Employee quits mid-shift after boss tries to dock pay for being 8 minutes late
'Sometimes we have no control over being late; it's human nature,' a user noted.
A star employee (u/lenapaulmvv) decided to quit mid-shift when their boss tried to dock pay for being only 8 minutes late to work. The story was shared on Reddit on October 19, 2025.
For six months, the individual was a role model. In fact, they would always clock in 10 minutes early and had never taken a day off. However, once everything that could go wrong did, the employee ended up arriving 8 minutes late. "My boss immediately pulls me aside and starts giving me this whole speech about professionalism because I didn't call to say I was running a few minutes behind," they said. Moreover, the boss informed them that, as a consequence, they wouldn't be allowed to take a lunch break. "I didn't pack anything, so I asked if I could at least run to the deli next door to grab something to eat before my shift got going. He said fine, but he'd have to clock me out for 30 minutes of pay," the employee recalled.
They clocked out and rushed to get something to eat and didn't return for almost two hours. "My phone started blowing up a little while ago, and it was my manager. I answered and just said, 'Yeah, I'm not coming back. I quit.' No regrets so far. Onto the next thing, I guess," they said. The individual had no regrets about leaving the job, but they were a bit anxious about finding another opportunity. "I don't know where to start. I want to focus on finding a comfortable job with a good salary, which I think is rare nowadays," they added.
My boss tried to take away my lunch break, so I took a permanent one.
byu/lenapaulmvv inInterviewCoderPro
It's surprising that companies try to dock pay for being late but don't want to pay extra for overtime, right? Despite popular consensus on '9 to 5' being an outdated standard, a survey by CareerBuilder found that half of all employers (53%) still expect employees to be on time every day, and 4 in 10 (41%) have fired someone for being late.
Reacting to the Reddit post, u/queasy_syrup_9707 wrote, "I think companies should just accept people are going to be late, like they accept we need to go to dentist and doctor appointments... sometimes we have no control over being late; it's human nature, but yeah, a limit like 10 minutes late is reasonable; any more would be a pizza take (food word replacement intentional)."
u/deadwillow26 commented, "Honestly, I wish I had that kind of confidence. I work in a factory, and to get to the production floor, I have to put on PPE (hairnet and lab coat) and wash my hands, which takes about 4-ish minutes. And then it takes another 1-2 minutes to get to my position, depending on where I'm at. The number of times I've been told I'm late is just... ugh. People punch in from lunch 5 minutes early just to make it there in time, and it makes the people not look late. But I have to stick with this job for now because, for no experience, I get paid 21 bucks and get full-time hours and occasional OT. And it is a 10-minute walk from my apartment."
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Employee reprimanded for being late by minutes despite working overtime makes company pay threefold
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