What moment does your “time card” trigger?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When they record the data, so whenever you first swipe.

Cool — so I can go chill out for 15 minutes in the lobby and wait till exactly 4:00 and exit the turnstile. I guess that 15 minutes counts.

What a bunch of bs kabuki theater.

Or you could, you know, work a full day and then go home. Do you have any idea how you sound? This whining makes Feds look terrible. Less flexibility these days, but it’s not like the private sector, where you’re on all the time, working weekends and vacations. Maybe you should consider moving and see what it’s like.

Jobs where you work weekends and vacation make multiples of a Feds salary.

And? Feds don’t work weekends and vacation. 8 hours of presence is not a tough ask, especially with the incredibly flexible leave policies most agencies have. As in, I basically can’t ever deny a leave request. Would need a crazy reason. And as many have said—no one is looking to catch people for coming in 15 mins late here and there. This only comes up when you have a bad employee and people notice they aren’t working enough. In those cases the data will usually show a major issue.

No, in this day and age of DOGE and illegal terminations and the intense partisan nature of federal workforce policy, exerting this kind of control over federal employees needs to be understood as punitive and laying the groundwork for them to terminate whoever they want. So no, you cannot clock in 15 minutes late and then record 8 hrs on your timesheet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When they record the data, so whenever you first swipe.

Cool — so I can go chill out for 15 minutes in the lobby and wait till exactly 4:00 and exit the turnstile. I guess that 15 minutes counts.

What a bunch of bs kabuki theater.

Or you could, you know, work a full day and then go home. Do you have any idea how you sound? This whining makes Feds look terrible. Less flexibility these days, but it’s not like the private sector, where you’re on all the time, working weekends and vacations. Maybe you should consider moving and see what it’s like.

Jobs where you work weekends and vacation make multiples of a Feds salary.

And? Feds don’t work weekends and vacation. 8 hours of presence is not a tough ask, especially with the incredibly flexible leave policies most agencies have. As in, I basically can’t ever deny a leave request. Would need a crazy reason. And as many have said—no one is looking to catch people for coming in 15 mins late here and there. This only comes up when you have a bad employee and people notice they aren’t working enough. In those cases the data will usually show a major issue.

No, in this day and age of DOGE and illegal terminations and the intense partisan nature of federal workforce policy, exerting this kind of control over federal employees needs to be understood as punitive and laying the groundwork for them to terminate whoever they want. So no, you cannot clock in 15 minutes late and then record 8 hrs on your timesheet.

You absolutely shouldn’t. But, at the same time the reality is that most supervisors are never going to get to the point of looking for this unless you are a huge p.r.o.b.l.e.m. I’m very precise with my time and I honestly don’t find it a chore. Some do. I’m telling them not to lose sleep over 5 minutes. It’ll be ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an attorney so the rules don't apply to me. I come and go whenever I want.

I’m sorry what? That is not how it works!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When they record the data, so whenever you first swipe.

Cool — so I can go chill out for 15 minutes in the lobby and wait till exactly 4:00 and exit the turnstile. I guess that 15 minutes counts.

What a bunch of bs kabuki theater.

Or you could, you know, work a full day and then go home. Do you have any idea how you sound? This whining makes Feds look terrible. Less flexibility these days, but it’s not like the private sector, where you’re on all the time, working weekends and vacations. Maybe you should consider moving and see what it’s like.

Jobs where you work weekends and vacation make multiples of a Feds salary.

And? Feds don’t work weekends and vacation. 8 hours of presence is not a tough ask, especially with the incredibly flexible leave policies most agencies have. As in, I basically can’t ever deny a leave request. Would need a crazy reason. And as many have said—no one is looking to catch people for coming in 15 mins late here and there. This only comes up when you have a bad employee and people notice they aren’t working enough. In those cases the data will usually show a major issue.

No, in this day and age of DOGE and illegal terminations and the intense partisan nature of federal workforce policy, exerting this kind of control over federal employees needs to be understood as punitive and laying the groundwork for them to terminate whoever they want. So no, you cannot clock in 15 minutes late and then record 8 hrs on your timesheet.

You absolutely shouldn’t. But, at the same time the reality is that most supervisors are never going to get to the point of looking for this unless you are a huge p.r.o.b.l.e.m. I’m very precise with my time and I honestly don’t find it a chore. Some do. I’m telling them not to lose sleep over 5 minutes. It’ll be ok.

Some doge bro will look at the swipe records and compare them to your time cards. It’s foolish to give yourself any wiggle room (unless on Maxiflex and keeping very close track and recording time accurately.)

[Anonymous]

Not all civil service jobs have a 5x8 schedule.

The part of the government I interact with has some people (not all) who must work 8 hour shifts to maintain 24x7x365 coverage. Not ATC, but similar continuous staffing requirements. There are always people working, weekends, holidays, snow days, whenever. There also are people who are "on call" to come in -- if circumstances need that.

[Anonymous]

My agency only has badge readers on the way in. They did test badging out once, a few months ago, so I won’t be surprised if they start it at some point.

As a manager, I used to get a report every pay period of people who reported in office hours and didn’t badge in. It was ALWAYS a situation where someone had ended up using leave at the last minute and not updated their timesheet (we have to submit timesheets on Tuesday, so if you get sick at the end of the pay period your timesheet is wrong until the system reopens the following Wednesday for corrections. I never had a case where someone was actually reporting being in the office and not being there. We never got any information about badge times and whether they correspond with reported hours.

I also haven’t received a badge report in months. Either they figured out to wait to run reports until after people were able to correct their time cards, or they stopped caring. Not sure which.

[Anonymous]

I'm assuming it's when I swipe my badge at the door to my office suite.

[Anonymous]

This going to depend on the agency. My agency is in a private building and the swipes to get in belong to the building not the agency. They monitor if you’re in the office based on computer login. But they don’t monitor hours. Most employees are attorneys and IT staff and working irregular hours, including nights and weekends, is common. So no one sweats it if someone doesn’t do 8.5 in office every day so long as they hit 80 in a pay period, come in for part of every day unless approved not to do so, and get their work done well and on time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This going to depend on the agency. My agency is in a private building and the swipes to get in belong to the building not the agency. They monitor if you’re in the office based on computer login. But they don’t monitor hours. Most employees are attorneys and IT staff and working irregular hours, including nights and weekends, is common. So no one sweats it if someone doesn’t do 8.5 in office every day so long as they hit 80 in a pay period, come in for part of every day unless approved not to do so, and get their work done well and on time.

I think it is extremely naive to believe there is no risk in that kind of flexibility. If you aren’t going to be in your office those 8.5 hrs each day, you need to be on Maxiflex and make sure your hours add up to 80 a PP and precisely record them. Your manager may not care but there is nothing you can do when the doge bros look at the data and decide you have been engaged in time card fraud. They can obviously access the building swipes. I would record my time based on swiping in and when I logged off each day in a similar office (where there was no swipe out.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an attorney so the rules don't apply to me. I come and go whenever I want.

I’m sorry what? That is not how it works!

I’m not the PP, but I suspect they’re probably a DOJ litigator who frequently works 50-60 hours a week (and more for trials), travel extensively, and are expected to respond to emails after hours and on the weekends. This is not a 40-hour regular federal job.

[Anonymous]

I assume it’s when I log into my computer.