To leave work 15 mins early?

[hnagw]

Work in a busy office environment. Standard office hours are roughly 9-5, 5 days a week in office. Sometimes people work from home if they have a doctors appt or something. Hours are often a lot longer though (think 9 or 10pm) but people leave the office around 5:30pm to eat get home for dinner and then work again.

The other day, I had finished all my work and someone was reviewing a task. I would need to process the revisions that afternoon. I’d finished all my admin stuff. It was 4:45 so I thought I’d take the chance to beat rush hour and hopefully the task would be ready for my review when I got home.

Get home and have multiple missed calls from a manager I very rarely work with. No voice mails or emails. Then it appears I was needed to help him with something but he had to give the task to someone else instead. This is despite me being around all day and seeing him in the corridor multiple times he didn’t say a peep.

AIBU to leave 15 mins early when waiting for work to come in?

All this outrage from posters about the hours you work, join a union etc...

Are you a solicitor OP? Your working day feels very familiar!

And I would say yes, given that you were going to log on when you got home anyway it's reasonable to leave early - but I would always clear that with my line manager first.

Sounds like that manager could do with managing their time more effectively rather than trying to get you to do something for them just before you are due to clock off. It's a very interesting culture - to expect people to regularly work 5,10,15 minutes over their hours but the minute they take a little back everyone is up in arms. Fuck 'em I say.

It sounds like you work far too many hours.