Slackers in the office? Must be the boss’s kids

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know — especially at a family-owned business. I’ve worked for a few during my years in IT and witnessed many instances when blood relations translated to special privileges, to the dismay of the rest of the workforce.

When I came on board at one such company, the second generation was in management and the founders’ children were beginning to graduate from college. The higher-ups soon created jobs with good titles and little responsibility for the offspring holding shiny, new diplomas. As an outsider who saw much and listened well, I was privy to a lot of information that left me gobsmacked.

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The company started decades prior to the electronic revolution, in a familiar pattern: Business was conducted with triplicate paper invoices, adding machines, and ledgers. As the company progressed and expanded, it went through the stages of dot-matrix impact printers and DOS-based accounting programs. These in turn slowly yielded to Microsoft Windows and laser printers. The company tried to stay competitive, though not on the cutting edge of technology.

After adopting a new payroll package that used time clocks and imported the swipes directly into the software, our manufacturing facility enjoyed significant labor savings. No longer did the payroll personnel have to spend hours poring over printed time sheets or punch cards determining actual hours worked.

The payroll department was very grateful and suggested we install the device at headquarters to collect the times of those 50 or so office employees — where two of the offspring worked.

Looks good on paper

The payroll staff, sequestered in its own wing of the building and not privileged to be related to the owners or execs, was not aware of the problems this would create. In order to be “fair,” all employees were to swipe in for the day, out to lunch, in from lunch, and out for the day by order of the CEO.

My office overlooked the general cubicle area, and I watched to see how this directive would play out. I knew these two employees had developed a habit of leaving for lunch between 11:30 and noon and not returning before 1:30 — if at all.

Other employees were frustrated, but it seemed nothing could be done. Exceptions reports would readily show these long lunches and missed punches, and I expected we’d finally see pushback of some sort.

Busy the first week on the new implementation, I overheard only suppressed muttering by the two individuals who were now limited to one hour for lunch. I thought maybe they’d eventually adapt. A quick check of the exceptions report showed their times were within the grace period, and they appeared to be adhering to the one-hour lunch period.

A couple of weeks later I needed to obtain some information from one of these individuals after lunch, but was unable to find them. According to the forms, they weren’t off for vacation or doctor’s appointments. I wondered how this could happen and remembered that several other employees had complained about their absences a few days earlier.

According to the time report the next day, they had worked eight hours. Though neither had been in the office, both had recorded eight hours of time worked. I was stumped, as I knew neither of them possessed the technical expertise to write a script to log them in and out. How were they doing it?

Conning the system

The next day around 11 a.m., I passed by the time clock area, where the rack held all the time cards. I saw one of these family employees grab two cards and swipe them. The light clicked — busted!

I returned to my office and instead of running the report on time worked, I ran the actual times in and out. There it was. Every day they would swipe out to lunch at 11 a.m., return to work for an hour, then join the queue of employees leaving for lunch at noon and swipe again — but the last swipe would be reported as in from lunch. The afternoon would then be theirs as long as they made the end-of-day swipe.

I had the evidence. But what to do with this information?

I reported the findings to my boss, who took them to the CFO — yes, also a family member. He took care of it by promptly moving the two individuals onto salary, so they would no longer have to swipe time cards. Problem solved — in a way.

Of course, this did nothing for the esprit de corps for the marching troops. I knew the family could treat their offspring as they wished, but yearned for a little more discretion in a workplace.

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