me and Jess (not her real name) have worked together for about two years. We're not close friends but we get along fine, no issues. Our manager starts at 9 and does a quick walkthrough around 9:10 to check who's in. Jess is late pretty much every tuesday and thursday. Not like 5 minutes, I mean 25-40 minutes. What started happening is that when the manager walks by her desk I've been saying things like "oh she's just in the bathroom" or "she went to grab something from the car" without even really thinking about it. It just kind of happened naturally the first couple times and then it became a thing.
Here's where I'm starting to feel weird about it. Last week she was 35 minutes late, walked in, didn't say anything to me, sat down and put her headphones on. No thank you, no acknowledgment, nothing. I don't even know if she knows I've been covering for her or if she just assumes the manager doesn't notice.
I haven't said anything to her directly because I don't want it to be a whole conversation. But I'm also realizing I've been lying to my manager repeatedly for someone who probably doesn't even know I'm doing it, and honestly doesn't seem to care that much about me either way. I'm not going to go out of my way to report her or anything like that. I just want to stop actively covering. If he walks by and her desk is empty I'll just say I dont know where she is, which is technically true.
WIBTA for that? I feel like I wouldn't be, but also part of me feels guilty for some reason even though I never agreed to do this in the first place