her. Especially as others have said, finding proof that the traffic happened or didn't happen doesn't prove anything.

This is not a good way to be a manager.

Your approach doesn't sound quite right to me, OP. Have you spoken to HR about the best way to approach your concerns?

In general, are the lies impacting on her work? Obviously, this time she missed a meeting, but perhaps suggest that next time she works from the office for important meetings (I also don't know how that would go from an HR point of view - perhaps it would be better if everyone in the meeting was told they had to attend in person?)? What impact have the other lies had? Is she trying to cover for the fact she hasn't completed work/met objectives? If so, could there be another reason she is trying to cover instead of asking for help? Like she needs further training, or she says yes to too many things, or she is just disorganised and needs help structuring work?

I'd agree with others re: getting this removed.

This is an automated Twitter / X feed which reports on the current status of the M4: https://twitter.com/Traffic_M4 - if you scroll back a few days you can see Tweets sent on Friday 26 April 2024. If you're on a desktop you can hover over the date to get the time (or click on the tweet and it appears at the bottom, same for phones). Each Tweet links to the same web page but note that that page is continuously updated so you can't scroll very far back to see more info there.

Looks like there were a few things were happing on Friday on the M4 so I'd suggest a cooling of the jets before meeting with your colleague :)

Jo

If you did this and snooped around online before talking to me, I'd go to HR about your conduct.

Assume every time she skips a meeting or work responsibility, she's lying.
That's what happens when you pull too many excuses. It stops mattering whether it's true or not, just whether she'll actually show up for work.
Having said that, if it's not affecting her actual output in a business sense she may just be a very late, panicked person with lots on in her personal life. Not an excuse, but I doubt it's in malice. Still means she's a bit rubbish reliability wise but you knew that already.
I guess HR is the best way forward as her timekeeping shouldn't be such a burden on your work or conscience.