Amistad? I think not.
Posted Mar 1, 2009 Problem Behaviors
∞ The Hiring Site blog over at CareerBuilder has a great post this week about excuses for tardiness. It features such gems as “My husband thinks it’s funny to hide my car keys before he goes to work,” and “I got locked in my trunk by my son.”
All of which may be true, but if the company’s expectation is that you show up on time, it’s your responsibility to make sure you do. If that has to include slapping your spouse and grounding your child for creating stupid adventures like this, so be it.
The post goes on to ask for the most outrageous excuses readers have heard - or used. I shared mine there, but it’s such a great story I had to tell it here as well. It was also an object lesson for me that continuity of expectations is an absolute requirement when management changes.
One of my employees once left for lunch and didn’t show back up for the rest of the day. I was a shiny new manager at the time - my first ever management gig - so I didn’t have the tact and polish that I have now. Given the circumstances, I can’t say I’m sure I’d be able to keep a lid on my natural response now, either.
Here’s the conversation I had with her the next day, to the best of my recollection. It has to be mostly intact, because this isn’t the kind of thing you forget in a hurry. Or ever.
“I couldn’t come back after lunch yesterday because I had to be in court for moral support for my daughter, because she was testifying against the people who kidnapped her and sold her into slavery.”
I thought for a second, and asked, “Why couldn’t you have scheduled this time off in advance?”
“Because,” came the reply, “we didn’t know when they’d be ready for her testimony.”
“I see,” I said. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because they don’t let you use phones in court.” This said in a tone that conveyed her thought: DUH, what are you, stupid?
“I see,” I said again. “And you really expect me to buy that?”
She went on to say it was all over the news that week. I told her I must be watching the wrong channel at 10:00, because I hadn’t heard anything about it. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I asked where she was taken as part of this ordeal. She apparently ended up being put to work in Kansas. Who’d have thought there was a thriving slave trade business alive and well smack in the middle of the United States as we approached the end of the twentieth century?
Insert a Toto reference of your choice here.
I knew, from my briefing on taking over this group, that there was an absenteeism issue with this employee. Through some glitch in the system, she’d been given two final written warnings over the fact that she was gone more than half the time she was expected to be at work.
So, I told her I wanted a copy of the court order and/or schedule that led to her daughter being required to appear if I was going to put the absence down as excused. She immediately told me there wasn’t one. I also told her that, given her recent history, if she missed any more time for this issue I’d need to see a court order requiring her own presence ahead of time. “That’s not reasonable,” she said. “And anyway, previous disciplinary action doesn’t count because it was done by a different manager.”
To my credit, I didn’t laugh. I explained that yes, it does still count, and that any more unexcused absences would see the final written warning being invoked. She didn’t show or call the next day, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I do have to point to another of the excuses listed at The Hiring Site, though: “I walked into a spider web on the way out the door and couldn’t find the spider, so I had to go inside and shower again.” This, as far as I’m concerned, is a valid excuse for being late for anything, up to and including the birth of your own child. Because really? Spiders are the living definition of fear. ∞
