Spin-Off: Co-Workers Get Away with What?

[kaytieeldr]

I don't allow them in my office. Well, as much as I can control it. The non-smokers do not roam off at various points of the day for whatever reason, so why should the smokers. I've told people to do it on their way in, all through their lunch hour, and on the way home. If they cannot control it throughout the day, they can take the break but it must come off their lunch time.

Are these full time positions? Do you not give all your employees an additional rest/coffee/etc break during the workday? Would you consider it?

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Are these full time positions? Do you not give all your employees an additional rest/coffee/etc break during the workday? Would you consider it?

Oh man, HUGE can of worms in my office. We have ONE smoker & she takes multiple smoke breaks. Nobody else was ever eligible for a break outside of lunch. When I hired a full-time warehouse guy, I told the boss in no uncertain terms he would be getting 2 breaks a day (if for no other reason than the warehouse is neither air conditioned nor heated). Well, now I have 3 full-timers out there & I've butted heads with the boss & his wife several times about the breaks. She actually thinks they should have to clock out for breaks if we're on overtime. Uh no, breaks are breaks & OT is OT. One is not dependent on the other.

 

[Stacy's a freak]

The smoking thing gets me a bit too. I'm not a smoker so a part of me can't relate. But a part of me can (married to a smoker). I think if people are honest about their smoke breaks and take like two a day and for about 5-10 minutes each, no one cares. I mean, I can get up and use the ladies room whenever I please (office environment) or go into the kitchen and brew myself a cup of coffee, I don't see a difference. However, if the smoke breaks are frequent and become a social fest for 15-20 minutes, that's where I would draw the line.

 

[Christine]

Are these full time positions? Do you not give all your employees an additional rest/coffee/etc break during the workday? Would you consider it?

The law is: two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch or no breaks and a one hour lunch. No one asks for breaks, seems to require one, want one etc. I also was in those same jobs and it was no big deal. I didn't need to go sit somewhere apart for 15 minutes. They certainly can take time here and there to talk to each other, make a personal call, take a quick walk around the floor to get themselves moving. What I don't allow is the smoke break which requires them to leave our massive building, walk across the street to the designated area, come back, go through security, and make their way back to our area. Our building takes up 2 city blocks as it's size. It's not a quick in or out to have a smoke break.

 

[Christine]

The smoking thing gets me a bit too. I'm not a smoker so a part of me can't relate. But a part of me can (married to a smoker). I think if people are honest about their smoke breaks and take like two a day and for about 5-10 minutes each, no one cares. I mean, I can get up and use the ladies room whenever I please (office environment) or go into the kitchen and brew myself a cup of coffee, I don't see a difference. However, if the smoke breaks are frequent and become a social fest for 15-20 minutes, that's where I would draw the line.

It's the old "slippery slope." In general, I agree with you. I don't really have it out for smokers. It's just that where I work, it is not a quick exit to the smoke break area. We are in a HUGE building and between catching the elevator (which then stops on about every floor) and walking indoors the length of the building (we aren't allowed to exit any other way except for emergencies), then cross the street and walk to "smoker's alley", well, they have likely already spent 7 minutes just getting out the door. When I've dealt with this before, though, it turns into a social group for the smokers. There is always a group of them out there talking. It's never quick. Then they tell you they are going on some other work detail when they are actually out smoking and it's just a huge disaster.

 

[morgan98]

The law is: two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch or no breaks and a one hour lunch. No one asks for breaks, seems to require one, want one etc. I also was in those same jobs and it was no big deal. I didn't need to go sit somewhere apart for 15 minutes. They certainly can take time here and there to talk to each other, make a personal call, take a quick walk around the floor to get themselves moving. What I don't allow is the smoke break which requires them to leave our massive building, walk across the street to the designated area, come back, go through security, and make their way back to our area. Our building takes up 2 city blocks as it's size. It's not a quick in or out to have a smoke break.

In my rant above about the office smoker(s) it is a very similar situation. The other hourly employees (more or less the receptionist's peers) do not take the two 15 minute breaks and take the hour lunch. If there is work (like around deadlines) they take a half an hour lunch and we pay them overtime. The issue is that the smoker still takes an hour lunch and then claims to need the breaks too for smoking. We are near the top floor of a high rise, have to walk through a large lobby, out the doors, etc. You cannot take a three minute smoke break here by walking 10 feet out the front door into the parking lot. It is a disaster. And the people covering for her resent it.

 

[crochetlady]

Once upon a time I worked in the circulation department of a library. One of the pages (responsible for checking and sorting books to be reshelved and checking out when things got busy) was a mentally handicapped older man. I don't know his official diagnosis, but he was "slow". He was just as sweet as honey, honest, helpful, hard working, and any other glowing things you could think of to say about him.

There was another woman in his position who treated him AWFULLY. Any time he made a mistake (and rest assured he didn't make them with any greater frequency than the rest of us) she would berate him. Ask him if he was stupid. Tell him he should just quit before he got fired.

I could not BELIEVE that other people just acted like the didn't see or hear this. One day she started in on him and I went slightly postal and in a not very nice way explained to her that the next time she had a problem with something he had done she could speak to me about it in that way and see how well that worked out for her. I then marched into my boss's office and told him what had happened and what was said and if he wanted to fire me, fine, but that wouldn't stop me from coming back to the library every day to make sure she never spoke to him that way again.

Nothing ever did happen to her formally, but at least when I was around she left him alone.

 

[Belle0101]

We have someone who routinely sleeps at his desk, even his manager makes jokes about it. He also is pretty incapable of actually doing his job (engineer), no sign that he'll be going anywhere.

I used to work at a bank and our branch manager would disappear every afternoon around 2:00 and reappear between 3:00 and 3:30. She never said anything, she would just be gone. For the longest time nobody knew where she was and her being the branch manager, you also didn't ask.

I don't who found out, or how, but she was going out to her van and taking a nap in the back. Whoever found out obviously reported her because she became hostile towards everyone, even threatening to have people fired for "tattling".

I ended up transferring to another branch and later heard she was given the option to quit or be fired. I never heard which she opted for, just that she was no longer with the bank.

ETA: I just wanted to add that her naptime was in addition to her lunch, which was always from 11:00 to 12:00.

 

[Jaya]

In one of my jobs, we seemed to have people who knew every trick in the book to "get away" with things. One employee came in with a doctor's note that said she had Adult ADD and had to have a private office as she couldn't work in a cubicle and had to work at home on "bad days". Well, we had to give her a private office, which no one else in her work category had. Within the next two months, two other employees suddenly developed ADD, too, and had to have offices. Isn't that amazing, such a rash of ADD?

Best yet, though, was a supervisor who frequently went to out-of-state conferences. She inevitably got "sick" the second she got there, had to hang around in her room or at the pool "recovering" and managed to pull herself together enough to attend the last session of the conference so that she qualified as having attended. She'd always managed to get some shopping in, too. THEN, she'd come back and immediate develop "deep vein thrombosis" from the plane ride and have to take several days off. She pulled this several times, but never got called on it as she was besties with the boss. The other ones in her department who went to the conference, attended all the sessions and came to work at 8:00 the first day back even through they might not have gotten in until after midnight the night before were not at all happy about it.

 

[tvguy]

Smoking breaks irritate me. We have 2 people who always take their smoke breaks together and it seems like it's every hour for at least 15 minutes (2 hrs a day smoking). I brought up at our last meeting to ban smoking from the grounds. They were the only 2 against it which I stated it's not fair to those who do not smoke. One of the smart asses said I should take up smoking them.

At least at my place, there are smokers that always seem to be out smoking, and others that I never notice are gone. The ones that always seem to be out smoking seem to head out whenever their body tells them they need a cigarette, and the folks who I never notice seem to be able to put off the urge until their is a quiet time in the workflow.

 

[TheIncredibles!]

We had the whole smoker issue for years.

We had a guy about 15 years ago bring in a Dr's note saying he was diagnosed with Diabetes and he would require a 10 minute break every hour. We had no clue what to do with that one. How do you ignore a Dr's note, even if you are almost positive it's fake? Thankfully he was a terrible worker and was always late coming in, late back from lunch so it didn't take long to address all those issues on their own and let him go.

On a smaller and just anoying scale we had a guy that would never bring lunch and when we ordered in would always decline but would then sit at the table when we all ate and would take food off of our plates?!?! It was so crazy none of us knew how to address the issue... lol

 

[usnuzuloose]

When I was managing a store there was a manager who always refused to do what the rules say. When food was introduced the place for food said you could not have artificial nails. She told our boss she would not remove them. Then when it came time to do resets she fell behind, she got bumped up to new stores with more pay. My boss told me to go and take over the store she had , mind you we had the same big store. I said no, as I did not want to clean up her mess and not get paid anymore either. I then got sent to the boon docks for a 70 mile round trip for work everyday. She still managed to get way up in the company. That is all I will say about that boss.

 

[CynBeth]

We have someone who spends HOURS on the phone every day - single calls that are 2-3 hours long. Plus she takes lots of breaks - out one door and in another so it's harder to keep track. It's ridiculous but for some reason her supervisor won't fire her or even discuss it with her although she now uses her cell phone instead of the office phone.

Sounds like a girl in my office except she still uses her work phone for personal calls along with texting and surfing the internet on her personal phone and she constantly complains about how much work she has. Most of the time her work is dumped on me instead of the team lead and manager doing something about her. We all have a set time to come in but with her it's whenever she feels like it.

 

[yeahdisney]

I'll play. Employee would come to work 15 minutes after the rest of us cause she had to take her kids to two different schools (she was lieing about where she lived so she could get them a different school district). Even in the summer, when they stay home alone. Then after she would come into work, make herself breakfast, eat it. And management told everyone eat before you come to work. Go do makeup hair. Then go talk to everyone, not a job requirement. Then say what is there to do? All of course after clocking in. Lunch was 1 hr 20 minutes long. Oh how I miss them. I forgot, was on phone and Facebook all day with timed entries that showed when she was posting pictures, comments. Another work no no.

 

[RedAngie]

I can't believe that some of my co-workers can get away with browsing and posting on Disney internet forums on company time. Me? I wait until one of 100 daily breaks to post. But NEVER while I'm working.

 

[tvguy]

I can't believe that some of my co-workers can get away with browsing and posting on Disney internet forums on company time. Me? I wait to post until one of 100 daily breaks.

LOL. I am PAID to be on social media and sites like DIS. Story ideas.

 

[RedAngie]

LOL. I am PAID to be on social media and sites like DIS. Story ideas.

I'd like your job, but I'd insist on normal business hours, no weekends, holidays, or 3am starts.

 

[MickeySP]

Well we don't have the smoker thing, not allowed to smoke as defined by contract.

I di have one woman who thought it was okay to take numerous bathroom breaks, we are talking a dozen or more in an eight hour period. Solved that by every time she announced a bathroom break I just said Oh me too. Then she started I just have to run down the hall to deliver paperwork, so let me do it I have to go anyway. It finally came down to a confrontation about her time out of the room, led her to breaking down in tears. She decided to go over my head - we have a very set chain of command - didn't work out to well. My supv response to her was "I can't make people like you" Seems I was not the only person complaining

 

[mrsheppo]

The secretary in charge of the area where I had my office was always showing up late, going home early and taking long lunches off property without clocking out. We knew she got away with everything because she was quite "chummy" with the boss. They would spend a lot of time together in her office with the door locked and the blinds on the windows down.

She was also allowed to approve her own payroll time even though the company requirement was that only salaried personnel could do so, which she was not. She also would go to the salon we had on premises and get her hair and nails done and have it comped to our boss. She thought she could do whatever she wanted and told me she had the boss in her back pocket. I went on vacation and when I came back, the combo code to get in our offices had been changed. This combo was never changed unless someone had been terminated. Turns out the secretary was terminated for stealing money out of a supervisor's purse in their office. She had done it previously and unbeknownst to her, a surveillance camera was installed to catch her in the act. She had stolen over $500 out of purses. When it was time to clean out her office, another supervisor and I were assigned the task. We found so much liquor hidden all over the office. We also found some condoms in her desk drawer.

 

[justgrace]

The secretary in charge of the area where I had my office was always showing up late, going home early and taking long lunches off property without clocking out. We knew she got away with everything because she was quite "chummy" with the boss. They would spend a lot of time together in her office with the door locked and the blinds on the windows down.

She was also allowed to approve her own payroll time even though the company requirement was that only salaried personnel could do so, which she was not. She also would go to the salon we had on premises and get her hair and nails done and have it comped to our boss. She thought she could do whatever she wanted and told me she had the boss in her back pocket. I went on vacation and when I came back, the combo code to get in our offices had been changed. This combo was never changed unless someone had been terminated. Turns out the secretary was terminated for stealing money out of a supervisor's purse in their office. She had done it previously and unbeknownst to her, a surveillance camera was installed to catch her in the act. She had stolen over $500 out of purses. When it was time to clean out her office, another supervisor and I were assigned the task. We found so much liquor hidden all over the office. We also found some condoms in her desk drawer.

Oh gosh!! That sounds like a Lifetime movie right there!!



I'm loving this thread!!