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.

Totally agree with this

It’s 100% true. Our insurance policy is available on our intranet.

OP has skirted by the numerous “redact” it posts…

I’m not sure why, but I don’t think she wants to do it.

Black out all other info or provide train ticket

Supply and redact. You’re both being as bad as each other.

Also, if my manager was this petty, I’d be looking for another job.

Card transactions don't always show on a bank statement as being debited on the same day as they were made, sometimes they come out a day or two later. On this basis, I would push for them to do their own internal investigation as the 'proof' they're asking for doesn't actually prove anything and is intruding on your privacy. Ultimately though, I'd be looking for another job as I wouldn't want to work for these jobsworth idiots.

This is such an unnecessary issue.

They are not being unreasonable to want something from you to show that the screenshotted transaction you prodiced actually comes from your account. You can easily provide that by reacting (blanking out) all the unnecessary data from your bank statement and just leaving your name at the top at the specific transaction. You will also presumably have a record of your train travel - either the ticket or a transaction in your bank statement showing purchase.

You have two choices: either provide the information that they’ve requested in which case you won’t have to do the extra day in the office or maintain your stubborn refusal to provide the information in which case you will have to do the extra day.

If I was your manager I would be questioning why you feel so strongly about refusing to provide the requested information to verify that you’d been in the office without any good reason (when your reason about not wanting to provide your whole bank statement is so easily and obviously addressed by redaction). It would leave me suspecting that you’d lied to me about being in the office with a the temporary pass and manufactured the screenshot (or it was from another colleague) and it would leave me with concerns about your honesty and credibility.

This. I’d be job hunting. What an awful company to work for

Why can’t they check their own records for the temporary pass? This is their responsibility.

Having said that, if it can be resolved by showing a train ticket or redacted bank statement I don’t see why you aren’t just doing it. This is one of those things where I’d say pick your battles, surely this isn’t worth the energy you’re spending being cross about it (albeit I do agree with you that it is ridiculous).

Even so, it's not the requirement to be in the office here, but the way OTT dismissive reaction to a failure of their own security processes - and shifting the blame on to somebody else.

I wonder if they will apologise to OP and the other employees when it's proven that their security pass system is dangerously faulty?

There could have been a fire in the building on that day and OP - or anybody else - could have died because of faulty security protocols (or negligence on the part of those responsible for implementing them) that falsely claimed that all registered occupants of the building were safely outside.

Why would you not just have security passes, but also go to the trouble of issuing temporary ones for those who don't have their standard ones - and then just ignore them anyway?

If you were issued a temporary pass surely there’s a record of this?

And why haven’t you just shown them the bank statement with anything you’d prefer to be private redacted out?

Having seen the film Hidden Figures ... how successful is Sharpie-ing text if they hold the bit of paper up to the light? (see from 25s in clip)

I agree with opening your banking app or logging in online and searching for the relevant transaction and making only that available but it does seem odd that they have no record of the temporary pass.

If you can't select a single transaction and have an on-screen sheet for the bank statement (e.g. a PDF) then I recommend using PowerPoint or Inkscape (free) to redact.

Below are two articles about redacting text which I read in 2013 (so they're quite old!), but interesting - if you like that sort of thing :)

Redacting Sensitive Information, United States District Court, Northern District of California

The problem of redaction, Restricetd Data: A Nuclear History blog

Jo

When I went in the office, even if we had our own passes, we had to sign in manually as well. Fortunately they stopped this after a while as it was a pain in the proverbial having to carry a laptop bag, cup of coffee, and sign in.

Well this absolutely isn’t true. As someone who is vaguely responsible for the number of days her team is in the office at one of these places, we are not formally recording, monitoring or managing days in the office. We are just strongly encouraging a specified number of days per week, but it absolutely will not be part of year end performance or bonus discussions (I make those bonus decisions so I can say that with authority).

Your management clearly don't have enough to do if they can spare the time to this sort of thing

You seem reluctant to do anything to resolve this so take the consequences…

Surely there's some sort of log of the temp pass being signed out and back in?

Stand firm and tell them to find the evidence themselves.

So, you were in the office but...

There's no record of your temporary pass nor presumably can the security personnel confirm it was provided to you.

No member of your team saw you in the office or interacted with you.

You attended no meetings nor can give any evidence of working with anyone in the office.

There's presumably no record from IT of you connecting to the office network.

And you're not prepared to provide them with a redacted bank statement that proves that you were in the office.

Faced with all the evidence above, if I was asked to analyse it, I would say that on balance of probability it points to you not being in the office tbh.

Why on earth don’t you get the statement on line, showing your name and address and that particular transaction? If they won’t accept that as sufficient, just redact everything else on the statement, as almost all the pp have suggested, and get on with life.

This thread is turning into "cancel the cheque".

Why is OP ignoring everyone asking about the pass?

Surely you just ask the person you got the pass from to verify for you.

Can your security desk not confirm that they issued the temporary pass?

If not, redact the bank statement.

And I'd be looking for a new job rather that stay somewhere where professional trust is down the drain.

It's ridiculous that your manager can't accept your word, the information you've already provided, or use their discretion.
They're an adult, but not treating you like one.

You're bank statement is private, they should not be asking for it.

Well I literally work in one and live with one who works in another and it’s the case for both of our bonuses and every one of our colleagues 😂
I know several people who are happy to have theirs reduced based on the cost of their long commute and so they specially never hit their 60% and yes they have lost money from their bonus.

Probably because she wasn’t in the office which is why neither of the two very obvious solutions will suit her.

It does seem weird that they think you have somehow faked the transaction on your phone, but as previous posters have said it is so easy to blank out other transactions on your bank statement. If you have a banking app, you can just search for the transaction and filter so only that one is showing and this method would still show your name and bank account details without compromising your privacy.