Outrage as HR Warns Staff About Being 1 Minute Late: 'Counts as a Full Day'

An image of a notice from an employer stating workers are "subject to attendance discipline" if they're late to work by a minute has gone viral on Reddit, where it received over 10,200 upvotes at the time of this writing.

The image was shared by Reddit user genericuser99999 in a post titled, "Being even a minute late counts as a full day missed!"

The image showed a notice from "Human Resources," which began: "Please be aware when you swipe in late or swipe out early, there is no grace period and you are subject to attendance discipline as this will count as a full EL [earned leave, the equivalent of annual leave] day. Documentation will need to be provided to avoid discipline.

"You are expected to be at your work station ready to work at the start of your shift and to remain there except for breaks or the end of your shift," the notice concluded.

On average, 6 percent of American hourly workers arrive late to work, based on a 12-month analysis (from March 2018 to March 2019) of 1.2 million global work shifts in a study by Deputy, a workforce management software platform, HR Dive reported in May 2019.

In a March 2018 survey of more than 1,014 hiring and human resources managers in the U.S. conducted by CareerBuilder, the employment website, one in four workers (25 percent) admitted they are late to work at least once a month, a drop from 29 percent in 2017. Over one in 10 (12 percent) said they are late once a week.

The Office of Human Resources Management of the U.S. Department of Commerce states: "If you are late reporting to work and it is not excused, then there are different options that may apply to account for the tardiness."

The options include the following, as outlined at the department website:

• With supervisor approval, you may be able to make up the time by working later on the same day, "as long as the extension would not result in an entitlement to premium pay."
• At your request and with supervisor approval, your absence can be charged "against accrued compensatory time, accrued credit hours, accrued annual leave, or LWOP [leave without pay]."
• You could be placed on "AWOL [absent without official leave] (supervisory directed)."

The office explains: "If you are charged with leave or placed in a nonpay status for an unauthorized absence or tardiness, your supervisor may not require or allow you to perform work while you are being charged with leave or are in a nonpay status."

In a later comment, the original poster in Reddit post said: "We're a 24hr plant...I do believe if an operation runs 24hrs a day, then any relevant dept. should also be staffed 24hrs a day...so should HR [human resources] be, and maintenance, and vehicle repair techs, etc etc."

Ask whether there "employees are there for 24 hours straight," the original poster said "absolutely yes," if you count "robots or automated systems have replaced humans as the employees."

However, "there are also humans there all the time, but only about 3k where there was once... I dunno 15k? Certainly a hella lot more than we have now," the user said.

Several other Redditors could relate to the frustration of the original poster, with some sharing their own similar stories.

In a comment that got 4,400 upvotes, user ironicmirror said: "Be sure to poke your head inside the HR office to let them know that you were a minute late so you're going back home."

In a comment that got 4,000 upvotes, user pork0rc said: "I worked at a place like this before. A couple of times I knew Id be just slightly late, so I'd turn around in the lot and just go home. Why not?"

In a comment that received 1,100 upvotes, user notyourbrobro10 said: "This is how I always approached 'even a minute late is a tardy' okay cool then I'll be 5 hours late instead of 5 minutes. Happy?"

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment.

Newsweek was unable to verify the details of this case.