This happened a long time ago but I worked at a place that had production lines that ran late almost every night. Every now and then the lines would finish early and we’d have all our work done. This was a professional job and my partner and I were scientists. Our supervisor would tell us if we got done early on a night then go ahead and go home since we averaged almost 60 hours a week. It happened about every other week and we left 30-45 minutes early.
One day when I got to work I got called into HR with my partner. The HR rep looked at me and said they pulled the times when we badged out of the building and that leaving early was dishonest and was stealing. They said they noticed it happened especially on Fridays (that was the one day they had less production lines and we almost always had to be in early on Saturday mornings for OT work). I look over at my supervisor who is sitting right next to me and he wouldn’t make eye contact. He was sweating and I could just feel the fear coming from him. If I said he gave us permission then he would have been fired. He was married with a small army of kids and they were not firing me, just writing me up. I kept my mouth shut and took the write up just like my partner.
It was actually a very valuable lesson that sticks with me to this day. I never leave employees to hang out to dry. It I made a decision and it turns out bad it is my responsibility…blaming employees is for the weak and low integrity employers.