my job sent police to my home when I was 2 hours late

A reader writes:

In 30 years, I have been late to work twice.

The first time, management used my emergency contact number to track me down when I was one hour late. I believe this was a misuse of my personal information, and I removed this contact information from the company systems.

Now, years later, it has happened again. My manager sent police to my home for a “wellness check” because I was two hours late. In this day and age, when federal agencies are claiming that they can come into your home without a warrant, it’s more than a bit alarming to see police at one’s door.

Is this even remotely acceptable? I do realize that some employers will simply terminate on a no call/no show, but these actions have me not wanting to share any personal information at all, and have me questioning whether it’s even worth waiting the 10 months I have till retirement.

Both these incidents were due to scheduling confusion, and I am not completely blameless. But I work third shift, and it was freaky being awakened at 1 am by police at my door.

Both of these were bizarre overreactions. Calling your emergency contact after one hour? And sending police to your home for a wellness check after two hours?

The point of a wellness check or calling emergency contacts is supposed to be, “We’re genuinely concerned about this person’s safety because we haven’t heard from them for an extended period of time.” Two hours — let alone one hour — doesn’t meet that standard.

If you’re an hour or two late, they should call you. If they don’t reach you, they should leave a message. In most cases, I wouldn’t think about calling emergency contacts unless you’re still not reachable the next day. And escalating to a police wellness check should take longer than that and should only come after they’ve attempted to reach your emergency contact (and in the current moment comes with a particularly high to be cautious about your safety). In both cases, we’re not talking about acting after only a few hours.

That said, this is fact-specific and there are situations where the circumstances could warrant acting more quickly — like if you’re someone known to have a potentially life-threatening health condition and you normally show up like clockwork — but we’re still not talking about taking those steps when you’re only an hour late.

Acting within one to two hours reads like they were using your emergency contact and the police as ways to get you to work, not because they were genuinely concerned for your welfare.

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