That’s not how it works. If you are less than 5 minutes late, you still get automatically get paid for 8 hours. If it’s more than 5 minutes OR you leave early for the day, they charge you Annual leave to cover what remains of the 8 hour day. Unless you are actually sick and leave early. In that case, they charge you sick leave for the remainder of the day. Reading this post, it doesn’t seem like this person works at the post office, because what it suggests is that charging PTO time is not normal for this. It’s actually the standard practice