How to Handle Poor Attendance in the Workplace

Every teacher has heard this one at one time or another along with a myriad of other lame excuses for not doing what was assigned. If you are going to come up with an excuse, make it more believable than this one. The problem with providing an excuse is that it is ultimately a lie and your forget which lie you used the last time you got in this kind of predicament. Just how many grandparents can one person have? Managers in the business world catch on after a while when you have gone to your 28th funeral for a grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, etc.

Telling the truth is a lot simpler in the long run. You don’t have to remember it because the truth isn’t made up. It’s just simply the truth. Having beeen a manager of people in my working career, I found I got real tired of “the dog ate my homework” approach to poor attendance. One particular case was an employee that made a habit of not showing up for work on Fridays. The truth seems that he would party on Thursday night and not show up to work because he just stayed out too late and didn’t feel up to working. He also drove in a co-worker so now two people wouldn’t be at work on Friday.

So to rectify the situation, I took the approach of the first time was a friendly discussion regarding the importance of showing up for work. The second instance resulted in a verbal warning. The next instance resulted in sending him home along with his ride without pay and a written warning that the next time would be the last.

This may not seem fair to the other worker but the rest of the workers in the department were unhappy with the poor attendance of the first worker and needed to be supported with actions that showed this would not be tolerated in the long run.

So when the culprit showed up on a Monday morning after missing yet another Friday (without calling to say he wouldn’t be in. He even had his mother call in sick for him), he was told by me that he was given plenty of chances to correct the problem and now is no longer an employee of this company and he should leave the premises. Yes, he threatened legal action (which never happened) and he was smart enough to not ask for a reference.

Another person I know (in a completely different business) used this technique when someone called in sick. He would give them two days off with no pay and told them to rest up and get well and come back to work when you are feeling better. The second time this happened he gave them the week off with no pay and very quickly the problem stopped.

There will always be schemers out there trying to avoid work because they just don’t feel like it. The important thing to remember is that you must show those that take their job seriously and have exemplary attendance that they are not mistreated by allowing others to get away with bad business practises. It isn’t cruel. It’s just plain fair and those reliable employees will appreciate it.

MO is wondering who came up with the phrase..indefinite lay-off….and why is it used soooo lightly?

This is another Facebook status that came across my news feed and it’s one that we are all growing very tired of for sure. MO is not alone in the feeling that the term is really a cop out for what is really happening. It has become acceptable to use politically correct phrases which means that it has become acceptable to outright lie. The reality is indefinite layoffs are now permanent today. The definition below is the most meaningful for what a layoff has become.

layoff
The temporary or permanent removal of a worker from his or her job, usually because of cutbacks in production or corporate reorganization.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

It used to be that a business owner took pride in his/her employees and reluctantly put people on a temporary layoff because business slumped or it was seasonal and the money wasn’t there to sustain that level of employment. When the business improved, the proud owner quickly recalled those individuals that were put on layoff.

Certainly times have changed. The bean counters that we put in charge, measure the score and determine that the team has too many players and he provides a number to cut. There is little consideration for their ability and what will happen to them. It is time that the bean counters are put aside to be replaced by people that will find new ways to deal with cost cutting. After all, cost cutting only results in more losses. It is just a temporary measure and will not improve the business. It only stops the bleeding temporarily.

So to all business owners out there, you need to find individuals in or outside of your business that will find ways to generate more business. The cost cutting approach has not worked. It is a self fulfilling prophecy and is doomed for failure.

We need to find ways to keep the MO’s of this world gainfully employed so that they contribute to the local economy and are employed locally. Shipping your production offshore is also a temporary measure and does no good for domestic economies. Again, we need to find ways to keep production in our individual countries.

So stop looking to the bean counter for the score and his idea of the game plan. We already know that we are behind in the game. Find the players that can create a game plan to march down the field to score and put the bean counter back on the bench with his clipboard. He isn’t even well suited as a water boy. Find a new direction or the market will show you where your business will end up—gone out of business.

Rather than end up as just another request in either the forum or an email to today.com, I thought I would share my feelings about the one only approach to everybody’s blog—specifically the new single look and feel. I can understand that it makes it easier for the folks at today.com but it takes away a major method of expressing one’s individuality.

I will find ways to work around this problem, but there are lots of folks out there writing that don’t have the knowledge or skills to do so. It is, in my mind, a very poor way to treat the contributors.

Some of the design changes are very good. It is a well organized layout but is over dominated by ads. The today.com heading is far from neutral so I think a better way to separate it from everyone’s header is to reverse the blog name (in white) out of one of the darker greys used in the page selction icons. This would create a fairly solid bar between the today.com header and the blog header. It is then up to the contributor to decide what that header should be. Neutral is always good as transition between a dominating red and whatever the contributor chooses.

The type is just too small. Maybe they should read mice print. Not everyone has 20/20 vision. There is a workaround using the Ctrl keys in conjunction with the +, -, and 0 keys. (see altering , last few paragraphs. The change has also destroyed some of my formatting changes and positioning of the graphics. Since it is an older article today chooses to lock you out of any editing possibility so the information in the post is now incorrect)

The choice of colours is not so much a problem as the lack of contrast and thickness in the fonts to make links stand out better. The font choice is not what typographers consider a better choice for reading. It is a sans serif font, meaning it has no tails and hooks on the letters that make them easier to read. I chose Georgia in another blog for that reason. Don’t try to change your font. There are defaults within the editor that will override your choice in many cases and especially if you use anything but paragraph for style selection.

There also needs to be more of a definitive break between posts. A rule about 12-16 points in the grey that matches the page icons would work nicely.

I tried to create a more casual tone with the look and feel so that the overall image was not so formal. This layout is more suited to documentation than writing that is more free spirited.

I’m sure the forum and customer support will be swamped with a lot of angry contributors. I really don’t see any reason to contact them because I am finding them more and more a large waste of time. The people that staff them are trained to deflect the problem rather than solve it. But I’m sure there will be more and more contributors looking for the delete button for their account in the next month or so.

I only have one word for today.com’s approach to changing the creative environment within these blogs.

Disappointing.

SM has such weird dreams sometimes! Just doesn’t make sense most of the time

That is the notation under SM’s Facebook status today.

We all have awoken in the middle of the night and said to ourselves “What was that all about?” in response to some strange dream that we just had. It might not even be considered a nightmare because scary probably isn’t correct, while weird is probably much closer to the truth.

Some of my more memorable ones involve being in numerous places wearing just my birthday suit and find myself trying to figure out why am I in this place. Another one that seems to be repeated is where I park my car in some mall parking lot or somewhere in the centre of a big city and walk around aimlessly looking for that stupid car. It isn’t too far from reality at times.

Of course, I get out of bed and look outside to see if the car is still there and, of course, it is just fine. I have only had the misfortune of having one car stolen in my life. I will never understand the thief’s thinking. The undercover policeman bought the 6-month old car for $250 from a drug pusher.

The dreams I feel are just how we handle the anxieties and frustrations that we create for ourselves. I like to think that it is how we keep our sanity. If you found yourself worrying about every possible thing that could go wrong you will eventually end up in the rubber room. If you try to figure them out like Tim Allen wrestling to understand the bigger questions you will only end up hurting yourself.

A copy of Tim’s book I’m Not Really Here sits on the floor in my favourite reading room opened at page 110 reminding me that I wanted to here Tim’s musings about stuff, much like the fence classes he had with Wilson Wilson Jr. in Home Improvement.

Instead he got into Quantum Physics and the bigger questions. He was attempting to resolve his dreams in the book, in my opinion. He said it best in the book “The chances of an answer – much less a coherent one – are about as slim as bumping into Mother Teresa at a Madonna concert.”

Do yourself a favour. Just roll over and go back to bed. It’s just your mind flushing the trash bin.SM might consider not eating that peanut butter sandwich or that tasty chocolate bar before going to bed. It’s very normal and you are going to have more of them in your long life.

Another thing not to do with dreams is assume that a good idea comes out of them and you should keep a notepad or voice recording device (no one uses a tape recorder anymore do they?) next to the bed. Have you ever tried to write in the dark and if you listen to the tape, you leave yourself wondering who was that talking and what is all that jibberish about plaid golf balls and motorized donkeys.

I still find that my best ideas seem to come ffrom a trigger in the real world like SM’s Facebook status that comes as a news feed on my homepage. SM accepted me as a friend and because her security setting is set to viewed by Friends, that information appears on all Friends news feed. It is harmless stuff, but it reminds us that some things should not be made available so freely like telephone numbers and addresses. Use personal messages to relay that information just like you would in a face-to-face encounter.

The best advice on how to handle dreams that don’t make a whole lot of sense might come form Mick Dundee.

No worries mate.

At least it should be, in my opinion. It’s invasion of privacy using the telephone.

I am seriously looking at getting rid of my home telephone and going to a CC. Most of my meaningful conversations are either email or Facebook based now anyway. The problem with the telephone is that it could be something important and some bozo is trying to sell you something that you just aren’t going to buy that way.

If you need something, you go to the store or you check it out on the Internet and then you might call them. Telemarketing has become so ineffective that I wonder why companies still bother with it. I think it tells you something about the people running the company if they insist on bothering people in the middle of their dinner or while they are relaxing in the early evening hours.

Some even think you will listen to a taped message of their pitch and respond by clicking the appropriate button. So somebody must be responding or otherwise I have to believe they will eventually give up because it’s an incredible waste of time and money.

So to those people who are responding to telemarketers, I have one thing to say.

Stop It!!!

You should be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal. And I am being very close to being serious here. Your courteous and caring response is perpetuating one of the most annoying creations of this era.

I guess I’m just going to have to stop answering the telephone and let voice mail kick in. It is so impolite but there isn’t much choice. Maybe break down and get call display. The blocking thing is only good if you know who the bozo is that is bothering you.

I get tired of saying “No thank you. I’m not interested” and hanging up, once I figure out who they are and what they are trying to sell. Why is their phone quality and phone manner so poor? The bozo that runs the company? That would make sense.

I can’t figure out why Thursday seems to be their busy day. Must have something to do again with the bozo running the company and that quota stuff, no quota junk.

Stuff is useful. Junk is just junk. Telemarketing is really bad junk.

CFO’s should not have been put in charge of the game in big business. I think that is one of the major reasons why we are in the world wide pickle that we now face. The Chief Financial Officer is really nothing more than the head scorekeeper in the game of business.

He is very much like that kid who played in the local pick up game that everybody picked last. He wasn’t very skilled at the game but he knew all the rules and all the terminology. He just sucked at the game. So if you let him have the ball he wouldn’t give it back and he made a lot of stupid moves with it while he had it.

I really don’t see any difference between this childhood playground scenario and what the big bosses have done in the commercial business world. So stop blaming everything else on your poor decision to let Ernie the accountant try and throw a touchdown or hit a home run or sink any basket at all. He doesn’t know how to do that.

He can only tell you how many times he shot, how many times he missed, how many times somebody else was at fault for his inability to score a point. He’s perfect in his mind. Ernie is an accountant and not a gladiator of the game.

I think the CEO’s need to get out of their over-upholstered executive offices and start looking for the gladiators in their organizations that will provide new and productive ideas on how to make their business a force in the world market. We need new plays, new game plans, new formations, new offensive and defensive strategies. We don’t need Ernie to remind us that we are losing this game. It is already painfully obvious.

It’s time for a comeback. Let the real players show you how the game is played. It’s really quite simple. Just ask them what they think could be done to improve the team’s performance. Just don’t be surprised that you will be hearing a lot of things you didn’t think of before.

Ernie was good at another thing—blocking.

In Facebook, you see it all the time. People joining different groups about all kinds of different things. Thousands of people in each, attaching their name to various banners.

I have never been much on groups but I loved being part of a team. A lot of people will say that a team is also a group but there is a big difference between the two. Groups are intended to align people under a single banner and they spend a lot of time talking about the cause or goal. A team is similar but the difference is they work together to actually do something about it.

A group embodies the true meaning of one of my favourite sayings— “They are like old men and sex. They spend more time talking about it than doing it.”

A team adopts the genuine spirit of one of the best advertising slogans I can recall—Nike’s “Just Do It”

My personal memorable teams involved a few football teams that I played on and a group of young men in their first year of university living in a residence called Edwards Hall. Throughout the year, we banded together in numerous actions ranging from frosh week rebellion against our residence executive. We dropped them off in a farmer’s field (20 miles away or so) in the middle of the night to find their way back to the residence like they did to us.

We peppered a nearby men’s residence’s balcony with locally purchased eggs as retaliation for crimes against some of the hall members’ girlfriends. The opposition dumped garbage cans of water on innocent passers by from that same balcony. We had numerous house parties that made Animal House feel more like a home movie made about our time in Edwards Hall.

But a visit to one team in particular gave me another look at what makes a team as opposed to a group. It was in Montreal while visiting the Montreal Canadiens. I was based in Toronto and used to visit Maple Leaf Gardens 4 or 5 times a week to conduct the business of providing team sales support to the Maple Leafs, Toros and Marlboros on behalf of Cooper Sporting Goods.

The Leafs were more like a group. In fact, it was the only dressing room in North American hockey that I was not permitted to enter as per the owner’s instructions, Harold Ballard. The trainers were always very embarrassed by this, especially after knowing I had just left the numerous visitor’s dressing rooms throughout the building and also the Marlboros dressing room right across the hall.

The Canadiens dressing room in the old Forum was charged with energy. The time was somewhere in the middle of their 4 year run of winning the Stanley Cup. It may have been the first or second season but that isn’t important. You could sense the confidence and shared in all the good natured fun that took place. The status lines between so-called Superstar and front line players really didn’t exist. They were all quite talented, but it is how they worked and played together that made it obvious that they worked together mostly as one unit.

They had techniques that weren’t dissimilar to my university residence experience to deal with non team players. I watched two players drink from another players coke that was chilling in an ice bucket awaiting the return of the other player from his shower. Upon his return the bottle was magically full again and the smiles of getting even were on all the other players because they were all in on the prank.

It was hard to follow some of the conversations because they were switching back and forth between English and French as if they had developed some new language called Frenlish. Most often the sentence was punctuated with group laughter. I now understood the meaning of what a team does to stay loose. Team chemistry is very difficult to develop and is much easier to destroy. Harold Ballard was very good at the latter.

It struck me as quite strange that I had to leave the room to talk to their starting goalie and go into his small and private dressing room to talk to him about the new designs of equipment that his brother worked so closely with us to develop.

Yes it was the Dryden brothers, Ken and Dave. Ken was not much of a team player while Dave was almost the total opposite. I guess their future careers reflected that. Ken became a lawyer and Dave taught school and worked at different levels in the educational system. Ken was more comfortable behind the scenes while Dave was in the middle all the time.

Some years later, I was at a conference where Ken was the guest speaker. He talked about his book, The Game. It is a very good book about hockey. I don’t remember the finish of his speech. Someone nudged me when it was time to clap.

Just what did poor little “Binky” do to deserve this treatment? Deep down inside, you must really hate little “Binky”. No? Then why do you punish him like this? What did he do to deserve this treatment? Pets are smarter than you might give them credit for.

I consider myself pretty lucky with one thing in my personality. If I happen to be someplace where there are pets or small children, it’s like I have this magnet. They all come running up at me like I had my pockets full of some magical candy. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I just don’t know how they sense that immediately. I pose no threat and I love their willingness to immediately accept you as a friend.

And I never talk down to them. No cutesy baby talk. I give them credit for how intelligent they already have become. Afterall, they have decided that I should be their friend. They read me like a book in about 3 milliseconds.

So I want you to put yourself in this position. Let’s put an elephantine hat on you, the size of a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood, and an over sized set of diapers and parade you down at the local shopping mall. How would that make you feel? If “Binky” could talk, he would tell you. He’s tried but you won’t listen. You keep putting that stupid hat back on despite all his efforts to tell you that he doesn’t like it.

Who really needs the obedience training in this scenario?

Show “Binky” how much you really care. The next time you are tempted to waste a whole bunch of money on that stupid hat, go on over to your local pet supply store and buy “Binky” the most expensive grooming brush you can find and don’t stop until you have reached at least a thousand.

Then maybe, you will have shown “Binky” how much you love him. One of the sad truths about owning a cherished pet is that they aren’t with us all that long. So show them that you care, otherwise we will have to report you to the SPCA.

The more and more I talk to people today is I get a sense that they share a common feeling. They are all getting really tired of the experience they are having while visiting most of the Big Box Stores. Some examples are Walmart, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Bulk Barn, Mark’s Work Warehouse, Best Buy, Future Shop. Not all of these stores are a bad experience. But they have a lot of things in common that will ultimately cause their downfall, in my opinion.

The first one is their buying power and how some of them use it on their suppliers to gain that better price that you see as a bargain. It’s all short term because that approach puts the suppliers out of business. One of the above stores opened in my town and couldn’t get the proper shelving locally because the original supplier was out of business. Guess what, the contract for the shelving goes to the lowest bidder which means the lowest bidder finds out they can’t produce it at that price and they go out of business. They had to have it brought in from a source thousands of miles away.

The formula said they must open on a particular day no matter the cost, including cracking the whip on the staff. They used to call us all into a store wide meeting to tell us it wasn’t going fast enough. And it’s going to be even slower now because you just wasted more production time by having this stupid meeting and you demoralized the hard workers. Breaks just got longer. Lunches were longer and the trips to the bathroom were more frequent. Head office people should just stay locked up behind their desks unless they are willing to get their hands dirty. I loved getting my hands dirty. Staff doesn’t ask why then. They just say what needs to get done.

So eventually, the number of suppliers dwindles to a point that the big stores start thinking about taking control of the supply source. That’s kind of like taking the vise-grips to your own lower body parts. So their short term price advantage has dried up. They hope their competition has dried up by now. But there are always entrepreneurs out there that live in the neighbourhood and decide that they could open up a store and do better than those big box things.

The second one is how employees are handled. Low wages. They would prefer pack mules but the mules won’t do their bidding. You might as well leave your brain at home because they aren’t interested in your ideas. They have a “tried-and-true” formula that some bean counter has developed and they are sticking to it because it worked somewhere. So the employees just avoid the customers because they get enough grief from their employer and the smart ones just leave. Enough is enough.

The entrepreneur recognizes that the job needs to get done but happy employees result in happy customers which is good for business. The entrepreneur recognizes he must be perceived as competitive and looks for alternate ways to make the in-store experience worthwhile. He also knows that he must provide price incentives to draw customers into the store.

In my town, there is a medium sized grocery store and two big box grocery stores. One of these big box stores is right next door to Garden Foods, the medium-sized family run grocery store. The store is always quite busy because they have fresh produce, helpful and friendly staff, reasonable prices, fresh baked goods, a huge deli and meat department, a hot food department.

The staff actually look like they enjoy working there and they say things like “excuse me and how are you and thank you”. It actually feels nice in the store. And customers can be found talking to each other all the time. You learn how to drive your shopping cart in this store. Everybody always says sorry when you do the “sneak-around” in the aisles. No one gets upset. Once in a while the owner says hello. He is busy but if you ask him to help, he will or at least direct you to someone nearby that he knows can help.

So why would I shop elsewhere? Sometimes I need white bread flour and the real dark demerara sugar but that isn’t too often. They don’t stock that stuff in the store.

The other way the big box store tries to keep it’s price down is by shopping off shore. Again, that is short term thinking. Freight isn’t getting any cheaper. If fewer and fewer local people are gainfully employed then fewer and fewer shop at their stores. The bean counters see that this particular store is under performing or, if it is a franchised store, revoke the franchise. In both cases the store closes. Bulk Barn was the first to go. The staff didn’t look too happy and the prices weren’t very good.

And they offer the equivalent of fast food up-sizing in their products. Do you really need 24 light bulbs or an extra jumbo jar of not-so-delicious jam?

Some of the big box stores will figure it out and adjust their strategy but start looking for a better choice because their days are numbered. I won’t miss them because they don’t really care about me and I don’t care about them.

Guess we’re even.

It’s so obvious that sometimes you wonder why you even have to start a story. I mean guys, how many of you actually enjoy wearing a necktie. We only wear it because it makes us fit in. Someone gave it to you as a gift. Sadly it’s a requirement for many places of employment.

It’s reminiscent of the days when slaves had chains that were locked at the neck with a padlock and everyone was tied together to join in some group work effort. Sounds like every office I ever worked in.

In some places of work they are considered a hazard and must be contained inside clothing. I actually had a supervisor in an automotive parts plant tell me that I must remove my tie. It was a safety hazard. That wasn’t really the reason because we had just left the front end of the building where we had a very cordial discussion with the manager that was responsible for plant safety.

She was just flexing the union muscle because I symbolized management with the tie. I was just there to assist an associate in his quest to supply forklift equipment. I was along for advice only. There to make sure the customer was getting what they needed for the job. Mind you none of the equipment was in motion. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything going on in that GM plant.

In the forklift company that I worked for, the boss used to wear those $75+ versions with the gold tie clip. He was constantly adjusting that clip or dunking the tie into whatever meal we had when we lunched as a group. It was the off site management meeting really.

You can never get a tie cleaned in such a way that it returns to its original form. He tried every way to avoid this frustration but it was liked the ties had a soup magnet or something. He’d always steal your napkins trying in vain to minimize the damage. His wife just bought that one for him. Ah, another symbol of slavery.

And what’s the first thing we do when we get home. The tie is removed in a fashion that is most definitely the same breath of freedom that that slave would feel when the chain is unlocked. They both rub their neck in relief with their new found freedom.

Only buy someone a tie for a gift if you really hate them. Why must you insist on punishing a friend or a loved one.

I think we should institute a new dress code everywhere. No neckties allowed. Turtlenecks only. Failure to do so will result in the tie being cut with scissors. I’ve seen people do it. They just wanted to set you free and that is all they wanted to do. They meant you no harm. They could already see you were in pain.

I tried to come up with something practical that we could do with all the neckties that are hanging on those twirly things in the closet.

Sometimes it’s just better to admit defeat.