Chronic late to work

[Gumbo4x4]

You worked for some very generous companies. I think at least one person at every company I have worked for has been fired for inability to get to work.
DW and I have had a spare car for the last 27 years partly so we always have a way to get to work in the event of a dead battery or flat tire . Of course, a cab would be an option, but we would have to pay for it.

I've had to threaten employees for missing due to unreliable cars. 3 straight days is called "voluntary termination" (aka job abandonment). Lose your job AND ineligible for unemployment.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

I would take the person without kids on public transit over the person with kids and a car... If I were going to judge a persons ability on something so meaningless, that is.

Which is why we're not allowed to ask. That would be discrimination, justified or not.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

You know, I am not saying that a car is not a reliable form of transportation--it is and my husband uses one for work.

But you are still not entirely correct--since all things almost certainly will not be equal. Someone who relies on a car all the time is not nearly as likely to even have a bike that is in good working order, have the stamina to jump on and ride it to work at the spur of the moment (if they are not used to riding regularly over distances), or necessarily even know the route that a bike can legally take (if their normal car commute involves the highway for example).

And public transit? If you do not live in a big city in the US--those who do not rely on it often don't even realize it is there. I am serious--I have encountered people over the years in at least three different areas who were startled when I said i had taken a bus to get somewhere, because they were completely unaware that the city HAD a us system. Even those who are vaguely aware of such a system, are often not versed in which connection to take, what stop is near their house, which is near their employer, etc.

Realistically, if their car will not start at 7:30 and they nee to be at work at 8:00 they will not be able to regroup, arrange public transit or ride a bike and make it on time. And, of course, if their car breaks down on the side of the road, or they are stuck in a huge traffic jam, there is no way to even try those things.

At the end of the day, most people use the method of transportation that works best for them--and most people know how to use that method well and make sure it DOES work.

A bike is not really a viable form of transportation unless you live VERY close to work. I mean, if you have to come 20 miles, hopping on your bike when the car won't start is still going to make you VERY late.

Also, many of those who rely on trains and buses still need a car to get TO the bus/train station.

 

[Sabeking]

Here is an interesting one. My DH had an employee who was a delivery driver for his company that showed up on time everyday BUT could never get his deliveries out on time. Constantly it was a new excuse, traffic, had to fill up truck, long line at drive thru, etc... One day a fellow employee was delivering in said employee's neighborhood. The driver in question had his truck parked in front of his house and it was about two in the afternoon. Usually at the end of the shift the trucks were parked at the business. Long story short after some observation said employee was coming home for 2-3 hours a day and watching tv, napping, etc... I'm not sure where he is working now?

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Here is an interesting one. My DH had an employee who was a delivery driver for his company that showed up on time everyday BUT could never get his deliveries out on time. Constantly it was a new excuse, traffic, had to fill up truck, long line at drive thru, etc... One day a fellow employee was delivering in said employee's neighborhood. The driver in question had his truck parked in front of his house and it was about two in the afternoon. Usually at the end of the shift the trucks were parked at the business. Long story short after some observation said employee was coming home for 2-3 hours a day and watching tv, napping, etc... I'm not sure where he is working now?

We had a UPS driver (tractor trailer) who picked up from us who had a similar "problem". He was completing his duties, but racking up WAY too much overtime. They followed him and found him taking VERY long lunches. IIRC, he managed to keep his job, but they moved him off the route to a job that wasn't so independent.

 

[eliza61]

Which is why we're not allowed to ask. That would be discrimination, justified or not.

and unfortunately Gumbo though I think it does have an effect. So I work with scientist. 99% male and although my company is very family friendly, the scientist is the guy who has to interview the candidate. Our candidates usually interview with us for the entire day. We bring them in, take them around, they meet with various folks, we give them lunch etc etc. It's extremely easy to find out a candidates marital status and if they have kids in just routine conversations without even asking.

I've got so many old fogies who really don't want women working for them.

 

[Sabeking]

We had a UPS driver (tractor trailer) who picked up from us who had a similar "problem". He was completing his duties, but racking up WAY too much overtime. They followed him and found him taking VERY long lunches. IIRC, he managed to keep his job, but they moved him off the route to a job that wasn't so independent.

He was fortunate to have been given a second chance.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

and unfortunately Gumbo though I think it does have an effect. So I work with scientist. 99% male and although my company is very family friendly, the scientist is the guy who has to interview the candidate. Our candidates usually interview with us for the entire day. We bring them in, take them around, they meet with various folks, we give them lunch etc etc. It's extremely easy to find out a candidates marital status and if they have kids in just routine conversations without even asking.

I've got so many old fogies who really don't want women working for them.

Yup, like I said earlier - we can't outright ask it as part of the interview, but if they're a serious candidate, we find out

 

[NHdisneylover]

That's great but where I live a cab would be coming from the downtown area in the city next to me which is about a 15 minute ride to my suburban town then 15 minutes back to work.

Not exactly "quick".

Yes, but it is not up to your employer to decide know or decide if where YOU live you can do x,y or z transportation-wise. It is up to them to tell you when you would need to be at work (an if there is the possibility of last minute time when you must rush in, etc) and your responsibility to tell them if you can do that or not (taking into account transportation, childcare, pet care, how well you function if pulled out of bed at 2:00 a.m. or whatever else).
For you, a taxi would not be a good option in the middle of the night. For me, I have a driver two doors own and another on the next block who take calls 24/7 and it would be safer than me trying to drive groggy (because I do not wake up well that fast) even if we had the car sitting in the garage. I know what would work to get me somewhere at a specified time, you know what would work for you--there is no way your employer can know what works for you and every other employ--and it isn't his/her business so long as you get there when needed.

A bike is not really a viable form of transportation unless you live VERY close to work. I mean, if you have to come 20 miles, hopping on your bike when the car won't start is still going to make you VERY late.

Also, many of those who rely on trains and buses still need a car to get TO the bus/train station.

Depends on who you are My brother and sister in law, who regularly ride up Flagstaff Mountain for a warm up before breakfast? He commutes on his bike most days and beats traffic by a lot. If he has to take the car (to drive visiting colleagues to a luncheon or something) he has to plan to leave EARLIER. You are assuming that someone who bikes for transit every day would be in as poor of shape as someone who only does it once in a while (and even if biking in when a car would not start resulted in being late--it is better than not arriving at all, which might well be the case for someone with JUST a car, right?)

Here is an interesting one. My DH had an employee who was a delivery driver for his company that showed up on time everyday BUT could never get his deliveries out on time. Constantly it was a new excuse, traffic, had to fill up truck, long line at drive thru, etc... One day a fellow employee was delivering in said employee's neighborhood. The driver in question had his truck parked in front of his house and it was about two in the afternoon. Usually at the end of the shift the trucks were parked at the business. Long story short after some observation said employee was coming home for 2-3 hours a day and watching tv, napping, etc... I'm not sure where he is working now?

Oh man!

I've had to threaten employees for missing due to unreliable cars. 3 straight days is called "voluntary termination" (aka job abandonment). Lose your job AND ineligible for unemployment.

My point exactly. People with CARS can be just as unreliable as those without. Some people make it their business to be able to get to work on time on a regular basis and others do not.

 

[khertz]

There is one nurse I work with on day shift who is consistently late, arriving at 6:55 am on a good day and 7:10 am on a bad one. We are supposed to be there and ready for report at 6:45 am. She ends up staying late every shift to chart, usually leaving somewhere between 9 and 10:30 pm. She has horrible time management skills (I did her orientation, and learned that time management is one of those things you just can't learn!), and when she does have downtime to be able to chart during the shift, she is usually on the phone with a family member trying to put out some kind of personal fire. We each carry a portable phone, and everyone knows not to take a certain extension that she always carries because you will be getting phone calls from her husband or other family members dozens of times a day! She complains every day about never getting to leave on time or missing lunch, but it is because she can't manage her time! This was brought up in the last unit meeting, but of course she didn't attend, so hopefully the manager brings it up to her personally. It doesn't affect me, but it affects the people who have been working all night and are ready to go home but they have to wait on her to give report.

I think what actually annoys me more, and there are several night shift nurses who do this, are those who get there early at 6:30 pm but they spend 30 minutes looking through charts, writing down their medications to give, etc. so they don't actually come to you to get report until 7. Meanwhile, you have been sitting there watching them and waiting for them to come over. The day shift nurses are getting fed up with that though, and have started making comments to them. If you come early to look through charts, etc before getting report, that's fine. But you should still be ready for report at 6:45 am.

 

[Granny square]

Nurses who do that to other nurses should be fired. They throw everything off for those who are doing their job.

 

[txSleepingBeauty]

There is one nurse I work with on day shift who is consistently late, arriving at 6:55 am on a good day and 7:10 am on a bad one. We are supposed to be there and ready for report at 6:45 am. She ends up staying late every shift to chart, usually leaving somewhere between 9 and 10:30 pm. She has horrible time management skills (I did her orientation, and learned that time management is one of those things you just can't learn!), and when she does have downtime to be able to chart during the shift, she is usually on the phone with a family member trying to put out some kind of personal fire. We each carry a portable phone, and everyone knows not to take a certain extension that she always carries because you will be getting phone calls from her husband or other family members dozens of times a day! She complains every day about never getting to leave on time or missing lunch, but it is because she can't manage her time! This was brought up in the last unit meeting, but of course she didn't attend, so hopefully the manager brings it up to her personally. It doesn't affect me, but it affects the people who have been working all night and are ready to go home but they have to wait on her to give report.

I think what actually annoys me more, and there are several night shift nurses who do this, are those who get there early at 6:30 pm but they spend 30 minutes looking through charts, writing down their medications to give, etc. so they don't actually come to you to get report until 7. Meanwhile, you have been sitting there watching them and waiting for them to come over. The day shift nurses are getting fed up with that though, and have started making comments to them. If you come early to look through charts, etc before getting report, that's fine. But you should still be ready for report at 6:45 am.

That's ridiculous. I cannot stand nurses who are late. I work days now, and there's one person that is consistently late, then wants to drag report on and on. Personally, I clock in at 0638, put my bag down and am ready for report at 0640 generally. I can look at charts on my own time, not yours! And I don't do ANYTHING until all my meds are passed, and everything is charted. I wish more people were the same way. I can count on one hand the number of times I've stayed late to chart

 

[khertz]

That's ridiculous. I cannot stand nurses who are late. I work days now, and there's one person that is consistently late, then wants to drag report on and on. Personally, I clock in at 0638, put my bag down and am ready for report at 0640 generally. I can look at charts on my own time, not yours! And I don't do ANYTHING until all my meds are passed, and everything is charted. I wish more people were the same way. I can count on one hand the number of times I've stayed late to chart

It really is ridiculous, and I don't know if anyone from management has said anything yet. I do know there was a confrontation between her and one of the night nurses the other day that went back to her always being late to leave so she can catch up on charting, and late nurse claimed it's because night shift always gives her a difficult assignment. But I find there are some nurses who can just never get caught up, no matter what kind of assignment they have!

I am the same as you, I almost never stay late to chart except on especially busy busy days where I barely have time to stop and pee, much less chart. But "late" has never been any later than 8:15 pm for me. Some people are still charting their morning assessments at the end of the shift! That has never been and never will be the way I operate. All of the patient rooms have a computer in them, so I assess my patient, chart on them in the room, then move on to the next!

 

[NotUrsula]

What I think is that unless it is the kind of workplace where seamless shift changes are involved (or the employee is responsible for opening a service establishment), I'd talk to the employee about why, and see if a minor schedule change will solve the problem. If that fails, then it is worth it to make it a disciplinary situation; WITH good advance warnings and a set progression of instances to termination. (Believe it or not, some people have never been taught that it is a "norm" to behave a certain way in a workplace, so what a supervisor might think goes without saying could need to be laid out in so many words to make the expectations perfectly clear. Oh, and NEVER use the word "goal" when it is really a quota -- most people consider a goal to be something that you HOPE to reach, not something that you HAVE to reach. Using "goal" to describe a quota is passive-aggressive, IMO.)

For many years I relied on public transportation to get to work in a mid-sized city, and I was usually late at least 2X per week because of it. The office was VERY inflexible re: starting times, and the only way that I could make it in by 7:00am was to catch the very first bus of the day. I also had a transfer to be made. I caught that first bus without fail, but I cannot tell you how often one or both of the buses I needed to be on would run late; often by as much as 45 minutes. In warm weather I rode my bike the 6 miles because it was a lot faster and more reliable than the bus, but three times in 5 years that tactic landed me an emergency room because careless motorists hit me on my bike.

Life got MUCH easier when I finally scraped up the cash to buy a 10 yo Corolla. It wasn't the most reliable car, but it was a darn sight more reliable than the bus was. That is why in many places it is common to insist that employees have access to a personal vehicle to get to work; because the public transit system does NOT fit the definition of "reliable transportation".

 

[Ember]

Life got MUCH easier when I finally scraped up the cash to buy a 10 yo Corolla. It wasn't the most reliable car, but it was a darn sight more reliable than the bus was. That is why in many places it is common to insist that employees have access to a personal vehicle to get to work; because the public transit system does NOT fit the definition of "reliable transportation".

If that's the case, it's still up to the employee to work it out. Public transit may not have worked for you in your city. But the idea that your experience means that I should be overlooked for a job because I take public transit in my city is just silly. Here the transit system is very reliable and I have not once been late. (I once took a cab due to my not leaving the house on time, but I still wasn't late to work.)

 

[NHdisneylover]

There is one nurse I work with on day shift who is consistently late, arriving at 6:55 am on a good day and 7:10 am on a bad one. We are supposed to be there and ready for report at 6:45 am. She ends up staying late every shift to chart, usually leaving somewhere between 9 and 10:30 pm. She has horrible time management skills (I did her orientation, and learned that time management is one of those things you just can't learn!), and when she does have downtime to be able to chart during the shift, she is usually on the phone with a family member trying to put out some kind of personal fire. We each carry a portable phone, and everyone knows not to take a certain extension that she always carries because you will be getting phone calls from her husband or other family members dozens of times a day! She complains every day about never getting to leave on time or missing lunch, but it is because she can't manage her time! This was brought up in the last unit meeting, but of course she didn't attend, so hopefully the manager brings it up to her personally. It doesn't affect me, but it affects the people who have been working all night and are ready to go home but they have to wait on her to give report.

I think what actually annoys me more, and there are several night shift nurses who do this, are those who get there early at 6:30 pm but they spend 30 minutes looking through charts, writing down their medications to give, etc. so they don't actually come to you to get report until 7. Meanwhile, you have been sitting there watching them and waiting for them to come over. The day shift nurses are getting fed up with that though, and have started making comments to them. If you come early to look through charts, etc before getting report, that's fine. But you should still be ready for report at 6:45 am.

That is ridiculous! I hope management does something about this soon--nurses have enough to contend with, without a coworker adding to the stress by being unable to manage her own time.

 

[NHdisneylover]

If that's the case, it's still up to the employee to work it out. Public transit may not have worked for you in your city. But the idea that your experience means that I should be overlooked for a job because I take public transit in my city is just silly. Here the transit system is very reliable and I have not once been late. (I once took a cab due to my not leaving the house on time, but I still wasn't late to work.)

My son was late to school last week--we took the car and a stop light was out and we sat in traffic for twenty minutes. He hasn't been late once this year taking the street car and bus connection (or the days he chose to bike--now it is dark in the mornings and afternoons and I'd rather him not ride that trail in darkness; there isn't very good lighting). By the way, that connection sends him all the way downtown and then the bus goes on the other side of the highways from where we sat on that overpass waiting on the broken light--so the bus was not affected.

 

[tvguy]

I've always worked hours that were when there was no public transit running.
And at $100 a month for a monthly pass, I can't afford to take public transit. I'd have a car either way, so the fixed car expenses would be about the same, and the gas to get to and from work is a whole lot less than $100.

Then there is the time issue. I work 13 miles from work, all freeway, so I can be at work in 15 minutes without traffic. With horrible traffic coming home, it can take 30 minutes. The routing I would have to take on public transit would require 2 hours and 5 minutes. Each way.

 

[NotUrsula]

If that's the case, it's still up to the employee to work it out. Public transit may not have worked for you in your city. But the idea that your experience means that I should be overlooked for a job because I take public transit in my city is just silly. Here the transit system is very reliable and I have not once been late. (I once took a cab due to my not leaving the house on time, but I still wasn't late to work.)

I never said that it did mean that. However, some posters here did imply that it should be illegal in the US to discriminate against candidates who don't have a private vehicle available. Unfortunately, the fact is, in many (if not most) US communities, public transit is not a reliable option, so if your criteria is that the employee must have RELIABLE transportation, it is legitimate in those communities to insist that dependence on public transit is not sufficient. The car-less are not a protected class, so it is perfectly legal to discriminate against them, and it makes business sense to do so if know that your local bus system chronically runs behind or does not have service running at their starting time.

The experience I related was in a city of about 350,000. Now I live in a metro area of 2.5M people, but unless you happen to live AND work near the central city or within walking distance of the light rail line, commuting via public transit isn't a realistically workable option for most folks. One of the suburban counties in the metro area has no transit routes at all, because residents deliberately blocked them for fear of crime. Overall, that is the wealthiest county in the state, and the third most populous at over 500 sq. miles in size. It still has plenty of poor, however; a friend of mine is the head of social services there.

I'd say that overall, about one-fifth of this metro area's residents could claim that public transportation was a reliable option for commuting; the rest really are dependent on private vehicles if they are going to be able to consistently get to work on time. We live in the central city, and while DH can sometimes commute via public transit, I cannot; getting from here to my suburban workplace requires over 2 hours' travel each way. I could do it in a pinch if I had to, but I'd have to know at 5 am that the car wasn't going to start.

 

[aprilgail2]

I never said that it did mean that. However, some posters here did imply that it should be illegal in the US to discriminate against candidates who don't have a private vehicle available. Unfortunately, the fact is, in many (if not most) US communities, public transit is not a reliable option, so if your criteria is that the employee must have RELIABLE transportation, it is legitimate in those communities to insist that dependence on public transit is not sufficient. The car-less are not a protected class, so it is perfectly legal to discriminate against them, and it makes business sense to do so if know that your local bus system chronically runs behind or does not have service running at their starting time. The experience I related was in a city of about 350,000. Now I live in a metro area of 2.5M people, but unless you happen to live AND work near the central city or within walking distance of the light rail line, commuting via public transit isn't a realistically workable option for most folks. One of the suburban counties in the metro area has no transit routes at all, because residents deliberately blocked them for fear of crime. Overall, that is the wealthiest county in the state, and the third most populous at over 500 sq. miles in size. It still has plenty of poor, however; a friend of mine is the head of social services there. I'd say that overall, about one-fifth of this metro area's residents could claim that public transportation was a reliable option for commuting; the rest really are dependent on private vehicles if they are going to be able to consistently get to work on time. We live in the central city, and while DH can sometimes commute via public transit, I cannot; getting from here to my suburban workplace requires over 2 hours' travel each way. I could do it in a pinch if I had to, but I'd have to know at 5 am that the car wasn't going to start.

When i was hired you had to have had a car and a home phone number. I know at the place i work part time we wont hire any teens unless they have their own car. We dont want to hear "my mommy wasnt around today to drive me so i couldnt cone to work@