A lot of these differences are regional and industry specific. I worked on the east coast in more traditional industries and 9am on the dot was expected. Moved west and switched to tech and I was the only one in the office at 9am. I had coworkers showing up at 11 and noon. Despite the late arrival, people would still leave at 3 and 4pm. Were they working any less hard? No, in tech people are online til midnight and 2 am regularly. Tech attracts a lot of folks with night owl chronotypes. Their brains are literally not functioning optimally until 7pm rolls around. Boomer work ethic doesn’t have a lot of understanding of this fact.
Just common sense should be enough.
If your job doesn’t require you to be there on the dot, who care?
If you keep being late for meetings and you’re wasting your colleagues time, get your ass out of bed earlier.
It’s not hard. But it’s super annoying to be waiting for people who just don’t care to be on time.
It’s also super annoying to be hounded about being on time when it makes no fucking difference.
I’m gen x. I’m always anxious about being on time because of how I was raised (thanks Mom). My partner is older than me and she’s ok with being late. This isn’t an age thing. It’s a personality thing.
They’re trying to divide us by sowing division amongst generations. The most wealthy are the enemy. They own everything and we must join together to take it back.
I manage Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, and Boomers. Yes, all of the above. My experience is that the Gen Z types strive for quality of work and will give you their best once they understand the mission and accept it. The Gen X and Boomers very often get stuck int he performative parts of work: dress, dates and times, etc, and focus less on the quality of work. Millenials are a bit of a mix.
Sorry, but if you’re expected at 10 you should arrive at 10. Doesn’t matter if it is work, a meet-up with friends or family, a date, or whatever. People schedule things around you, they’ll expect you at 10, not 10 minutes later. So if you come late, it means you’re not respecting other people’s time, which means you don’t respect other people.
It’s work, not elementary school. Just don’t be late for your first meeting. But also don’t throw meetings on people’s calendar at 8am. It’s a dick move.
Try working at a company that has staff on the opposite side of the planet. I’ve missed meetings scheduled for 7am (I start at 8) that were sent in the middle of the night. That’s what I call a dick move.
I feel like meetings are an exception. And meetings scheduled at the literal start of business open is just plain stupid if it can be avoided.
Both are dick moves
My favourite is when the person who we’re all working around sets the time and then doesn’t show up on time of the meeting. That’s the epitome of entitlement to disrespecting everyone’s (and the company) time. And this is a millennial that pulls this shit regularly at my job. It also costs the business a stupid amount of money when all those people aren’t producing revenue just to come sit in a meeting that isn’t going anywhere.
If you need to be there at a specific time, be professional and be there. If other workers are depending on you to be there, be there. Being tardy just ‘cause, is pretty pathetic. In an ideal world, none of us would have to work. But we do, so show up.
And likewise, any employer unexpectedly asking you to stay late is just as unprofessional.
AND if someone is late because of traffic, etc, you shouldn’t sweat it.
I think that depends on the nature of the work, but also whether it’s a regular pattern of being late.
I’m Gen X and the last job I had that required me to work a specific shift was in the kitchen of a pizza place in 1988.
In my first job after college, I asked the business administrator what hours I was expected to work, and she was noticeably confused by the question. She told me most folks show up around 9.l, but made it clear that it was up to me.
In my next job, I asked how to request PTO, and my boss told me he doesn’t care about the record keeping. He said just let him know when I won’t be there, and as long as everything keeps working he doesn’t care if I’m ever there.
Even in my current position when they introduced time clocks and we had to clock in before our start time, we were allowed to specify our start time. I chose 10:00am. I normally get in around 7am, so I figured if I’m not going to be in by 10, I’ll just take the day off.
Damn, what field are you working in that has that much flexibility? That’s pretty unheard of, at least in the US.
My last job for a software company was like this. We had to file for PTO, but we got so much I took nearly every Friday off and didn’t bother looking at my totals.
Hang on Gen X once the boomer population dies out you’re next in the ongoing war to keep generations hating each other. You may get lucky and the future articles will skip over you and go directly to the “uptight, low tolerance Millennials”
These articles are such overgeneralized bullshit just to get people mad at each other. I bet there are older workers that are always late to work and I bet there are young workers that are on time and do amazing work.
Gen X exists in name only. It went from boomers to millenials and nobody blinked.
I’m looking forward to it. GenX here, fuck all of you and fuck all of this. I just want to spend time with my family and friends.
I don’t think anyone outside of GenX understands how fucked GenX is. We are jaded AF You’re free to come for us but fuck around and find out.
Lol as if fuck around and find out is exclusive to one generation.
No previous generation has ever wanted to spend time with family and friends before! This is unprecedented!! Every single old person has only ever wanted to go to work and help create value for shareholders by fucking over the disadvantaged!!!
Nah man, we don’t want to fuck with you except as friends. After the boomers, we all cool.
I mean…yeah?
I bet there are older workers that are always late to work
I’ve employed several, and in my experience they’re usually the ones who spend most of their time at the bottom of a bottle.
The C-suite boss where I work complained about being in the office at 7 am and seeing empty desks.
This was pre-pandemic.
The thing was, policies in place at the time allowed employees to work from home up to two days per week, and flex hours were permitted as long as the core hours of 9am to 3pm were covered. It just sounded insane to everyone.
They can fuck off with that. Everyone else is there on time because they’re adults, why are you special? All those people left 10 minutes earlier than the absolute minimum of time in order to account for traffic problems, etc. So can you.
If I’m always expected to work half an hour late, showing up to work ten minutes late is early as long as no one is waiting on me.
I personally don’t want to hear anything about coming in late when I usually am the last one to leave the office in the evening.
I’m the other way around. I’ve agreed to work for these hours, so I’m showing up on time and leaving on time. They seem to value this higher than more total time spent.
The mouth pieces for the ruling class really love pumping out articles to drive division between us…
Thanks for pointing that out. Its like we have multiple levels of control mechanisms ensuring our eternal enslavement.
Ten minutes late to a meeting? Go somewhere else and make someone else’s life harder. Ten minutes late to holding a chair down? I don’t care if you’re on the moon, just get your shit done.
As a millennial I’m on team, “Work starts at 9, show up at 9”… but if you’re a little late here and there, whatever. So long as the work gets done.
I show up 30 minutes early because everyone at my job is incompetent so I have to see how things are going so I can plan my day. Im mid 20’s
I would be this way but I started my career in Boston and the T and the busses and the tunnels there make anything close to this impossible. If you actually wanted to be on time you’d be showing up 20 minutes early just as often as 15 minutes late. To truly always be on time would mean planning to get there an hour early every day.
Companies downtown here know just not to put meetings between 9 and 10 because it’s just impossible that every single member of a team will make it to work without issues even once a week. I’d guess even hourly jobs give more flexibility than you’d expect from a standard employer here because it’s just such a clusterfuck to transit in Boston
The further into the burbs you get, the more hardcore companies are about enforcing a 9-5.
