I am continually amazed at how some people are such brazen freeloaders!
I go to talk to one of my employees cleaning a small bank branch, and as I'm driving up to the bank, she's pulling out of the parking lot, 15 minutes early. Interesting, I say to myself. I wonder if she's already done cleaning and has clocked out, or if she's trying to cheat the clock, go run an errand or get a Starbucks, then come back to clock out. I check the computer, and she's still clocked in! So I sit across the street and wait. Finally I check the computer to see if she's still clocked in, and nope--she clocked out from home or her cell phone! So I go in, unset the alarm, and tidy up the things she didn't "have time to do".
The next day I tell her to meet me because I need the key to the bank. She meets me wondering what's going on. I explain what I observed the previous evening, and here is her response: "The only reason I left the bank before clocking out is the alarm. Why should I have to clock out and THEN set the alarm. I should be paid for setting the alarm. So I clock out from home." I relatively patiently explain that setting the alarm takes 15 seconds, and she was stealing 15 minutes. "Oh, whatever!" she says and walks away.
One week earlier, a customer called me to report something odd that our employee was doing: he was coming in, using the phone, then leaving. The customer would wait around for quite a while, but the employee wouldn't return before the customer had to leave. Finally it dawned on the customer what was probably going on, and he called me. So the next night, after the employee came and used the phone (to clock in) and then left, our customer set the alarm. So when the employee finally returned to clean the building we had a record of what time the alarm was unset. It was over an hour that this employee was stealing! So when our manager went and fired the guy, he was shocked that we would fire him! Here is his defense: he had to go pick up his daughter from a ballgame. When he finally started cleaning, he worked really hard and really hurried, so that he wouldn't go over his allowed time! He promised that if he hadn't been able to finish the job right in his allowed time, he would have clocked out and just kept working off the clock! Yeah, right! Brazen freeloader!
Another employee we thought was showing great promise, and we talked about possibly promoting this person to a vacant supervisor position, even though she had only been with us a few weeks. So our manager went to talk to her about that possibility--but couldn't, because she wasn't in the building, even though she was on the clock! This person had not even been on the job a month and was already cheating!
Another customer called me that she was sure her building had not gotten cleaned twice that week, because she was there, and our employee never came. Our manager and I met with the employee and asked him point-blank, eyeball to eyeball, if he had cleaned the buiding those days, and exactly what time had he done so? He promised that he had, and provided details. Then he didn't show up for work the next day, and the truth came out: he had lost the building key days before, and so he couldn't clean it!! Liar, liar! Brazen freeloader!
Society can only support so many freeloaders. I don't know what the maximum ratio is of productive citizens to freeloaders, but I suspect we are approaching critical mass in our society. These people look just like you and me, and can even talk like us, but they're missing a conscience!
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