A Cook's Repeated Lateness and a Supervisor's Dilemma
A lead cook has been late to 9 of the last 20 shifts, typically by 10-25 minutes. She is the most skilled cook on the evening shift and covers the grill station that no one else has mastered. Her lateness forces the previous shift to hold over, generating overtime. When approached informally, she says her bus route changed and she is 'doing her best.' The supervisor has not documented any of the incidents. The department has a progressive discipline policy but also a history of informal arrangements. Other staff have begun arriving late as well. The supervisor must act before the problem spreads further.
1. Analyze what the supervisor has done wrong and what the immediate priorities are.
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The supervisor has made three errors. First, no documentation means there is no defensible record if discipline is later challenged, and the employee has never received clear notice that the behavior is a problem. Second, tolerating the behavior while it imposes overtime on others signals that the rule is optional. Third, relying on one indispensable person for a critical station is a single point of failure that the supervisor has allowed to persist.
Immediate priorities:
- Start a written record now, documenting dates, times, and impact.
- Hold a private, structured conversation: state the observed pattern and its effect, ask about the bus route, and listen. The goal is to separate a fixable barrier from a performance problem.
- Set clear expectations in writing: on-time arrival, a defined grace period per policy, and consequences.
- Address the spillover by restating expectations to the whole team consistently.
- Begin cross-training a second person on the grill so the department is not hostage to one schedule.
2. Recommend how to handle the scheduling barrier and the discipline question together.
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Treat the two issues separately but resolve them in one plan. Barrier: if the bus route genuinely changed, explore a shift start 30 minutes later, a carpool, or a temporary adjustment for a defined period (e.g., 60 days) with a review date. A reasonable accommodation for a transportation issue is not the same as excusing chronic lateness; it must be time-bound and documented.
Discipline: if the pattern continues after clear expectations and a genuine attempt to help, apply the progressive policy: verbal warning, written warning, then further steps. Apply it consistently so other staff see that the standard is real. Avoid the trap of protecting the skilled cook because she is hard to replace; that is a staffing problem to solve through cross-training, not a reason to abandon fairness.
Document each step, keep the conversation factual and respectful, and give the employee a chance to respond. The message should be: we want to keep your skills, and we need reliable attendance; here is the help and here is the standard.