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Woman pointing during tense office meeting while coworkers argue around laptops and documents.
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Milking a relaxed workplace policy isn't some kind of power move, it's just inconsiderate, and it never stays one person's problem for long. The moment one person starts treating their schedule like a rough guideline, others start paying attention. Some of them start doing the same. Suddenly the whole department is slipping and the manager who tries to pull things back looks like the villain, even though all they're asking is for people to show up when they said they would.
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They abused a good thing and destroyed department morale
Years ago I was managing a back office team for a bank. We had a laid back approach about certain things like clocking in. There were no time clocks just the honor system of you should be on time and if you’re not, make it up at the end of your shift. If you worked overtime document it and you were paid for it.
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I had an employee I will call Carrie. She was average work wise and a single mom. My only real issue with her was how she managed her time. She was scheduled from 7AM to 330PM with a 30 minute lunch everyday. She showed up 5-10 minutes late almost every single day. She would walk in, start her computer, put her stuff down, then go to the cafeteria for breakfast and coffee (the line was always long and took about 10 minutes to get through) and then sit in the cafeteria and eat for about 30 minutes. Once she was done and ready to work it was usually around 8AM. Most of us ate breakfast at our desks.
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When lunch came, she always ate out and it was almost impossible to get even fast food in a 30 minute turnaround. She would get food, eat it there, then come back, and almost always took an hour, but many days it was 90 minutes. But when 330 came she was out the door, no time make up, no nothing. I mentioned it several times and no change.
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Woman speaking emphatically in tense office meeting with coworkers, laptops and documents on table.
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When her first performance review with me came up I told her these habits were unacceptable and she needed to adhere to her schedule or make up the time after or I would have to write her up. She got upset at me and said that her son’s daycare didn’t open until 630 and drop off took a while. I asked where her daycare was and it was just a few minutes down the street from our office so I asked politely that she try to make it on time, to stop spending the first hour in the cafeteria and taking longer than 30 minutes for lunch or I would be adjusting her schedule to come in later with an hour lunch to accommodate her needs instead of writing her up. She agreed, and then just kept doing the same.
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I warned her several times and she got mad and said that I was picking on her over a few minutes. I repeated that it wasn’t a few minutes, it was at least an hour a day. She went on and on about how single mothers need more flexibility and I eventually told her that I was changing her schedule to 8AM-5PM with an hour lunch. She threw an epic tantrum.
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She said how she would no longer be able to pick up her kid at daycare. I confirmed with her that the daycare closed at 630 and she should have no problem with that since it was down the street. Her reply was that she needed to run errands before picking him up. Then she objected to the hour lunch, I told her that is what you already take. Some tears and complaints followed, threats to quit, but I stuck to my guns. Other members of the team had already complained about her and some even started doing the same as her, coming in later, and taking long lunch breaks and I needed to put my foot down since productivity was slipping. I was the new manager and felt that the team were testing my boundaries and seeing what I would do.
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Apparently right after this meeting she contacted HR and told them that I was discriminating against a single mother and she had to have the original schedule or else. A few days after that I get called into a meeting with my boss, his boss and HR. I told them everything and had it all documented like I was supposed to and they agreed with me in theory but when she said the awful Discrimination word they got scared and said that her schedule would go back to what it was and I needed to manage her better.
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I was so angry, my first serious decision as head of the team was just undone and it made me look ineffectual and sort of dumb. So I did what they asked. I documented every time she came late, would go to the cafeteria to find her every morning and tell her to go back to her desk, same with lunch, and asking her to make up the time at the end of the shift. She didn’t though, just kept going on the same way, and complaining to HR that I was harassing her. My response to them was that I am doing what you asked, I am managing her.
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Now she was not the only one who did this, she was just worse offender. Several people would do similar things and some even tried to sneak out early. The other managers and I put forth a request for time clocks to show what was happening, how much time they actually working and that we were not just whining about the employees. This was granted, but started another fight that overtook the entire department.
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We ordered actual timestamps that you had to physically stamp on a piece of paper. They had to come to my desk, find their name on the paper for that day and stamp the time on it for start of shift lunch and end of shift What was revealed was that most of the department was late every day and taking long lunches, Carrie was just the most obvious about it and never tried to hide it. Their paychecks were smaller since they were no longer getting paid a flat 40 hours plus the reported OT but instead were being paid whatever hours were listed on their stamps. I also caught several people trying to clock in their friends, saying things like “they are just in the parking lot of course”.
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Woman using smartphone at desk with laptop while coworkers check phones during office meeting.
Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
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Moral went way down. Many people blamed Carrie since she was the one that went to HR and kicked the entire battle off. Saying if she had only just made up her time at the end like she was supposed to we would have never started that process and they were kind of right even though she wasn’t the only one, just the worst about it. That her outright refusal to change affected the entire department. People started quitting, over time clocks! Telling us that it wasn’t fair that they were being micromanaged. Carrie eventually quit and I was so relieved. I could get someone in who might actually listen but the damage was done. We were no longer laid back, but strict. You could no longer come in early and leave early, you had to work your actual schedule every day.
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I realized that anything I tried to do could be undone by the complaining of one person, that in a single moment HR could and would undo my decision out of fear of being sued. All we (department managers) tried to do was hold some of them to a schedule and change it if necessary. Oh well I left too eventually and took a new non management position because all that drama was not worth it.
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Edit: her work was not always done before she left. She was late on completing tasks sometimes and would have got them all done, if she worked her schedule. She was also a terrible influence on the entire department.
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The discrimination card is where things really go sideways though. Not because raising it is always wrong, but because HR's default setting is full panic mode the second they hear it. Documented evidence goes out the window, the manager who handled everything correctly gets undermined in front of their team, and everyone walks away having learned that the right complaint at the right moment can override basically any decision. That's a terrible lesson for a workplace to absorb.
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After that it's just a slow unraveling. Trust is gone so now there's time clocks and logged lunch breaks and a paper trail for everything, and it all exists purely because a few people couldn't just make up the time they missed. The employees who'd been doing the right thing all along suddenly have smaller paychecks and zero flexibility, and they're mad at management instead of the people who actually caused it, which is predictable but still pretty frustrating to watch.
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Laid-back cultures don't bounce back from this stuff. Once the timestamps are in and the vibe is gone, that's pretty much it. The good employees start leaving and the whole thing falls apart, all because a few people couldn't appreciate what they had while they had it.
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