^It’s a corporate principle. Corporate structures make full-time employees very difficult to terminate. With HR issues paramount to what a corporation wants to project, they can’t just fire people.
The solution has been to simply not hire many full-time employees. Instead, rely on mostly part-time workers. Those aren’t easy to fire either. But. The schedule makers can cut their hours to the point that employees quit, and leave that way.
Full-time employees are GUARANTEED hours. Most full-time positions are considered ones that require 33 hours or more per week.
Only employees that are written up, or face disciplinary documents on a large scale are susceptible to termination. Exceptions are things like theft, or violence…
Computers track punctuality, and sick days. If those incidents reach certain levels, they will result in disciplinary notations in the employees records. Enough of those, and the employee is terminated. An example would be Employee A was recorded clocking in 35 seconds late once, 5 minutes once, 1 minute twice, within a two month period. Ok. Sounds fair. Late is late. Right? Agreed.
However. Things not tabulated are times when Employee A was early (something not even allowed in many cases,) or stayed many hours after their shift was scheduled to end because they were asked to. Nor is coming in to cover other employees, or because of higher amount of business. Employee A also does exceptional work, even when they could have half-assed.
Employee A is an exceptional employee, and more often than not provides more “work” than their level of compensation meets. No record of cigarette breaks or long personal phone calls, or work avoidance. Employee A’s performance only becomes relevant in incremental employee reviews.
Meanwhile. Employee B clocks in on time, enough for the computer to ignore them. Employee B also rarely misses shifts. So. No automatic disciplinary action. No automatic termination.
However. Employee B is deemed difficult to work with by the majority of other employees. Employee B takes 10–20 cigarette breaks, each lasting an average of three minutes smoking time and three minutes getting outside and then back to their workplace.
Employee B also has 2–5 personal phone calls, each lasting an average of 3–15 minutes.
Employee B avoids the hardest/, most meticulous tasks. They tend to be somehow strangely require cigarettes, or an important phone call at the exact time of the hardest times on any given shift.
When Employee B actually does take part in difficult work, the quality and timeliness of their work is substandard.
Such behavior constantly bothers other employees AND the most immediate person in charge. However. Most people are reluctant to sit down people like Employee B, and request they make adjustments, or face disciplinary repercussions. Employee B understands that they could go to HR, and protest such subjective criticism. They may even have reasons, that HR will accept, that can paint their low quality evaluation as bias by their supervisor.
So. Instead of risking the HR nightmare, the supervisor explores ways to get Employee B out of their hair. The easiest way to do that, is move Employee B up or parallel, to another position…
The result of this corporate structure is simple.
The company would rather keep, and reward an employee that does mediocre work, and is toxic to the environment BUT is punctual, than a far superior employee that is less than 5 minutes late on rare occasions…
I’m not crying about it. I’ve been Employee A all of my life. However the honest truth is that I could have always done better at any profession, if I were always precisely on time…
I’ve learned that. So. In my opinion, I should be doing much better than I am financially.
IF I can just be punctual. And avoid injuries/sicknesses, I would have less to complain about.
The world is not working against me. It’s just not working for people who’s only problem is punctuality…
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