Has anybody out there ever heard of a no fault attendance policy? Well if you have not, I'm going to explain. When you miss a day it counts as one point, if you are late or leave early it is half a point. The reason you missed a day doesn't matter being in the emergency room with a two year old child spiking a high fever is weighted the same as calling in and saying "Gone Fishin'." My last job had such a policy. Their point limit was set at 5 points, upon receiving your 5th attendance point an employee is suspended pending termination while the case is reviewed. Now, even if you have a doctor's note, police report, court document, or similar verification an attendance point is still awarded - all that a doctors note will do is make multiple consecutive missed days be covered under a single point rather than receiving a point a day for the absence.

Well, anyway, I've missed some work at this job. The bicycle I was riding to work was stolen and I had to miss a day, I was in the ER when my two year old son spiked a high fever out of the blue and had to miss a day, I was in urgent care with my wife when she developed sciatica and had to miss work, ate some bad tacos and couldn't get off the john for two days and had to miss a day of work, and, finally, had a person who was supposed to give me a ride to work fail to show up and had to ride 15 miles from my apartment to my job on a bicycle with a broken rear wheel which resulted in my being late for work. Now, all this resulted in my carrying 4.5 attendance points at my job, I've been trying to make it until the 12th of July when points start being removed and my job was no longer hanging by a frayed thread.

Now comes Sunday just past. The person I was carpooling with got stuck behind a car accident on Poplar Level road and was late picking me up. Anyway, we head to work with her doing 80+ mph on the expressway trying to avoid being late. When we arrive at our job I run straight to the time clock and it's displaying 11:02 pm, my shift started at 11:00pm. Two minutes late, I actually breathe a sigh of relieve about this because at less than five minutes late, most employers will not even consider you late for work as long as it isn't a habit. WTF, was I thinking - I work for complete jerks who did consider two fucking minutes as a full blown tardy as subject to maximum punishment under the attendance policy. Mind you, I have paper documentation for every single missed day, except the case of the runs (I didn't feel like dealing with a $20 medical co-pay for that one). The bicycle with the broken wheel was sitting at my job all night on that occasion, yet my boss refused to walk to the fucking door, to see that I wasn't fucking lying. And then this job fires me of two fucking minutes, when I am actually at my work station before production even starts. Now, I have to try and see if I can get unemployment, and have my son put on Medicaid since, of course, medical coverage ended with my job. And I have no fucking idea how I'm going to pay the rent that's coming due, but if I don't have that by the 15th the apartment building automatically files for eviction. All over two fucking minutes, when I'm normally 20-30 mins early most days, and have repeatedly worked over and come in early whenever asked. Am I a bad employee, or just a father with a young child and a family? It's enough to make me want to blow the fucking plant up, metaphorically speaking. Of all the....