I work at an inbound call center and here's how our time works:
We long in and press a button and when we press it we are officially on the clock. There's different “modes” we can switch to, like personal, break, lunch, ready, meeting, training, etc.
Once you're on the clock, you're expected to be in “ready” mode asap, and only switch to other modes based on your schedule.
When you're in ready mode, you're immediately available to receive any incoming calls (only one at a time though) and some calls last a long time so you might be a few minutes (or an hour) late for your breaks or lunch.
Basically your attendance is measured by what % of your schedule you adhered to, so if you were in ready mode your entire shift without any personal breaks (like bathroom, snap, etc) and took all your breaks on the dot (kind of uncontrollable but it's doable) then your adherence would be 100%
The goal for the call center is 95% and I was wondering how low my percentage could drop without getting fired? Currently my supervisor has spoken to me at least 3 times now about being 90-92% and it's all just a couple bathroom breaks or refilling water or taking my breaks within five minutes of the scheduled time instead of exactly.
We're also measured by other things too, like how often we transfer a call, how long our calls are, or if a customer calls back within 7 days of talking to us, etc.