I understand school-kids have excuses, but if you're late you're late. It doesn't matter why.
The small book of excuses is laughable. I'd rather not work for a guy like him.
To be fair, I think he's a fake guy. Look at the start of the "article" it has all the weasel words that you'd expect to see in a dodgy email forward. "I once heard a story of a an unnamed manager at an unnamed company who..."
Go to Snopes and you can find a hundred emails that start like that.
What's there's a word for this type of story, that I can't recall at the moment. Straw-man set up to illustrate the moral of the tale. Truth is with only so many hours in a day, and burn out is just a much a risk as anything else, work-life balance is sometimes required.
The article might be interesting and eye opening if you're a teenager, when I was a high school teacher, the constant use of low value excuses was worth drawing attention to. In fact occasionally delighting a high-school teacher with a new excuse sounds appropriate and realistic. A manager at a big-company though? Fuck that, adults do sometimes have real excuses - their kid was sick, the roof on their house was leaking, whatever. Could you imagine some dude checking off "ahh sick child #123, delightful" when you told him your kid was sick? You'd punch that miserable fucker in the nuts.
I left those details out because I didn't think they would add to the story. The big company was KPN to which I sold my WiFi Hotspot operator in 2003. The manager who told me the story was Jan Kroon and it was about a manager he reported to. See, all that info doesn't make the story that more interesting really.
Actually, it's those details that do make the story interesting. Some little details that make the characters seem real are essential to hold your audience. (At least, so says my wife, who is a writer.)
If I can't come in at 9.15am, then I'm not staying a second past 5pm. In my experience, the places that are strictest on this kind of thing are the same ones that browbeat you on not being a team player when your hours are up. This kind of management practice is probably the biggest reason I went it alone.
I think this manager didn't care about you being late or not. All he cared about was results. If you would have come in at 9:15 AND showed poor results and then came up with an excuse he would have punished you for it. But if you came in, with a confident smile on your face because life was good and you loved your work, he would have just smiled back at you.
If work hours or company policies are not posted, couldn't you also say that expectations aren't made clear and communication is lacking? Aren't some sort of standards still needed? Otherwise everyone would cram everything into a 4 day workweek and be MIA on the 5th day.
That's not the impression I get, with the little book and all. It's no different to the managers who walk around with hand puppets that fulfil the 'bad cop' part of his routine.
Go to Snopes and you can find a hundred emails that start like that.
What's there's a word for this type of story, that I can't recall at the moment. Straw-man set up to illustrate the moral of the tale. Truth is with only so many hours in a day, and burn out is just a much a risk as anything else, work-life balance is sometimes required.
The article might be interesting and eye opening if you're a teenager, when I was a high school teacher, the constant use of low value excuses was worth drawing attention to. In fact occasionally delighting a high-school teacher with a new excuse sounds appropriate and realistic. A manager at a big-company though? Fuck that, adults do sometimes have real excuses - their kid was sick, the roof on their house was leaking, whatever. Could you imagine some dude checking off "ahh sick child #123, delightful" when you told him your kid was sick? You'd punch that miserable fucker in the nuts.
I call bullshit.