If you worked retail and arrived at your job early, would you start work early or would you wait until the second your shift started to clock in?

In today’s story, one former retail worker used to start work early when he arrived early, but that’s about to change.

Find out why in the story below.

Sorry I’m late sometimes (Retail)

Many many moons ago when I was a sweet young teen (18m then, 33m now) I was sometimes spotty with arriving on time to work…

For context though the out-of-town retail park my place was located at had absolutely tragic traffic flow/design…

So you could be 15-20 minutes ahead of time and then still be stuck in traffic that long during the busy season.

I set off very early during those times and I was often there 30 minutes early as often as 10 minutes late.

I would regularly just start early when I arrived anyway, because why would I sit there and do nothing, especially when colleagues needed breaks (which was often).

He decided to make sure he wasn’t late.

One day the manager pulls me aside, and the conversation is basically “your numbers are good but you can’t keep arriving late, it’s not fair on everyone else and you can’t do it again”.

I was too young to stand up for myself and argue about the traffic (and reading other stories that has never worked anyway), so instead I followed the rule to the letter.

When the roads were busy I accepted that I had to set off even earlier to get there, even if I was burning 2 hours of my own time for a 4 hour shift, but the beautiful compliance came thanks to my managers lack of foresight.

Which meant he sometimes arrived early.

I arrived an hour early for one of my shifts, and my manager implores me “Mr XYZ has been working without a break for 6 hours and he really needs a break, could you start early?”.

My response was “I’d be happy to if I finish early too”.

She laughed in my face and said “it doesn’t work like that.”

I laughed in hers (very subtly) and said “then I don’t work like that”.

It would be hard to work somewhere where traffic made it extra difficult to know how long it would actually take you to get to work.

If he’s there early though, might as well start work early.

What else is he going to do?

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The car for the win!

As long as you’re getting paid for it, why not start work early?

It sounds like the employer was breaking the law.

A former fast food worker shares their experience.

Traffic is the enemy.

And we are all fighting in that war.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.