To refuse to provide bank statement to my work to prove I was in the office

[HanExplorer]

I’ve found myself in a very unusual situation and am standing firm so far despite pressure.

I work in a hybrid role with a requirement to attend our office twice a week, this is measured monthly based on card swipe data. On one of the days in May, I forgot my pass so was issued a temporary one to use that day.

Earlier this month my manager flagged I was showing a day short for office attendance in May and said I’d need to make up a further day in June. I looked at the dates they had on record and quickly realised the missing one was when I had the temporary pass so that obviously hadn’t registered on the system.

I explained this to my manager and she still maintained I’d need to attend an extra day to balance the totals on the system as there ‘wasn’t any record of me attending’.

I realised I’d spent money in the on site restaurant that day and there’d be a record on my bank showing the company name. I screenshotted this on my phone, cropped it so you could see the date and sent it to my manager.

She has checked with her manager and told me that I need to provide a copy of a bank statement which shows my name and the transaction - that would of course also show all my other activity!!

This has been dragging on and I’m standing firm so far, but I’ve had a call booked in with my manager and her manager for tomorrow and I’m wary of what they are going to say.

My office is over an hours train journey each way so not a case of driving 5 minutes down the road to work a further day - regardless, I don’t feel I should do out of principle.

No - because there's no law in the UK that says you have to have a list of people on site, so for companies that don't, this would be a pointless exercise. At my previous company (which was a very large global company), the fire marshalls did a full sweep of the building to check for people (or reported when they exited if they had been unable to complete it). Nobody took a register. The idea was that a sweep would find people who were injured/unable to evacuate so they could either be helped or reported to the fire service. Anyone silly enough to work through or stay put were adult enough to make their own decisions, and the fire services would be made aware of their presence.

There are plenty of businesses where a register would be pointless. Shops for example - nobody knows who is in the shop at any given time. A hotel - you can't know who is in the hotel bar rather than in their room. Restaurants - nobody is noting down who is there, who has left, who has nipped outside for a smoke.

Schools take registers because they should know exactly who is on site at any given time for security reasons not related to the fire. So if you have a security set up that means you need to know exactly who is on site, then of course it makes sense to use that in the case of an evacuation. But it is not a legal requirement and many companies don't have that knowledge.

I see why it's annoying you, but just do it, and it'll be over. Blank out everything else, as many others have said.

But first you will contact HR for clarification on what the formal process, abiding by the company's legal GDPR obligations, is for this as you feel there fundamental breakdown of trust. It deeply concerning I feel as though I am being accused of not only not attending the office, but also effectively being accused by two managers of dishonestly and fabrication of evidence and being forced to provide bank statements containing my private information in an unsafe manner.

This. Why the heck can't they speak to reception or whoever issues temp passes?

What a workplace. There's one thing having a rule but enforcing it to that degree is childish in the extreme.

Yep, 100% this. Sounds like a completely made up problem. No company in this day and age would need a bank statement showing a transaction as proof someone was on site😂

They do have that. It's swiping in with their passes. OP failed to complete the process correctly as she forgot her pass, so the onus is now on her to prove that she was indeed in the office, despite the record clearly showing that she didn't swipe in.

I'm also really rather shocked that there isn't a process for temporary passes. My gut instinct is that there is, and OP isn't on the record of temporary passes issued. Whether this is because co-incidentally there was a process error on the day that OP forgot her pass, was seen by no-one in the office, didn't log into the office network and didn't attend any meetings or whether it was because OP is pulling a fast one and didn't go in, only OP knows.

But, on the face of it, the normal checks that employees would do - pass swipe records/temporary pass records/ confirmation of attendence at meetings/confirmation of attendence by colleagues show that OP wasn't in the office, it's not unreasonable to ask her to prove she was in the office in these circumstances.

And a bank screenshot showing the clearing date and establishment name doesn't prove that. A bank statement showing the transaction date and location of the establishment would. For example, lets say the office cafe concession is a Costa and OP was meant to be in the office on Friday 2nd May. A screenshot saying:

2nd May - COSTA -£3.59 doesn't prove she was in the office that day.

But a full statement narrative saying
2nd May - COSTA Office Location 2nd May -£3.59 would be a pretty reasonable indication that she was.

However:
2nd May - COSTA Home/Other Location 2nd May -£3.59
2nd May - COSTA Office Location 1st May -£3.59
2nd May - COSTA Home/Other Location 1st May -£3.59
would not prove she was in the office that day, and one of them would actually prove she wasn't. So the devil is in the detail.

OP is adamant that she was in the office on that day, and it's really easy for her to prove it. So why won't she?

When our badge-swipe tracking started, my manager warned us that if we forgot our badge, we might as well go home rather than request a temporary one, because our day wouldn't count. I assumed this was now standard for large companies. I'm surprised yours is even offering to let you try to prove attendance in any other way. Good luck, because I agree it's ludicrous.

I’d do this - leave your name, last 4 numbers of your card and just the charge for work. Then they get what they want, you keep all your other transactions private

Just show it to them or do the extra day. What a lot of drama over nothing.

Print it out and use Tippex?

Fgs OP I was on your side at the start but now you're just being silly.
You remind me of my MIL. She won't even click on Rightmove links for houses I send her. It's exhausting.

Your only options are ask your colleague who was there to vouch for you (literally why haven't you done this already anyway?) or just blank out the transactions.

I agree but I don't think she should do the extra day only because it looks like she's being shady still and has been caught out.

Is there a reason you can’t redact the info that you don’t want seen?

Surely what they actually need is a print or screenshot of the transaction details. A print of your bank statement will only show the date it cleared and the retailer. When you click into the transition it will give you the transaction details, so date of the actual transaction along with clearing date and the actual location of the retailer. This is what the company require as its this that will prove if you were or were not in the office on that particular day.

I’d also flag up that their system for temporary passes seems inadequate if there was ever a fire etc.

Jesus Christ just print a copy of the statement, blank out other transactions with a big black marker and take it next time you’re in the office

Completely agree. What an insane hill to die on.

It is a ridiculous situation. Could you print them off, redact then yourself then scan them to yourself and email them to the boss.
Failing that I’d just go in to be honest!

Sorry, I missed that they don’t record issuing temporary passes. That is incredibly lackluster security.

I guess I am used to my rare trips to the office, which vaguely resembles Ft. Knox.

I understand why it's the principle.

I worked somewhere once, it was an office role in the city where is pretty normal to work upwards of 10 hours.

They were logging if anyone was later than 9am and using HR to threaten them.

Guess what happened? People no longer worked late, they no longer worked above and beyond. They hung around the gates chatting until 8.59am and clocked in.

Employers treating you like a child does absolutely nothing for good will. I would be telling them to FO in more polite words than that.

I think this says so much. Almost as if actually turning up for work as contracted is doing your employer a favour.

Gods this thread is like “cancel the cheque”.

The OP has already stated:

I realised I’d spent money in the on site restaurant that day and there’d be a record on my bank showing the company name. I screenshotted this on my phone, cropped it so you could see the date and sent it to my manager

ie manager won’t accept screenshots/ cropped information.

Multiple posters have pointed out that black pen/sharpie redaction is not secure, nor are online pdf editors. They are “free” in return for parts of the data.

OP has also stated:
I have asked re. a record of my temporary pass and been told no record is kept - I have my employer number and they viewed my photo on the system to verify and handed the pass over without recording anything

ie the process at this company is to do fuck all in terms of record keeping on staff attendance where a pass is lost or mislaid or forgotten - hardly an unusual event in most organisations.

The notion that your employer has all your personal and bank info so it doesn’t matter is nonsense. Payroll have your info, HR will have access to your info but random line managers do not and should not.

All of this misses the fundamental point that if the only way a manager can monitor staff is through pass swipes into the building they are a bloody useless manager working in a sloppy organisational culture. Better companies are available.

What a terrible way to treat staff, so wrong on a number of levels.

1. Why don’t they have a record of people using temporary passes? Surely if it has to be swiped there must be data somewhere on their use?
2. Such a pedantic way to deal with such a simple human error as forgetting your pass!
3. And why bother even issuing temporary passes if their use can’t be tracked?
4. I’m sure you can’t be obliged to show a bank statement! What if you hadn’t used the restaurant that day and had brought in your lunch or gone out to eat? What then?
5. Clearly there is a climate of no trust in your workplace.
6. They clearly want everything to tally on their ‘system’ but how does the information they want even feed into that? Is there is a button entitled ‘client proved they were in work by providing bank statement evidence of using on site restaurant’? And it’s some jobsworths role to input all that information?

Provide the redacted statement if you want to and if it’s possible but I’d be making it clear I’m not happy and looking for another job.

For goodness sake, you can print out a copy of the bank statement and go over the bits you don't want your employers to see with a black felt tip or tippex.

You can redact it yourself without using any external program.

For example, take a screenshot of the statement using e.g. (on Windows) the snipping tool (Windows key + Shift + S; then drag to capture) and then paste it into something where you can add boxes to blank out the bits you don't want them to see. You could use PPT for this, or something IrfanView (free download).

Then stabilize the document by saving it as a PDF.

Not really a faff, certainly not as much of a faff as travelling in for a meeting!

Can't you print it off and black ink the bits you want to keep private? Wouldn't be a hill I'd die on in your circumstances.

If your DP actually works in "cybersecurity" he would be able to tell you there are countless secure ways of doing this. The easiest, which I could have done at the age of about 8, being take a screenshot of the full statement, paste it into word or paint or whatever, draw black boxes over the bits you want to hide, take a NEW screenshot of that and save that as a new document. The image data will "read" the black boxes as part of the original imagine (the second screenshot) so they won't be able to be edited/removed. Not that you'd assume your employer would care that much to do it.

I can totally see why you're frustrated and employer sounds annoying, but you're the one who sought to rely on the payment so not unreasonable to prove it was you who spent it, and when.

If you don't want to "hand over" the info, even redacted, can't you just show your statement on screen to your employer?