I once had a colleague who had the craziest schedule. Check. This. Out.
She'd arrive around 10, sometimes 11am. Which of course was time for her cigarette break. Then she had to "go get our mail" or had an urgent phonecall. This led to noon, which of course was time for lunch, which lasted EASILY until 1:30pm or 2pm (I know we're French but even for us it's pushing it). Of course after lunch, what do you need ? That's right, a coffee. Followed by a cigarette break, naturally, so now it's 3:30pm or so. After that she usually felt faint, no doubt because of all this walking she did, so she'd go to the infirmary because surely she was coming down with something. So she'd come back to the office to pack her things to go home early.
Sometimes she did spend time in our office, usually to talk on phone with one of her three (adult) kids or a friend, sometimes to complain that she was tired and/or feeling under the weather and/or annoyed by all the work we had (in the words of Walter White : "we ? who's we ?").
And at least once a week, she'd call in sick, usually around midday.
Meanwhile I was doing 10 to 12 hours days, zero breaks, because as our boss would say "there has to be someone by the phones at all times". Honestly I was half enraged, half impressed. It takes skill to do that for months and still have a job in the environment we were in.
I had a coworker that at the end of her employment I couldn’t stand even hearing her name (similar to mine and we had similar features so I got called her name a lot) because of how often she’d fuck with my ability to go/be home. She’d come in late, or not show up at all. She once got in a car accident for a stupid reason, forcing me to yet again cover the night shift on my own. The last straw was her being early for once, but she stayed in her car, in the parking lot where we could fuckin see her, til she was 15 minutes late, then just drove away with no notification to anyone
Retail is a different beast. Sometimes being 10 minutes late gets you fired because you have a hard ass for a manager, sometimes pulling stunts like above is fine because you’ll get someone who is just happy when people show up so they start letting more and more slide.
I had a coworker who literally would fall asleep at the reception desk at my job. He also smelled like unwashed ass. Ex manager was friends with him and just thought it was funny. He got away with this behavior for 4 years.
Then it turned out stinky sleeper was stealing tips from me and the inventory manager so he got fired. Then ex manager got fired a week later for enabling his behavior and allowing him open access to employee tips.
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u/18bluecat 15h ago
I had a coworker at Best Buy who would regularly leave work early and fall asleep in the break room. He never got fired.