Dishonest day work

As this week's working day only begin on Wednesday, most of the people took the week off. In my office, the whole floor, only 5 of us are in the office as compared to the usual dozen. Some took official annual leave, but there is one particular person in my office who only comes in the morning and goes missing after lunch.

To me this is not the way to work. If you want to work, stay on the whole day. If you want to take a rest at home, you are allocated annual leave that you can take at your convenience. You must be fair to everyone.

While thinking about this topic, another example came to my mind that was told to me by my gf. One of this colleague is also this type of person. He told the whole team that he will be going to a site at a specific time, but ended up not appearing at site. He just used it as a reason to go do some of his personal things and never thought of others. I also heard that a team of people at the site waited for his arrival but he fail to turn up and did not inform them until like 5 something pm.

This is not something new to me when I heard that. I have seen many times with reputable consultants informing the "whole world" about a meeting at a specific date and time and he himself did not come for the meeting.

I understand sometimes we have to handle some of our personal things during office hours as some official dealings with the banks, government agencies etc is not available after office hours and on they are close on weekends.

However, upon we finish with all these, we must get back to work soonest possible. We must cover our own tracks. When we "sneak" out to do our personal things under a specific name / work related destination that we need to go, we must make sure we will also end up there meeting the people we are suppose to meet for work also.

If you just leave the office and informing your fellow colleagues that you are going to a specific site but instead you just went off somewhere and did not turn up at the site, the news will spread like bush fire. It will leave marks on your personal records with your boss if he finds out. Is it worth risking?

When we work, we must be fair to everyone in the office too. Not many of us get the chance to leave the office during office hours officially. Only people that is in direct contact with customers e.g. sales teams, site teams, project teams etc. can leave the office and be on the road during office hours. There were many other people in our company that do not have the 'privileges' to leave the desk. The only time they leave the office is either they are going out for lunch or the are heading home after work. Rest of the time, they need to have the rear glued to their seat during office hours.

Of course, again, I understand working outside the office is not as nice as working inside an fully air conditioned office. Those in direct contact with customers need to face all sorts of characters the customer can put up. Travel long distances by land, sea and air to get their jobs done. Work under the hot sun and wet rains.

When we travel out of office to do some of our personal things, we must also patch up with completing the official duties. Make sure when we go back end of the day, we have work enough to call it an honest day work!!

Therefore, to all of you out there, please consider all the factors and learn to cover up tracks of the dishonest day work. As there is a Chinese saying, "Stealing food to eat, we must know how to wipe out mouth".