Work

[SuperBacon]

On the day I'm in the office I do arrive early, but that's only because I have my routine (big poo - coffee - half an hour or so smoking) that I need before I start otherwise I'm all out of sorts.

[Cod Eye]

I always get to work early, about 30 mins usually. 

I live a 30 minute drive away, and get actual anxiety about being late so I set off at 7am for an 8am start. It really works for me though, as I will call for a coffee and bacon sandwich to eat at my desk, and will start working when I get there(while eating). I know that "unpaid" work, but I find it much less stressful to use that 30 mins or so to get a head start on my work, which means I can work at a steadier pace. Also, my monthly bonus is worked out on how well the team I run performs, so doing all my emails and making sure they have everything in place to do their jobs before they even get to their desk is an advantage. To be fair, the bonus I get 99% of the time dwarfs the 10 hours extra or so a month they get out of me.

[I Bent My Wookie]

Live legit as I've counted it yesterday 116 seconds away from work for the season. 

Have been 15 minutes early every day this week. 

Do I think I'm gonna get stuck in some entertainment club conga or something? 

[Briefcase]

The job I most recently left to take a break (thank you all for the uplikes and kind responses! I will share an update soon!) I was the manager and assistant manager who I would see most days on handover was always 5-10 mins late, no matter what I did or what I said or the hours he was working he would always be late (I think in the 9 months I worked with him he arrived to work just once on time lol).

Lateness has always bugged me but as time went on it got to the point where I just changed my working hours to factor in his lateness so that I wasn't doing extra time, to be fair to him he worked hard, always came in, would do extra hours or stay late without complaining (he's also been there for like 10 years) so I realised after a while that if everything else is fine within the job then the 5-10 mins lateness isn't the end of the world and that's just probably him being him in a innocent way. He always worked his hours so guessing he just had a laid back approach. Also on the very rare occasion I was running late (home life) I always knew he of all people wouldn't moan or make it an issue.  

Anyway as you all know I've recently left so his lateness is now the next managers problem and hopefully for his sake the new manager is just as understanding as me. 

[deathrey]

18 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

I'm not a morning person by any means. But if I have to get up early, get an earlier train and make sure I'm on time I do it.

For me it's just a matter of respect for everyone else who does turn up on time.

Do I want to get up at 5am instead of later? Fuck no, but it's not fair if I just rock up at whatever time I want just because.

Laziness or whatever else - surely everyone knows what time they start work, and unless there's specific issues with transport or something unusual at home, there's no excuse for being consistently late?

I'm not trying to claim this is the case with the majority of people who are late but for some of us it really is an executive function issue rather than laziness - particularly an issue for those of us with ADHD. Being late makes me anxious so I get up extra early to try and negate that but due to shit executive function my brain very rarely takes extraneous variables in to consideration.

This morning I had a Pilates class at 8am, I got up in plenty of time. I started getting ready and got distracted by the fact the sink needed a bit of a clean, cleaned that and the toilet, this added 10 minutes on, I then got ready a bit rushed, my youngest son woke up, had a quick chat with him, I then woke his dad up to look after him, that added 5 minutes, I was still on time at this stage but my contingency time had been eaten up. Quickly ate something, grabbed my water bottle and was good to go to make it with a good 5 mins to spare. The car was iced over, I didn't expect that, this added 10 minutes on whilst I defrosted it, did stupid things like tried to use my scarf to clean the screen and then I set off. Luckily there was not traffic but I made it to my class bang on 8am when I should have been early. 

My executive function is shit, I can't plan very well and I get distracted incredibly quickly, all this has a knock on effect. I didn't discover my ADHD till about 2 years ago and now I do what I can to manage the chaos in my brain and things are better but for nearly 40 years I didn't know I was ADHD and just thought I couldn't human very well, and no matter what I tried I was just really shit at being organised.

[DavidB6937]

@deathrey Definitely interesting to hear your experiences. I'm pursuing an ADHD diagnosis and I'm absolutely on the other end of the scale when it comes to time keeping and prep. Far too anxious and will always over compensate timing wise. Find it very difficult to focus on anything else if I know i need to be somewhere.

[deathrey]

22 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

@deathrey Definitely interesting to hear your experiences. I'm pursuing an ADHD diagnosis and I'm absolutely on the other end of the scale when it comes to time keeping and prep. Far too anxious and will always over compensate timing wise. Find it very difficult to focus on anything else if I know i need to be somewhere.

Have you always been anxious about it? I'm anxious now but it's because I worry people will perceive me as being lazy or find me out that I'm disorganised. I also worry about people thinking I don't value their time. To be fair I don't take the piss with my lateness, it's 5/10 minutes at most, I've never strolled in to something half an hour late.

[DavidB6937]

1 hour ago, deathrey said:

Have you always been anxious about it? I'm anxious now but it's because I worry people will perceive me as being lazy or find me out that I'm disorganised. I also worry about people thinking I don't value their time. To be fair I don't take the piss with my lateness, it's 5/10 minutes at most, I've never strolled in to something half an hour late.

Oh yeah definitely always anxious. Can remember it going back to getting the bus to school. I did not deal well with bus delays.

[BomberPat]

Someone I know recently got an ADHD diagnosis, in her early 40s.

She talked about how she basically had to complete the questionnaire they give you twice - instinctively, when asked a question about something like timekeeping, she would think, "no, I'm really good at timekeeping, because I have all these failsafes and rituals in place to make sure that I'm on time", then having the realisation that she has had to build those systems to accommodate for her poor executive function, and that she should be answering the questions taking that into account, that actually, no, she isn't good at these things if she's had to construct an entire scaffolding of behaviours to consciously manage them better. 

[Chris B]

On 3/15/2026 at 11:24 AM, DavidB6937 said:

Oh yeah definitely always anxious. Can remember it going back to getting the bus to school. I did not deal well with bus delays.

Do you think that anxiety is playing a part in getting annoyed when others don't seem to take it as seriously? Like, if you're kept waiting for 15-20 minutes, I totally get it, but I do find it interesting when people get irritated at the 5-minute-late kind of thing.

My general rule of thumb is that I don't have an issue with waiting as long as someone's letting me know what's happening. I can then re-plan and work around it. But then, that led to me being more visibly late than others in more than one workplace because I was the only one messaging to say I was late.

[DavidB6937]

1 hour ago, Chris B said:

Do you think that anxiety is playing a part in getting annoyed when others don't seem to take it as seriously? Like, if you're kept waiting for 15-20 minutes, I totally get it, but I do find it interesting when people get irritated at the 5-minute-late kind of thing.

My general rule of thumb is that I don't have an issue with waiting as long as someone's letting me know what's happening. I can then re-plan and work around it. But then, that led to me being more visibly late than others in more than one workplace because I was the only one messaging to say I was late.

At work I'd only get annoyed if it's a regular thing that someone's constantly doing. In those cases I do think if there's an ongoing issue then the onus has to be on that person to work out how to fix it, otherwise you might as well just let everyone be late. I understand there may be some underlying issues going on there rather than just a blanket "that person is lazy!" kinda deal.

Especially when in my workplace we're often having meetings from 9am discussing the day etc so it can have a detrimental impact if it's the same person being late.

I've definitely worked with some obviously lazy people though, and that's generally reflected in their attitude towards work as a whole, and the being late is just one of a list of issues.

[westlondonmist]

Fuckin retstructure announced today. 6 months ago I was told a big opportunity to promote was coming up and I was a shoe in, I didn't get it, and now a restructure. Feels like I've been shafted twice in 6 months as I'm not sure I'll have a job in 12 months. They tried to downplay it but they've given a timeline of 10 months, which includes 2 months consultation preparation and 2 months consultation. To me that's pretty fucking big. Truth is our team has grown too quickly, 2 years ago our Directorate had 34 staff plus 3 senior members of staff (on salaries ranging from 80-165k) to 50 staff plus 9 senior members. 17 of the 50 are managers too, so it's a very top heavy system with 15% Senior and 44% Manager or Senior. I actually think it's the managers who should be shitting their pants (as those extra 6 SLT have a rough cost of about 700k) but we it's all being done internally rather than an consultant so who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky and be one of the one's who does well out of it but I always think the worst can happen.

 

I suppose this is why I pay my union fees. 

[Mr_Danger]

I’m late for work nearly every day. For a while it was an accepted fact that I am late. I  justify it to myself as I don’t get paid until I start and I always work over my finish time. My manager started pulling me on it threatening disciplinary action but nothing has happened so far, the spineless nerds.
 

 I nearly got the sack the other day because I left an age restricted product on a customers doorstep. It was only the fact that I explained it wasn’t even my round and I was just taking it because it was too heavy for one of my colleagues to carry up stairs and that the customer was a blind lady who is locked in her flat so asked me to leave it for her that saved me. My manager was actually arguing in my favour whilst my union rep was telling him I should have followed procedure which is pretty fucked up. The next day it was downgraded from a sacking to a training issue, no warnings given.

I told my manager later that week he was better suited to putting me on jobs I could do quickly instead of sorting jobs that take me longer to do due to my dyslexic brain. He said he’d cut or change my hours. I’ve asked for this threat in writing. A big pay off is just around the corner, I just need to hang in there a bit longer.
 

I’m basically Ron Livingston in Office Space at this point.

[SuperBacon]

4 minutes ago, Mr_Danger said:

I’m basically Ron Livingston in Office Space at this point

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Danger.

[LaGoosh]

I get to work as early as I can. I'm usually the first one in so I can put my feet up, have a cuppa, post shit on here and not do any actual work until everyone else starts trickling in much later. Additionally as no one knows what time I get in other than it's before 8 I can knock off early most days as everyone just presumes I'm doing my full hours even when I'm not.

I reckon I could write a fucking book on skiving with all the tricks I've learned and built up over the years.

Edited March 18 by LaGoosh