Ex-Texas AT&T worker believed he always clocked back on time. But his manager allegedly claimed the late seconds added up to 20 minutes

A former AT&T call center employee in Texas has shared a story about being pulled into a meeting by his manager over what he described as an impossible situation involving seconds on his lunch break clock-ins. Isaiah Cantera, who goes by @zaythemuse22 on TikTok, posted a video recounting his experience working at an AT&T call center.

According to Cantera, AT&T call center employees were given a one-hour lunch break along with two 15-minute breaks. He said he was always careful to return from lunch exactly on time. “If I clocked out at 1 o’clock, I would be back at 2 o’clock,” Cantera said in the video.

Cantera said that one day, after returning from lunch and taking a phone call, one of his managers sent him a message on Microsoft Teams asking him to join a team meeting once the call ended. What followed, according to Cantera, was a meeting he did not expect.

AT&T’s tracking system flagged accumulated seconds, not full minutes, Cantera claims

When Cantera joined the meeting, he said his manager had a blank white PowerPoint slide on the screen with the words “20 minutes” written on it. The manager then asked him if he knew what that meant. “It says 20 minutes. I go, I don’t know what that is,” Cantera recalled saying.

According to Cantera, the manager then told him, “So that’s the amount of time that you have gone over your lunch.” Cantera said he immediately pushed back. “That’s not true. I always clock back in exactly in an hour. I never ever go a minute. I’m always an hour to the tee,” he said he told the manager.

Cantera said the manager acknowledged that he was technically clocking back in at the one-hour mark each time. However, the manager reportedly explained that the issue was with the seconds. “You don’t clock in exactly at an hour. You have seconds. So these seconds, they add up, and it’s added up to 20 minutes. So that’s why I’m having this talk with you,” Cantera recalled the manager saying. 

Cantera said he then asked whether it would be better to clock back in five minutes early to avoid the issue. According to him, the manager said that would not work either, because employees were required to take the full hour. “You would get in trouble because you have to take an hour,” Cantera said the manager told him.

The manager’s reported advice was to set a timer for exactly one hour as soon as he clocked out and be ready to clock in right at that mark. “As long as you don’t go 30 seconds over when it’s been officially an hour, it won’t flag you. But it’s when you go over 30 seconds,” Cantera recalled the manager saying. In another case, a travel agency worker accused a manager of rounding hours down and marking sick days unpaid.

Cantera described that meeting as the turning point in his time at the company. “Yeah, that was the beginning of the fucking end, dude,” he said in the video. He also said he later heard from a former coworker still employed at AT&T that the manager who had that conversation with him was reportedly fired about a month after Cantera himself left the company. 

Cantera also spoke negatively about AT&T’s union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), stating in the video, “Their fucking union, the CWA, sucks donkey dick. They don’t really do shit, bro.” He said he would not recommend working for AT&T, even with union membership. A similar dispute involved a Texas Roadhouse manager who kicked a customer out after she mentioned being at the pool.

Viewers who commented on the video appeared to relate to the situation. One commenter said, “Wow that’s ridiculous!” Another, who identified themselves as a current AT&T corporate representative, wrote, “You get a gross period of 10 minutes after your one hour lunch break AT&T corporate rep here.” A third commenter wrote, “yup I had a manager who wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom. No one cared.”

According to workplace well-being platform OpenUp, constant oversight can contribute to a sense of distrust and reduce an employee’s feeling of autonomy. The platform’s website states that micromanagement can lead to increased stress and anxiety, lower confidence and motivation, burnout, and decreased productivity.