Are we really trying to make this of all things a generational thing? Why?
It depends on the job, if you have to say open a store then 10 min late is a problem. You have to say make a thing, then 10 mins is not an issue as long as the thing is done.
I have seen people with no respect for other peoples time (so they where late often) and they where not of a single generation but more commonly of a class (the people with means tend to think they can be late).
I used to have to open a fishing pier at 5:30am. A line of angry fisher people at the gate will tighten you up real quick. I let everyone in for free if I was 10 minutes late, but I was more so motivated not to be late.
These were the people who were fishing as a source of food and/or bait for later fishing for food. I got to know them and wasn’t late often because that would be shitty. They got to know me and knew I was working 3 jobs and going to college. So, they were sympathetic when it did happen.
Life, man, turns out it ain’t all simplistic generational platitudes.
I wish more people saw the world this way.
Every time someone divides an attitudes by generations.
Every time someone divides driving capabilities by make of car.
Every time someone divides work ethic by race.
Every time someone divides action by class.
There are good people and bad people and everything in between and they are not tied to specific demographics.
You can witness a trend, but it does not define anything.
People are just people.
It depends on the job,
I am surprised how much this point is lost on the other commenters
Its wild that people can think a whole ass batch of people (a generation) thinks being 10 min late to anything is not a bad thing. Like if you show up to meet someone and they are 10 min late, its not the end of the world but if it happens every time you are going to judge that person.
I don’t think jobs should be tied to timecards (I hate time keeping systems, I had to fix some) but to job requirements.
Some examples: Office work normally does not matter until it does. I once worked in a banks head office and had to at or shortly before 7:30am tell all the ABMs to change to the next business day (this would cause them to go offline briefly) and pull the reports for that day. If I was 10 min late the reports would not be there on time for 8am where they are needed for another task a co worker is expected to do before the bank opens (at 8am in some places).
Any retail store that has some respect for their employees and customers needs people to not be late, showing up 10 min late might just mean rushing to open or relieve some co-worker but that also is likely increasing the risk of accidents. I don’t think its fair that someone gets to work an extra 10 mins or wait to buy whatever for 10 mins just because some one thinks “eh, 10 mins is close enough”
Task based jobs on the other hand (say programming, maintenance, sales, repair centres, etc.) should not really matter as much. When you start is less important then if you meet a deadline when finished. I used to work a job that wanted me to “start” every day at 7:42 AM (we used time units of 1/10th an hour) but would get real pissy when I did not leave my house until 8:30 or so since the stuff I was working on was in places that did not open until 9 or 10 am. They told me I should go to an arbitrary location (a warehouse or McDonalds where the examples they gave) by 7:42am to log in “in order to show I was ready for work”. That was stupid and irrational, so I did not do it. But I would also not show up 10 min late if I could help it for any appointment (work or otherwise) since I value my time and the peoples time I am interacting with.
Why?
It’s a Fortune article. Their whole thing is keeping the class war active and right now a great way to do that is to make the older, capital owning generation, pissed off at the young ones so that they don’t think for a second this whole “widening wealth gap” thing might be unfair and oppressive.
I think the issue is they are not “keeping the class war active” but trying to make the class war into a generational one. I have worked with, for and had worked for me people who are often late and never did I see one age group of people show up more late then another. Hell I have had issues with staff showing up over an hour early and that was only people under 25 so far (not an issue with them doing it, just an issue with feeling I am taking advantage of them).
Sorry yeah I used badly unclear language there you are absolutely correct.
I should have said “It’s a Fortune article. Their whole thing is keeping the class war at less than a simmer. They do this here by providing distracting ammo to fuel other wars and blaming [age/race/gender/migrant status] for economic troubles rather than the true oppressive force that is capital.”
Thanks for understanding what I was trying to say before I even wrote it 😅
In the 80s and 90s, Gen X were coming in late and the Greatest Generation was firing their our asses. It’s generational because every generation becomes more concerned with punctuality.
Time clocks have been around since 1888 and people have been getting fired for being late even longer.
Stop trying to make this a generational thing.
Dumb article trying to make laziness a feature (not a bug), and shit on boomers.
laziness is a feature, not a bug, and it’s literally how our brains are wired.
(e: also it’s literally a study into generational differences. empirical data showing there is a difference in mindset. if you think that’s shitting on boomers then it’s you who made the value judgement in the first place. also if you read the article, if anything, it’s shitting on gen z for not getting work done on time.)
I was either 10 minutes early or 20 minutes late
A bus ride taking 40 minutes to go to work sucks
But the workplace was great so I don’t have much to complain about
Is the work getting done? If so, what does ten minutes matter? Is it about productivity, or just about ensuring that work is sufficiently unpleasant to keep the peasants in their place?
What else is the overseer supposed to do to justify their position besides add stress and create reasons to not raise wages?
Its probably just what everyone’s used to. I work in an ED. Fuck anyone who always turns up late. What does 10 minutes matter? It matters a lot actually. This is shift work. The work is never “done”.
What’s ED in this context?
Emergency Department. Its a Level One Trauma center, so down time is not predictable.
work is sufficiently unpleasant
Can’t have these wagies too comfortable, the labour won’t be alienated enough.
Work and quality of life > filling time to satisfy timecards
Well then the boomer bitches can pay enough for us to live 10-15 mins from work, not a 2 hr drive in rush hour. This close eyed brutal existence they are forcing on us is about to implode on them. The barbarians kicked over the oil, they dropped their torches into it, and they are currently sharpening sticks to roast the ruling class with. This is not a damn game. You stole our lives from us, now we want yours. (The actual life, not your quality of living)
I am fresh off a rather interesting conversation with my boomer boss. I’m a new manager and I’m working on policy and process. I was basically shut down, told to not bother documenting, that we have a way of doing things and he would spend every day with me for weeks to get it right if he had to.
I asked again, wouldn’t it be easier and more efficient to have these processes documented and accepted rather than force muscle memory? I even offered to document the process during our training sessions but was told that were a small company and no one will look at documentation if we create it (we’re a 2000 employee manufacturing company).
Oh well, I know how to work around obstinance and he’s pretty old.
That’s crazy. Anyone who is against documentation should not have a job that requires literacy.
Think there’s a balance.
I work at a company where they have a documented process for everything. The thing is once some thing is in a document, it’s like some written in stone mandate that becomes unchangeable and inflexible. The stuff in the “oral tradition” remains flexible.
Every so often new blood comes along, sees how dysfunctional the documented processes are, and proposes to fix the processes. Now in principle, they are right, but those of us who have been through a few iterations dread the outcome. Invariably the changes they propose to replace stupid existing processes are instead just added to existing processes, because some folks recognize the improvement but no one wants the blame for a mistake caused by leaving the old process behind. So each time we end up with more redundant stupid work.
So while in principle, documented processes are right, sometimes the political reality is stupid.
The. Your company is doing lean six sigma wrong…if at all. Processes are supposed to improve and change all the time.
What’s a sigma?
Both of you are right.
You meed to document processes. The minute you put them to paper they will be out of date. No one will read them. It has always been so.
But it does allow you to go, “Ah here’s where the process went wrong, step 6 in the SOP. Why don’t you use it as a guide for the next one?” It then isn’t me vs them, it’s me helping them understand the documented process collaboratively.
Yup. Documentation is a necessary, but imperfect medium.
I just started at a new company that really invests time in documenting their processes, but the are poorly made by people that don’t understand the process itself and, in some cases, the process itself is poorly planned and has to be changed over and over again, to the point where the DTP looks nothing like what’s actually done…
I was instructed to review the documentation you twin myself, but advised the process did not actually describe the process itself…
That’s precisely what I’m after, and what I’m proposing. I don’t care about the outputs, I care about the process that gets them to us.
Also why they need to be living documents, but if we have to reinvent the wheel every time we need a new one, it slows things down. I should mention, I’m on the IT side.
There are Process people and there are Get It Done people. Both are necessary. In their extremes, both are bad. When they work together they can do great things.
Depending on industry certs, documenting things will make life easier.
It depends on the job. For most office jobs, I don’t think it matters that much if you show up a bit late to go to the bank or if you’re stuck in traffic, especially now that holding online meetings are easy.
But for a job where being late means holding up the work of hundreds of people, say, being an actor on set, then showing up ahead of time is very important.
When I got my first office job (after working retail and the like), I was uncomfortable when people would have a conversation and not be productive. It was burned into me that one should work at all times while “on the clock.” I learned the phrase, “time to lean is time to clean,” when working at a restaurant.
We really walk on people who work in service jobs. It’s not right.
Why did you have to bring Vin Diesel into this?
I mean, just because you’re on TV and get paid a lot of money doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you.
What is actually needed is the flexibility to do it.
It really doesn’t matter for the task if I’m physically present between 8:15-16:15 instead of 8:00-16:00.
If I have to be at my desk at 8 sharp, I will hit the rush hour both ways, having to leave my home at least 20 minutes earlier and waste that time in congestion for no good reason. I’ll be home about the same time, because the only difference is how long I get to stare at the steering wheel.
I don’t care if the one option that saves me 1-2 hours of unpaid time every week is considered “tardy” by boomers. In my gen-x point of view, a lot of their lifestyle is wasteful for no other reason than selfmade “traditions”.
Used to be a phone salesman. Got there at least 15 minutes late every day. It got so bad that one time I got there 15 minutes early and when my boss saw me get there he shouted “Steve?! What time is it?!”. Nobody cared because I outsold everyone else by so much that I was making double what they were, until the boss of my boss’ boss decided to start micromanaging the branch and basically told me I would be fired unless I started showing up on time. Boomers have weird priorities.
Their weird priorities is because they were raised with the dumbass idea that showing up early somehow increased production and is rewarding. Hell I showed up 15 minutes early everyday and the boomer was still pissed because he didn’t want to pay the overtime. Can’t even make up their minds!
yeah we have this whole thing about being logged on by 8.30 to start stand up at 8.37, so everyone logs on between 8 and 8.30 and then has breakfast or doomscrolls until the stand up starts. Which nobody listens to, because it’s poorly run, and then immediately after goes an makes another cup of coffee, bathroom run, and probably starts actual work around 9.30.
Meh. It’s all about power. Same reason tucking in your shirt and being clean shaven is a big thing for some boomer execs, it’s just some bullshit they can’t use to force people to conform
This seems more likely. The same guy also wanted me to buy a suit because jeans and military boots give clients a bad image of the company. We did all of our business through the phone.
He probably wanted you to buy a suit, but wouldn’t give you a stipend for it if you asked
Maybe if the fucking workplace wasn’t so fucking far from home, or if public transportation was decent, people would be much less likely to arrive late at work.
The other thing is, as soon as you realize that your job could be remote, which is true for a lot of office stuff, being “on time” matters fuck all.
Force employers to pay hourly wages for at home prep and commuting and they will suddenly start caring about hiring people in their area
I’ve always thought not compensating for commutes was ridiculous. Ive demanded 15k raises for jobs because they wanted me to drive.
All of the neighborhoods within walking or cycling distance of my workplace are literal crack dens where I’d be mugged and/or robbed within a week.
The boomers are dying out. It’s a self solving problem.
Millennials are five years away from Get Off My Lawn years old tho.
I’m an elder millennial, a lot fi my friends are sharing very boomer-esque “back when I was a kid, things were better because of XYZ.” Millennials are not the panacea you want them to be. A lot of them are just as dumb as boomers and these problems are systemic, not generational.
I hope when I get to boomer age, I complain about how it used to snow or Roe like I am now. Unless those problems are fixed ofc
Survivorship bias applies to memory as much as anything else.
Not fast enough
Downvote if you will but it is just rude to show up late regardless of your performance or the situation. Period.
Nah. Don’t be so uptight. The 4 emails that I received during off hours will still be there if the insane amount of construction they keep starting but not finishing in my city causes me to be 10 mins late that morning.
Really depends on the job.
If you complete all assigned tasks on time and don’t inhibit anyone else’s schedule, then who gives a shit?
If it’s shift work and someone is waiting for you to arrive so they can start their work, or worse, end their shift and go home, then yeah it’s a huge dick move.
I mean yes in practise and if you put it that way of course.
I’m just saying that as a general rule you should be on time.
I’m with the zoomers on this one, honestly. If the workload is independent then there is no reason to demand what time the person gets started on that work load if it’s going to take the same amount of time. Yes, there are jobs where its time sensitive or assisting customers so obviously you need to be in place by a certain time, but that is not universal.
And it cuts both ways, if you consider it rude for a person to not show up by a mandated, arbitrary time, it’s equally rude to mandate a meeting or other function a person has to show up to that has nothing do with their job. I’ve been in the workforce nearly 20 years now, and frankly the number of meetings, events or functions I’ve been expected to go to that served no purpose other than to waste my damn time is way too high. The meeting could have been an email, the training might as well have been a check box, and if the party/event was so damn important why wasn’t I paid to attend?
TL;DR unless a person being late directly affects another person, then who cares? I’ll start caring about what a corporation thinks is rude when said corporations start giving a damn about my time and compensating properly for wasting it.
And it cuts both ways, if you consider it rude for a person to not show up by a mandated, arbitrary time, it’s equally rude to mandate a meeting or other function a person has to show up to that has nothing do with their job. I’ve been in the workforce nearly 20 years now, and frankly the number of meetings, events or functions I’ve been expected to go to that served no purpose other than to waste my damn time is way too high. The meeting could have been an email, the training might as well have been a check box, and if the party/event was so damn important why wasn’t I paid to attend?
Yes. Both of these things can be true…
It’s a job. Imagine having literally any respect for it.
I agree. We will be the first to call out employers who want you to arrive early to load up systems to be ready to take calls at start time. I see this as the same.
I want to get paid for the time I give, nothing more and nothing less.
That’s unambitious. I want to be paid for the value my work creates. Time is a finite resource. Trading it for (in all likelihood not enough) money so other people can get rich is a sucker move.
That’s not what you sign up for, ever except maybe c suite negotiations where you get bonuses based on performance. A job is not a trade of value. It is literally paying you for your time since most jobs are unskilled manual labor you can train on the job.
I want to be paid for getting the job done, not for being a body in a seat for a specific number of hours regardless of how much work there is to do.
Sometimes the job is being available, being a body in a seat.
And often it is not, but still treated that way by managers.
Nah, ten minutes don’t matter.
This really depends on what you’re doing.
If you’re in IT nobody should care. If you’re doing an artillery barrage then being late could mean a lot of your people die.
Highly dependent on what you do for work. But if Bob the Bookstore Manager wants me to treat a cashier job with the same respect as a military mission then he better be willing to issue me a rifle and a 400,000 dollar life insurance policy
I actually think I’m with the boomers on this one. You should strive to be on time. No need to make a federal case out of occasionally being a little late, but it’s wrong to be constantly late.
If I need to be 100% on time, then I’m 100% leaving on time.
Every job I’ve had I’m one of if not the first to stay late. Need me to work a double even if it’s not my job next? Not a problem boss. But be cool with me being 5-10 minutes late. I’ll try to be there on time, but shit happens.
But if your gunna come at me for being a little late, I’ll be damned if I’m gunna stay late to help you. Pick your battles
I wasn’t arguing any different. By all means leave on time.
But this is part of why it is disrespectful. Look at nurses. If you are late, patients in a hospital can’t just go without care. So that means the prior shift is asked to stay later. That’s just one example.
I was solving a DNS issue that I resolved at 5.12 yesterday. If I had knocked off on time the website would still be down until January 2nd.
For the want of a nail…
So, you should get overtime.
I mean for that I’d have to be hourly, I’m salaried, which often works in my favor tbh. If I charged my hourly rate they’d find ways to nickle and dime me and be watching my productivity much more closely.
I get where you’re coming from. It is nice to your fellow employees to be on time to relieve them. That’s just being a solid team player.
But again, every team or job I’ve had understands if I’m a little late cause they know I’m putting in the work when I get there. Shit, after I got into a motorcycle accident and was bleeding down my side I still had the driver take me to work to talk to my boss. Stayed until the concussion made me leave haha. My boss at the time would tell that story to people who were a bit sluggish. Saying how even on the worst days there’s no reason to not give it your all since YourPartnerInCrime came in half dead.
In hindsight it was a bit dumb. But, don’t complain about me being 5 to 10 minutes late. I’ll be there and I’ll give it all.
I understand if it’s occasional. But constantly means you are not giving it all. Sorry, I just hate lateness. I am almost never late, but am constantly waiting on people that cannot meet at an agreed upon time. It just wastes my time and shows me they think their time is more important than mine. It’s a pet peeve.
I’m all for flexibility and flextime when it can be granted. But if you agree something happens at a certain time, it should happen at that time.
Exactly. If you’re paying me from 8:00-5:00 I am starting at exactly 8:00. If my computer takes 5 minutes to boot, connect, etc., that starts happening at 8:00. If you want me online and responsive at 8:00, then you have to pay me for the boot time before 8:00. No pay, no work.
Worked retail and the end of shift crew always had to wait to leave at the same time with some bag check BS. Pile of shit thieving corporate and management would adjust the time to cut out payment of the last 5 or so minutes. The company is now defunct (taken out by vulture investment group owner entity after it was sold), otherwise it would have been nice to call the department of whatever deals with wage theft on them now that I know better. A.k.a.: if your company does time adjustments silently, consider this your signal and call the inspectors on them.
Depends on the job
It really depends on what you do. If you’re in a factory and the entire line is held up or someone is staying extra time from a previous shift then it’s a big deal. If you’re late to the daily IT stand up meeting you can get the notes from Brad.
Some jobs are more critical than others, sure, but it’s still disrespectful to make people constantly have to cover for you. Why does Brad constantly have to give you notes? What if both Brad and you are late?
If Brad is late then we get to go home, 15 minute rule, just like in school.
No but seriously, Brad is anyone who was there. Someone should be taking notes and sending them in a follow up. Because not everyone is going to be there all the time. Make your systems around people and they’ll work better than just holding everyone up and getting mad.
And if no one is there?
I’m not saying everyone has to get mad over occasional tardiness. But when one employee decides his time is more important than mine because I always have to cover for them, and they are always missing when we start, fuck yes, I will be mad at them, not just as a boss, but as a fellow employee. Have some respect for your fellow workers.
Then you obviously have a structural issue.
And here we have another person assuming being late is a choice. This really is a toxic attitude.
The structural issue is having people constantly late.
And, yes, constantly being late IS A CHOICE. I’m not talking about hitting traffic, the kid or pet being sick, having to deal with an emergency, or stuff like that. I’m talking about people that are repeatedly, constantly, late to everything. People are not just born to perpetually be late.
Work isn’t the only thing going on in their lives. They aren’t robots that you own.
It really depends what you do. If you’re just strolling in to your desk and writing code, wgaf. But fuck anyone that schedules meetings for 8am.
We always scheduled meetings 30 minutes after latest start time which was 9.
As long as you made it to the meeting if it was scheduled and did your full hours, no one cared.
Im always 1 to 2 hours late, sometimes I dont even show up and have a body double go in for me, and I keep getting raises. Don’t worry I give the double a raise too
Why?
Because others have to pick up your slack. Because others have to waste their time waiting around for you. Because it’s unfair to other staff that wind up working longer than you.
Or they could just not either
Not an option if you expect to stay in business.
So it’s up to labor to work extra hard so the boss can own a business? Yikes.
If the labor wants to have a job, yes.
It’s sad that workers can’t even imagine a world where they are in control
Because it often fucks over others who are either overworking themselves pulling your load or can’t take their own break or lunch because you are late
It seems like this is more nuanced than simply black and white. Of all the jobs I’ve worked, about half of them had/have any ramifications for being late.
One job I had, if I wasn’t on time to start the production process, the evening crew would have to stay later to finish. My current job on the other hand is WFH and project-oriented, so as long as I’m not late to a meeting, I could start 2 hours later and finish 2 hours later.
The question is why anyone would answer “why” have they never worked any of the types of job where people depend on each others effort in real time? Like 99.9% of low end jobs are like that.
Chicagodog and a couple of others here have never worked a job that requires even minimal collaboration, at least not in a time sensitive manner. Basic community effort skills would be necessary to get any task accomplished even in a labor-free communist paradise.
No hate to those users either; they are clearly just clueless due to inexperience, and it’s good that there are others to educate them.
Or they can also refuse to take on extra work. Why are we assuming that the amount of work the boss sets is the exact amount that must be done?
In my experience at the lower rungs of retail, the bosses will assign 100% of your non-break time to 80% of the work that needs to be done. I have far more experience with understaffing than busy-work.
I’m gen x. I’m always anxious about being on time because of how I was raised (thanks Mom). My partner is older than me and she’s ok with being late. This isn’t an age thing. It’s a personality thing.
They’re trying to divide us by sowing division amongst generations. The most wealthy are the enemy. They own everything and we must join together to take it back.
My mother raised me on the saying that (with occasional exceptions, such as dinner and parties) “if you’re not ten minutes early, you’re late.”
I don’t entirely agree with it, but it did result in me taking other people’s time very seriously and me being a very punctual person. It also caused anxiety about being punctual.
taking other people’s time very seriously
This is a kind thing to do, but I also put it squarely in the “respect is earned” category.
I wouldn’t give someone hell for being 10 mins late because traffic or whatever, but if their standard is expecting me to be there half an hour early, just staring at the clock, won’t let me clock in early and just get to it, burning time I’ll never get back, anxiously awaiting to clock in on the dot and not a minute more or else…
…They clearly don’t think much of my time and therefore the relationship is going to be adversarial in nature.
It also caused anxiety about being punctual.
Exactly. If I’m running late I get pretty stressed. It’s physically uncomfortable.
