If you know someone who is chronically late for work – or, indeed, if you are that person – you’ll know how much trouble that one characteristic can get you in. Sure you’re a good worker in all other respects, but if your punctuality is consistently letting the side down, you know for certain that your boss is going to mention it and take issue with it. Because in some industries, late employees mean a business can’t open or function in good time, meaning that the business is automatically losing out on income. Other times it’s just not fair to punctual colleagues or team morale.

So of course you do something about it. You set earlier alarms, try to get in earlier to combat your lateness. And of course, you’re never going to be perfect, and you will be late sometimes. But sometimes is better than always, and the extra effort you’re putting in won’t go unnoticed.

Unfortunately for the boss in this story, one employee is always late – even after agreeing to try not to be. Worse, she won’t return or answer calls, and has even blocked her boss. So unfortunately, the company is going to have to take further steps toward terminating her employment – even though no one really wants to.

Read on to find out why.

WIBTA if I fire a depressed employee for repeated tardiness?

The employee in question (‘Anna’ for the sake of this post) used to work with my mother at a different company about fifteen years ago, so we have known her for a long time.

She was fired from that job twice. She ended up having to leave our town and go live with family as she couldn’t find another job at that time.

She has a long history of depression and has cycled through periods of being very social (going out for dinners with my mother and other coworkers) and periods of not showing up to work or responding to anyone’s phone calls.

The second time she got fired from that job, she disappeared. For three years no one knew when she was. Then one day she showed up and asked us to give her a job at our new company.

Let’s see how Anna has settled into working this new job.

We agreed to hire her about nineteen months ago. She knows the job and is a productive and intelligent worker.

We are chronically short staffed due to the nature of our work and a lack of people who can handle the job. We had a conversation with her at the very beginning about the importance of attendance and showing up on time. She said she understood.

In the past year, she has not shown up to work on time a single day. She is often up to three hours late. We have had conversation about this and have asked that she call the office if she’s running late. She always agrees, but then fails to do it.

We have had her sign written warnings several times and the very next day she’ll come in two hours late. When she’s not here an hour after our day starts and we try calling her, she rejects our calls. I’ve tried texting her and she has blocked my number.

Uh-oh. Read on to find out how the company is dealing with this.

We know she has struggled with depression for years, so I’m guessing what’s happening now has at least partially to do with depression. If she brought us a note from her doctor, we would have to accommodate her and give her hours that work for her, but she refuses to bring us a note.

She is also in her late fifties and nearing the end of her career. She will not be hired by anyone in our industry if we let her go.

I want to terminate her employment because it isn’t fair to everyone else who’s showing up on time. Maybe they’d rather sleep in and show up at 10am too.

It also often causes problems with our clients. They need their product finished and are often stuck waiting for her to show up. It makes us look unprofessional when we can’t tell our clients what time our employee will show up.

But that wasn’t the only reason they wanted to let her go.

Mostly I want to let her go because of her attitude towards the leadership team when we try to have conversations with her about coming in late. She gets very angry and yells at us that she’s sick of the rules and if we don’t like her and think she’s crazy, stupid, evil (she goes on and on here usually), we should just fire her.

She’s incredibly honest and not a malicious person at all which makes this so much harder.

My mother says it’s an ******* thing to do because she won’t be able to find another job here and has no savings for retirement at all at this point.

WIBTA if I fired her?

Honestly, there are plenty of steps that Anna could take to help herself – and getting a doctor’s note is one of them. Being honest and cooperative with her employers is another.

If she was able to get a doctor’s note, they’d be able to accommodate her much better, and have made that quite clear.

It sucks that she has no retirement savings or other employment options, but this company have to think of their other staff and customers too, and Anna isn’t cooperating to find a middleground.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought the company needed to be ruthless.

While others thought that keeping her on wasn’t fair on other employees.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who was passed over for a promotion, so got a job with the competition and quit immediately.

Meanwhile, this Redditor encouraged the boss to fire her for the sake of their own job too.

Honestly, it is a shame. Everyone seems to quite like Anna, who is a good worker (when she actually turns up) and obviously this boss’s mom has a really good impression of her too. Understandably, given her depression, plenty of folk have taken pity on Anna and are happy to employ her on that basis, as well as cutting her a lot of slack when it come to her punctuality. But this has gotten to a point where it’s not fair on other workers who do turn up for work on time, and do communicate effectively. Because the fact that Anna refuses to do so puts their business and professionalism at risk.

Really, they’ve done more than they needed to to help Anna, on the basis of understanding and being sympathetic about her mental health. She is being given a lot of room and a lot of opportunities to agree to come into work on time, but still not doing so. And it’s not the fact she’s not arriving on time, it’s her refusal to communicate, the fact she has blocked her boss so she can’t be communicated with, and won’t even obtain a doctor’s note to cover her. At some point, she has to take responsibility. It’s sad, but she needs to go.