Boss takes 15 minutes off construction worker's pay when he was 1 minute late, his refusal to work sparks chain reaction with other staff: 'I'm not getting paid until 6:15 so I'm not doing any work until 6:15. I enjoy what I do but I don't do it for free'

Bosses will often get really annoyed when you're even a few minutes or seconds late for your job. Even though it might not seem like a big deal at the time, they have a point. Being late shows a lackadaisical commitment to your job, along with disorganization. And when your job requires a strict timeschedule to keep things running smoothly, as they often do, you're just being careless. Of course, things happen, and sometimes forces outside of your control will cause you to be late. At that point, your boss should be considering your previous punctuality and other circumstances before taking this one instance too far.

In order to make you see the gravitas of your lateness, some will decide to impose a bigger penalty upon you than the crime, trying to brute-force you into complying through severe penalties like your parents might have done when you were a child. Of course, like when you were a child, this heavy hand might backfire and cause you to rebel at the injustice, and may cause your siblings to join you.

Time is money, it's the foundational fact of the entire working arrangement, and it's not up to anyone to arbitrarily decide the terms of that agreement and what time has been worked. That's why it doesn't serve as a suitable punishment to deduct an employee's pay for being late. When this boss tried to do so, it sparked a chain reaction in the workplace that had rippling effects affecting efficiency well outside of the few minutes they were worried about.

Setting ultimatums is a double-edged sword; people like to throw them around way too often as a tactic to get their way, but the problem with throwing your weight around too much is that all it takes is one person resisting and calling your bluff to give the whole game away.