Posted on 20-Jul-09 by The Timekeeper

From the Rhode Island-based Providence Journal website:

Seems a Cranston-area school custodian is now on unpaid suspension (and, reading between the lines, possibly being encouraged to resign to save himself and the School Committee the trouble of a formal termination hearing) after he was caught on tape buddy punching for several of his co-workers.

Given the circumstances, I have to agree with the Superintendent of Schools, Peter L. Nero, who’s quoted as saying he thinks this was “ not a one-time occurrence.”

An anonymous person (Disgruntled co-worker? Student? Outside party? We don’t know.) apparently found out about the buddy punching and — for whatever reason — instead of telling school officials, set up a secret video camera (a violation of school policy itself — a case of “the ends justifying the means,” perhaps?) and sent the resulting videotape to a local TV station… who, in turn, informed school officials.

What’s a bit interesting is that this wasn’t a simple case of buddy punching, where one employee punches at the normal time for another who’s running late or who left a little early, to make it look like the absent employee is on-premises. No, in this case, the custodian was observed actually unlocking the clock, changing the time, punching five time cards, then setting the clock back to the correct time.

Makes one wonder what the custodian was doing with a key to the timeclock in the first place. And how he learned to reset the time on the clock. And what everybody else was doing while he was messing about with the clock. And why the anonymous person who discovered this didn’t just go to the school administration, but rather felt compelled to set up the hidden camera and go straight to the media.

Lotta things to wonder about.

But one thing we don’t need to wonder about: if instead of a traditional time clock and time cards, they’d been using a biometric time and attendance system, the custodian wouldn’t have been able to buddy punch for anyone.

I’m sure if you’d asked them before the video tape surfaced, school officials would have said they didn’t have a buddy-punching problem. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if the leaders of Local 153 of the National Association of Government Employees, which represents school custodians and maintenance workers, would have objected to a biometric time tracking system on the grounds that such a thing was not necessary in Cranston and that the implications of such systems are insulting.

And it would have turned out in this case they were wrong.

So what are they doing to prevent this from re-occurring? According to the story, by the time you read this, new locks will have been installed on the time clocks. That, plus a police investigation and the probable termination of the custodian will likely serve as a deterrent, at least for a period of time.

But, you know, the only way to ensure against buddy punching is to use some form of biometrics. When you have to use part of your own body (finger, hand, retina, face, whatever) to identify yourself, it’s hard to leave that behind for someone else to use for the purpose of clocking you in or out.

So what about at your company? What kind of system do you have in place? Have you had any problems with buddy punching?

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