My boss now understands that I will come in five minutes past the hour most days, because that's when the train gets me there. It's that or leave much earlier to get there only a little earlier. There's nothing special about being there "on the hour" and I stay until all the work's done. Most of the time, there isn't even anything for me to do in those five minutes, of the ten after. He doesn't consider this being late and neither do I, because we share expectations.

A previous boss expected me to be there at noon to open the bar by one. Opening the bar took me twenty minutes, so I started coming in at 12:30. When he complained, I asked him if he wanted to pay me for another half-hour to stand around. He saw sense.

A third boss would camp out at six am just to write me up for coming in five minutes past the hour. Again, while we are not open and there was nothing for me to do but be there. And again, to get there beforehand, I would've had to get on a bus a full hour earlier. I explained this, but he was new to his job and saw this as an affront to his authority or something. I was eventually fired over it, just a week before he himself was fired for inappropriate conduct.

That is the kind of behavior I'm talking about. Worship of the clock to the exclusion of sense.