Recently, a Redditor who does construction shared an incident he had with the boss at a former job.

Since the workers started pretty early, it was just expected that from time to time they would be a little late. “Boss got tired of people walking in at 6:05 or 6:03 when we start at 6:00 (even though he was a few minutes late more consistently than any one of us were),” the author Righthandedranger wrote in a post that amassed 45.4k upvotes.

So the boss came up with an idea to dock 15 minutes from each of the workers’ time if they were not standing in front of him at 6 o’clock sharp. What he did not see was that this could not have ended well for him.

A construction worker maliciously complies with his boss docking 15 minutes off his time for being 1 minute late to work, sits and waits until his paid time starts

Image credits: Image-Source (not the actual photo)

It soon became clear that the boss’s policy to dock time turned against himself

Image credits: duallogic (not the actual photo)

However, the author  didn’t stay in the job for long

Image credits: Righthandedranger

“If the manager isn’t even being a good role model himself, none of his employees will respect his petty rules,” a career coach says

“Being a couple minutes late is not a good enough reason to get your employees to dislike you,” Christine Mitterbauer, a licensed and ICF-approved career coach and serial entrepreneur, told Bored Panda, commenting about this case. “It shows pettiness, and if the manager isn’t even being a good role model himself, none of his employees will respect his petty rules,” Mitterbauer added.

“What he should have tried instead is, first of all,” the career coach continued, “being a good example himself, and second, trying the carrot rather than stick approach. For example, by encouraging his employees to be on time by serving free coffee and breakfast at 5:30 am.”

According to Mitterbauer, “this would show him in a generous, positive light, encourage people to come on time, and also encourage healthy social interactions of all employees which ultimately benefit the company,” she explained.

Image credits: Image-Source (not the actual photo)

According to the HR Knowledge agency, employers can always discipline exempt employees for being late or force them to use their paid time off to cover hours missed, but they cannot dock the employee’s pay.

“A common situation we hear about is when an exempt employee requests time off for personal reasons but does not have any paid time off available.”

The employer has a few options and that includes doing nothing and paying the employee’s full salary; deducting the full days missed from their salary; or allowing the employee to borrow against future paid time off accruals.

Image credits: duallogic (not the actual photo)

“You must be fair and consistent in these types of situations and ensure that you are not docking an exempt employees’ pay for partial-day or full-day absences that do not fall under the limited exceptions listed earlier,” HR Knowledge agency explained.

Having said that, the company has to have a policy or practice in place that clearly formulates the conditions under which it doesn’t pay the exempt employees.

The OP shared some more information about the incident in response to these comments

And this is what other people commented

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