THE QUESTION: Recently you’ve been exhausted and less productive at work because of lack of sleep. You find yourself getting distracted and frequently nodding off. As a part-time employee, you are paid hourly, required to track your work hours, and expected to submit a timesheet biweekly. For your last pay period, you’ve easily wasted two hours due to your lack of productivity. Although you’ve exceeded past expectations, met deadlines, and plan to get more sleep and work harder over the next pay period, you’re considering subtracting two hours from your current timesheet before submitting it to your supervisor.

WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER?

A. Subtract the two hours from your timesheet and submit it.

B. Decide that previous productivity makes up for wasted time, and submit your full timesheet without subtracting anything.

C. Seek advice from your supervisor, and follow his/her guidance.

D. Submit your full timesheet, and work an extra unbilled two hours next pay period to rectify the situation.

WHAT’S MY ANSWER?

I picked B. Decide that previous productivity makes up for wasted time, and submit your full timesheet without subtracting anything.

Recently I attended the CAI HR Managment Conference in Raleigh, NC where I learned something very important concerning this dilemma: If you are an hourly employee and you show up, you log it on your timesheet. It doesn’t matter how productive you are at work – you are there, you have to log it.

The crazy thing? Most people at the conference didn’t know that! We performed an alingment study with the HR professionals at the conference – feel free to answer the Dilemma for yourself and/or check out the results of the study.

Now while philosphically I don’t agree that my previous productivity makes up for my wasted time this week. However, I do feel that I can’t be on 100% all the time. My manager should assess my contribution to the company based on my work ethic and output over an extended period of time.

You can read my comments from my orignal post (where I picked A) here. 

Click here to read an evaluation of this Dilemma from Fulvio Di Blasi, a world-renown scholar in the field of applied philosophy and business ethics.  

Well, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Let me know your answer and why in the comments below.

Dilemmas are a powerful way to improve your life now by testing your values. Keep discovering your values by answering more dilemmas here.