Originally Posted by
Pirkaus
Being prompt is a pet peeve of mine, please be on time.
If you are to be "at work" at a particular time, be there. I am flexible to some extent, as long as the work gets done, on time, and at or under estimated cost.
In LA, traffic is so terrible and unpredictable that if you 100% want to always be on time for everything, you’d add an hour to your drive time.
I am all for being on time if it matters- I’m not going to screw over my doctors day so that I don’t have to build in the extra drive time, because 1. It’s respectful, 2. It matters to him, and 3. It’s not an everyday thing.
But at work, it makes zippedty squat difference if I arrive at 8am, 8:05am, 8:10am. My appointments start at 9:30am, and what I have to do from 8am until 9:30 (case rounds and a few phone calls) generally takes around 45 min. I have built a lot of wiggle room in because worst case scenario I have a bunch of cases transferred to me from the ER and it might take longer to get things done, but even then I have redundancy in my system in that I can tap some additional personnel to do some of the morning stuff. It would be a ridiculous huge time waste for me to build in the extra time to every commute just to have to arrive on time for the sole purpose of “being on time”.
No one sheds a tear for me when I’m asked to come in at 7:30am for a department head meeeting (which I’m never late for- because it matters, there’s other people expecting to start the meeting at 7:30am). No one sheds a tear if I stay late in an emergency surgery and don’t get home until 10pm. Likewise no one shows any angst if most days I actually get in to work at 8:05am because that’s what makes sense with the available train schedule, and my alternative is to take a train that leaves 40 min earlier.
Businesses should value their valuable people above valuing sticking to a precise schedule. Unless the nature of the business requires employees being present at a rigidly specific time.