Going The Distance To Be Lazy

Australia, Coworkers, Employees, Lazy/Unhelpful, Office, Sydney | Working | May 1, 2020


A coworker is always late in the morning; her excuse is the distance. We live along the same train line but her station is 25 minutes further away from mine; it takes me an hour to get to work on a train that takes me directly to the town we work in.

One day, my coworker asks me which train I catch as I am always at work on time.

Me: “I get [Train]; it’s pretty quick as it only stops at [Major Stations] before it gets to the city.”

Coworker: “Oh, that one leaves my station too early for me and I don’t like stopping at all of the stations because it makes the trip so much longer for me.”

Me: “But isn’t that the last train that will get you to work on time?”

Coworker: “Yeah, but I hate all those stops, so I wait for [Express Train] which gets me into the city without stopping; it only takes 45 minutes and I am there not long after your train goes through.”

Me: “But that still makes you late, doesn’t it?”

Her train terminates at the station, so she has to get through crowds to change platforms and then wait for the next train to take her to our station which is four stations past the city.

Coworker: “[Manager] understands because I live so far away; he always lets me go home ten minutes earlier, too. Anyway, I am moving soon and will be closer.”

She moved a couple of weeks later and was still arriving twenty minutes late every day. This went on for six months until she forgets some keys. I was working reception when her manager let me know that they would be out of the office for two to three hours because he needed to drive her home to get the keys which were vital to his work.

Less than fifteen minutes later, they were back, and her manager looked even more pissed than he’d been when they left. It appeared that she’d neglected to tell him that she had moved to a place just ten minutes’ walk from work. She thought it was funny that she had been able to get away with it for so long.

She didn’t stay with us much longer, quitting because her unreasonable manager would insist on picking her up each morning half an hour before starting time, and she did not like getting out of bed that early.