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.
Baby Boomers, if were going to generalize, often feel the boss has ass-grabbing privileges with the attractive employees, so their opinion may not amount for much in the 21st century.
Except among the ruling class, of course, where we leave demented and senile representatives in power until it is wrested from their cold dead hands.
“i don’t appreciate you being tardy”
“Say what? What did you just call me?”
“I don’t feel tardy!”
A lot of these differences are regional and industry specific. I worked on the east coast in more traditional industries and 9am on the dot was expected. Moved west and switched to tech and I was the only one in the office at 9am. I had coworkers showing up at 11 and noon. Despite the late arrival, people would still leave at 3 and 4pm. Were they working any less hard? No, in tech people are online til midnight and 2 am regularly. Tech attracts a lot of folks with night owl chronotypes. Their brains are literally not functioning optimally until 7pm rolls around. Boomer work ethic doesn’t have a lot of understanding of this fact.
Just common sense should be enough.
If your job doesn’t require you to be there on the dot, who care?
If you keep being late for meetings and you’re wasting your colleagues time, get your ass out of bed earlier.
It’s not hard. But it’s super annoying to be waiting for people who just don’t care to be on time.
You know what super fucking annoying? Meeting at 9am. WTF?
People get stuck in traffic, or public transport failed, or little Johny forgot his school bag so the parent had to turn around when dropping them at school.
Number of times I’ve been in meeting at 9am that don’t end up happening is absurd. Plus the majority of attendees have most of the day clear in their schedule. So why book the meeting for 9 goddamn am in the morning?
I think 10am is reasonable for first meetings.
I would also say no meetings to close to the end of lunch or ending at 5pm.
It’s also super annoying to be hounded about being on time when it makes no fucking difference.
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.
I manage Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, and Boomers. Yes, all of the above. My experience is that the Gen Z types strive for quality of work and will give you their best once they understand the mission and accept it. The Gen X and Boomers very often get stuck int he performative parts of work: dress, dates and times, etc, and focus less on the quality of work. Millenials are a bit of a mix.
One of my best jobs I was consistently late to, and eventually I asked my manager about it.
She said I was outpacing the other workers in productivity (editing pages of copy) and she wasn’t going to push the matter.
Sorry, but if you’re expected at 10 you should arrive at 10. Doesn’t matter if it is work, a meet-up with friends or family, a date, or whatever. People schedule things around you, they’ll expect you at 10, not 10 minutes later. So if you come late, it means you’re not respecting other people’s time, which means you don’t respect other people.
It’s work, not elementary school. Just don’t be late for your first meeting. But also don’t throw meetings on people’s calendar at 8am. It’s a dick move.
Try working at a company that has staff on the opposite side of the planet. I’ve missed meetings scheduled for 7am (I start at 8) that were sent in the middle of the night. That’s what I call a dick move.
Been there (worked with offshore in India). No getting around it, scheduling meetings just fucking sucks when you’ve got a 12 hour offset.
I feel like meetings are an exception. And meetings scheduled at the literal start of business open is just plain stupid if it can be avoided.
Both are dick moves
My favourite is when the person who we’re all working around sets the time and then doesn’t show up on time of the meeting. That’s the epitome of entitlement to disrespecting everyone’s (and the company) time. And this is a millennial that pulls this shit regularly at my job. It also costs the business a stupid amount of money when all those people aren’t producing revenue just to come sit in a meeting that isn’t going anywhere.
I’m Gen X and the last job I had that required me to work a specific shift was in the kitchen of a pizza place in 1988.
In my first job after college, I asked the business administrator what hours I was expected to work, and she was noticeably confused by the question. She told me most folks show up around 9.l, but made it clear that it was up to me.
In my next job, I asked how to request PTO, and my boss told me he doesn’t care about the record keeping. He said just let him know when I won’t be there, and as long as everything keeps working he doesn’t care if I’m ever there.
Even in my current position when they introduced time clocks and we had to clock in before our start time, we were allowed to specify our start time. I chose 10:00am. I normally get in around 7am, so I figured if I’m not going to be in by 10, I’ll just take the day off.
Sound like you have had some good, human bosses.
A good boss makes the job. A bad boss with a stick up their arse loses good staff.
Damn, what field are you working in that has that much flexibility? That’s pretty unheard of, at least in the US.
My last job for a software company was like this. We had to file for PTO, but we got so much I took nearly every Friday off and didn’t bother looking at my totals.
Prolly High end professional type jobs although those require experience before daddy will permit this level of autonomy
Hang on Gen X once the boomer population dies out you’re next in the ongoing war to keep generations hating each other. You may get lucky and the future articles will skip over you and go directly to the “uptight, low tolerance Millennials”
These articles are such overgeneralized bullshit just to get people mad at each other. I bet there are older workers that are always late to work and I bet there are young workers that are on time and do amazing work. Yet nuance like that doesn’t drive angry clicks and comments.
I’m looking forward to it. GenX here, fuck all of you and fuck all of this. I just want to spend time with my family and friends.
I don’t think anyone outside of GenX understands how fucked GenX is. We are jaded AF You’re free to come for us but fuck around and find out.
Lol as if fuck around and find out is exclusive to one generation.
No previous generation has ever wanted to spend time with family and friends before! This is unprecedented!! Every single old person has only ever wanted to go to work and help create value for shareholders by fucking over the disadvantaged!!!
Nah man, we don’t want to fuck with you except as friends. After the boomers, we all cool.
I mean…yeah?
Gen X exists in name only. It went from boomers to millenials and nobody blinked.
I bet there are older workers that are always late to work
I’ve employed several, and in my experience they’re usually the ones who spend most of their time at the bottom of a bottle.
Low tolerance millennials?
If anything millennials are just becoming more and more radicalized against the elites and the unhealthy work “ethics” they had to endure.
Good on the next generations if they dare standing up for themselves.
Some of us. A lot of us are just like the stereotype of our boomer parents.
Millennials are reversing the trend and getting more progressive as they age contrary to all other studied generations
https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4
If you need to be there at a specific time, be professional and be there. If other workers are depending on you to be there, be there. Being tardy just ‘cause, is pretty pathetic. In an ideal world, none of us would have to work. But we do, so show up.
Depends entirely on the job.
If you are interacting with people or have meetings, sure, promptness is important and polite.
If you are doing design work, or coding, or data driven jobs where you don’t really interact with anyone and just work for 8 hours, then who gives a shit if you work from 8-4 or 8:10-4:10? Fuck off if you think that makes a difference. 8 hours is 8 hours. End of story.
My last “not odd jobs to make ends meet” job I had was project manager of a job shop. I had days where I was meeting with customers, and days when I was building what my customers asked for.
When I had a customer to meet, I showed up early. I considered it a personal demerit if the customer arrived on site before I did.
When I had a thing to build and the customer wanted it on the 18th I’d turn up when I felt like it. Research, ordering parts, CAD design, programming, coordinating with my team and correspondence could and usually did happen from my house. A lot of brain storming took place in the shower. When it was time to show up in the shop I turned up when I felt like it and left when I felt like it. I cannot think of a time when I missed a deadline that was my fault. The deadline I blew the worst was the one I wasn’t told. “I needed it by the 26th.” “Well the 28th was a great time to tell me that.” “I thought you’d get right on it!” “I had five other customers’ projects going, you were 6th in line.”
I genuinely miss the "Here’s a weird goddamn thing to build. I want a radar guided hammer dulcimer. I need the right handlebar shroud of a 1994 Yamaha FSF-400XF. They only made 400 of these bikes, the part fell off somewhere in Wyoming, here’s the left one. You know that scene in spy movies where they need to steal the diamond launch codes from a room full of laser beams? Make an arcade attraction out of that. I need a 3D scan of my stillborn baby.
Actually no I’m never doing that last one ever again god chestnut-roasting dammit.
Further, if you don’t need 8 hours to finish the work, then nobody should care if you’re there or not, as long as your outcomes are achieved.
And likewise, any employer unexpectedly asking you to stay late is just as unprofessional.
AND if someone is late because of traffic, etc, you shouldn’t sweat it.
I think that depends on the nature of the work, but also whether it’s a regular pattern of being late.
The C-suite boss where I work complained about being in the office at 7 am and seeing empty desks.
This was pre-pandemic.
The thing was, policies in place at the time allowed employees to work from home up to two days per week, and flex hours were permitted as long as the core hours of 9am to 3pm were covered. It just sounded insane to everyone.
The mouth pieces for the ruling class really love pumping out articles to drive division between us…
Thanks for pointing that out. Its like we have multiple levels of control mechanisms ensuring our eternal enslavement.
Ten minutes late to a meeting? Go somewhere else and make someone else’s life harder. Ten minutes late to holding a chair down? I don’t care if you’re on the moon, just get your shit done.
If I’m always expected to work half an hour late, showing up to work ten minutes late is early as long as no one is waiting on me.
