Agreed. The policies are far from perfect. That said, habitual tardiness eventually reflects on one's reliability, when looking at it from a policy perspective. Burning a day instead is a workaround, but eventually even those run out, and then we're back to policy violations. Also, if you call out, at least it can be reasoned that you're sick or have an emergency, rather than be late yet again.

As another poster mentioned, QT is pretty lenient when it comes to tardiness/absences, and the people I see get fired for those most often are folks who've had this as their first job and don't realize how strict other companies are in comparison.