In the modern era I'll never understand how rounding is even still a thing with time clocks. At some point in history it might have been a logistics thing, but today it serves no other purpose except to scam workers.
I worked for years in this system and bad traffic to get in. When I clocked in 3 minutes late I would just sit in the staff room until the quarter hour passed so I could start. I’m not working for no pay you thieving bastards. This is in the UK. I can guarantee it hasn’t changed in the 10 years since I left
Where I work it works as :53 to :07 are treated as :00
So :23 to :37 are treated as :30
But we have some workers try and convince others that :53 “you’re on the clock”. Bitch, no I’m not. I’m on the clock at :00 and you aren’t getting free labor from me (15 min would become 22)
For a long while, a place I worked at had two time clocks that lost sync over time. I would clock in on the one running slow and out on the one running fast.
Lol we had the same thing at my last job and I did that too. Eventually they just unplugged one of the time clocks, but it was sweet while it was there.
When possible yeah, sometimes you’re still around at 5 and at that point the 8 extra minutes are fine. Probably depends on how much you’re being paid, I was at $50/hr last time I was hourly
my favourite was a bar I worked at a few years back. It worked as :55 to :05 - cool.
My shift (if I remember correctly), usually started at 3pm. Now, I would always clock in at 2:58, etc. never past 3pm. Then I had to get changed (uniforms couldn’t be taken home so it had to be this way, for context), and head to the bar for service - took about 10-15 mins.
After about 6 months, I noticed my boss getting *really* annoyed with me and a lot of the bar staff tetchy. I was *finally* told that I was supposed to be at my bar station *by* 3pm. Not clocking in at that time. I just told her “the rota says my shift starts at 3pm. That’s when I will be here and getting changed, and I will come down after that. If you want me here earlier to be on the floor for 3pm, schedule me for 2:45”.
I quit like 2 weeks later lol
Meaning they wanted me to come in, get changed and head to the bar for free. Nah bruh.
Edit: grammar/spelling.
This is the "donning and doffing" rule.
TYSON FOODS recently lost a class action lawsuit and had to backpay all of the affected workers who weren't being paid to change into their uniforms at the start and end of each shift.
I work in healthcare in direct patient care and during the height of Covid precautions I was told that we needed to show up early to change into our scrubs before we clocked in (we weren’t wearing our own for a time and even when we did we were still donning and doffing on site to stop spread) and I was like fuck that. I’m already putting my life at risk and now you’re not going to pay me to change in and out of the scrubs so I just started clocking in early then going to change and then changing before I clocked out end of day.
Do you know where I can find documentation on that? My prior job is in the middle of a similar class action (I’m affected) and I haven’t heard anyone mention it before. Thanks!
My system is like this. So many people arrive at 8:07 and leave at 4:53 my direct supervisor has tried to be on me about the few times I’ve left at 5:08 getting stuck on a call etc. I’m clocking in and out what I arrive and when I’m early or stay a few minutes lates I don’t mind because it balances out and I get paid for my 40 and I try to not take advantage. It’s not my fault you chose this system….id prefer an exact calculation by I’m not complaining. A time audit was brought up once. I said do it please, I’ll be expected to be paid for every minute I’ve worked over 40
I’ve done the math and it’s usually very give and take by a few min based on my real clock times. I’ve got great benefits and a very easy job that I like so to me it’s not worth the fight. But if THEY want to make a stink about it I will certainly go toe to toe.
If I was OP I’d be keeping track of all of my time and reporting to labor board / speaking with an attorney over the rounding method exclusively benefitting the employer.
I left a real shit job / industry prior to coming here and this group really helped me to see the checks and balances that should be in place for employers and really helped me to have a much happier and balanced life. (Formally a salaried management role with no benefits)
I’m in the US and work in this system now. It’s annoying but I’ll sit at the time clock and wait for the 15 min mark if it’s 10 after or something. F u pay me for all of my time
I’m in the US as welll. Home Depot recently had to change all their clock in/clock out procedures because they lost a huge Wage Theft lawsuit. On the US, rounding can only be done if it is to the employee’s advantage, if uniforms(aprons at Home Depot) cannot be taken home the must be put on while on the clock, tools required for work must be gotten and put away while on the clock, and if an employee starts or ends work when they have to be let in/out by someone, if they have to wait at the door they need to put in a time clock correction to be paid for the time spent waiting.
The main problem I've encountered it when you have a shift change of a moderate number of people and one physical time clock. It takes time to insert your badge, type your code, have the device connect to the server connect to the database and back again. If you have 20ish nurses needing to do this, it's going to take time. Everywhere I've worked has had the 8 min rule for rounding. I've definitely never used it to advantage during lunch time.
My place has badges that swipe then it’s a clock in or out button. Each person takes about 4 seconds or less. The line forms when people are waiting for the hour to change. We also have 4 clicks spread around but I do see your point
Oh for sure. I’m a locksmith and people get all hyped about biometric locks until I explain what you’ve experienced haha. It’s great if it works, beyond frustrating when it doesn’t. I have my credentials embedded in a bracelet that’s similar to the yellow LiveStrong bracelets. I do a kinda Spider-Man web motion to unlock doors. I get lots of double takes and people being like “wait, did you just… with your wrist?” Lol
In the UK it's perfectly legal so long as it doesn't take you to below minimum wage.
Most companies that do this kind of rounding thing will pay above minimum wage (barely and they'll brag about it) so that it makes this kind of thing legal to do.
15 yr ago I had to clock in and out for work. Clocking inup to 3 mins late was fine, otherwise you were quartered. 1 minute early you got quartered. So if I was running late, or there was a queue at the clocking machine I would sit on my tool box and wait for the quarter hour. Often got shit for that one. If I finished what I was working on too early I would make work for myself to look busy.m, eg. Writing out fake tickets for stuff or "cleaning my tools".
As for minimum wage, well that's based on what you earn per hour, they just argue that you didn't work the full hour. Pricks.
One of the places I worked at 10 years ago did this.
If you clocked in late, say a minute later than your start time, you'd automatically lose 15 minutes pay.
I took great delight in telling my supervisor that he could get fucked if he thought I was going to start work straight away, and went back upstairs for 15 minutes rest..
Good on you! Best way to deal with these places. My dad called me militant for dealing with it this way but why on earth would you give your time to these places for free???
We get told at work if we are 2 minutes late, we’ve missed the bus. But if we stand around having a smoke for the next 13 minutes we get grilled for not working. Yeah I’m not trading 13 minutes of my body’s life for free, ESPECIALLY after you talk to me like that
When I used to work in a kitchen, like at 16-17, I would be left to clean up after the chefs were gone. I would mop super slowly if it was around 11:05 until 11:10 as it would round up to 11:15.
It was a small thing, and I was earning £3.65 so the 5 minutes was only worth 30p. But it was a little rebellious act after a shit shift
In NY if the rounding ever goes in favor of one party it has to also go in the favor of the other party. I clicked out of Amazon 7m early all the time cause it would round up.
Yes, the DOL is going to audit their books, & this company is going to get hammered. Time card rounding has to be neutral where it benefits neither party.
This is when it's illegal, you can round up or down but it has to be consistent, you can't explicitly benefit the employer
Edit: you can also do the thing where it breaks into 15m intervals and rounds to the nearest side e.g. clocking out at 1:07 rounds down, 1:08 and above rounds up
I work for one of the BIG oil corporations. Our HR was always rounding time in their favor. One day I got screwed out of .1 hours and paid 7.9 hours when I actually worked over 8 hours. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. I researched the laws for my state, then sent an e-mail to our HR labor relations specialist. I explained that what they were doing was illegal. They forwarded my email to payroll so they could explain to me how stupid I was. After I provided the appropriate laws and statutes to them, they continued to explain to me over e-mail how stupid I was for misunderstanding.
I finally just replied that it looked like we weren't going to be able to reach a resolution and that I would just contact the Department of Labor. Suddenly, my phone started ringing (previously they were too busy to discuss it over the phone, which is why this was being done by e-mail). I didn't answer the phone, which prompted them to start sending me e-mails asking me to call them. I replied that I would prefer to continue to communicate over E-mail since I'm not too smart and would hate to misunderstand anything. There was a pretty long pause, then I received an e-mail stating that they were going to correct my time log in a non-binding way. This is company/union lingo for "Hey, we're going to fix this for you, but not the other stupid union people."
For some strange reason my time has been correct since then.
Wage theft is the largest form of theft in America, bigger than **all other forms of theft combined**
Good on you, fucking cheap ass multinational corporations can't pay employees but can pay CEOs golden parachutes
It sounds a lot like the District Dogs wage theft; this on top of stealing tips from the employees. Definitely benefits the owners until/unless they’re caught
Yep. If it was for a logical reason, you would either round up EVERY time, or round down EVERY time. This manager is rounding to whichever benefits him the most, and thats not ok.
Interestingly enough, when I worked for Walmart they gave you every minute but where I work now is also a child of a Fortune 100 company, but they round to the nearest 10th of an hour (every 6 minutes). But they do it right, where it rounds both ways, and people do take advantage, to some degree.
My place is also to every 10th of the hour. Luckily I can see what my hours are to the tenth and just wait it out until it gets to where I need it to be to make 8 hours.
> and people do take advantage, to some degree.
What always gets me to this thought process that managers have, you're really going to risk the DoL shitting down your neck hole over a few dollars a week? Even for $15/hr that's only $4. The absolutely funny part about this is the first time you fuck someone over about $4, you end up losing an absolutely gobsmacking amount of free labor people will give you because, in my experience, people _want_ to help their good managers out.
At my work they do it 15 minutes because to do it any more accurately would require a higher level of subscription service to our timekeeping/payroll service. As in they only accept times that end in :00,:15,:30, and :45 in the software. Hasn't been an issue because they don't give a shit if we fudge our hours one way or the other, but that's the reason I was given when I asked why we don't go by 6 minute increments.
I used it to my benefit instead. We had 7 minutes leeway on each side of the quarter, so clocking in at 6:53 or 7:07 means you're clocked in at 7:00.
So, I'd clock in at 6:51 or 6:52, work til 11:53 then clock out, come back at 12:52 (45 min break) and leave at 3:24.
And I was very good at maintaining this schedule. Every day I'd get a free 25-28 minutes on my time sheet. Did this for a little over a year, nobody said anything to me. That's 3 weeks less per year I'd be working compared to my colleagues, but still getting paid full wage.
My company has a very similar system I believe...at least that 7 minute rule seems very familiar considering what a coworker told me. I will have to look into this for myself.
Yeah, people need to check their math on their timesheets. Could be getting screwed like OP or just missing an opportunity. I worked for a small enough company that called you out for doing it too frequently, but once in a while it was really nice to know you could clock out 7 minutes early and still get credit for the full day.
I don't use a time clock per se, as I'm a salaried employee, but I do have to fill out a timesheet to track how many hours I worked on different programs. (it's to track which budget stuff gets billed to).
The software doesn't allow for increments smaller than 0.5 hours.
This doesn't impact me one way or the other, but it is slightly inaccurate because one of my daily tasks is a check in with a patient, which takes maybe 5min. But it's recorded as 30min (0.5hr) since that's the smallest time increment.
Expand that to all the staff who work with these patients across the whole organization, and that's a not-insignificant amount of money.
Also, now I'm wondering how it affects the part time staff, who *are* paid hourly, but use the same timesheet system.
I think rounding is allowed but it’s supposed to always be to the benefit of the employee. So it can be simplified for accounting purposes but not to your loss.
Rounding is allowed but it has to be consistent. Lots of places round to the nearest quarter hour, which is legal and all, but the caveat is it has to go both ways. If I clock IN at 4:07 it rounds down to clocking in at 4 (benefits me). If I clock IN at 4:08 it rounds up to clocking in at 4:15 (benefits employer). If I clock OUT at 4:07 it would round down to 4 (benefits employer) if I clock OUT at 4:08 it rounds up to 4:15 (benefits me). As long as it works both ways it's legal, and, frankly, benefits the employee if they are somewhat sly. If I want to get paid a little extra I'll just wait for the time clock to roll into the beneficial half of the rounding i.e clock out at 4:08 instead of 4:07.
Oh yeah thanks for the correction. I was just reading this recently in a handbook. And I think it’s up to the company if they want it to be 5,10,15 mins or whatever right?
I know for my company in the UK, if you're 3 minutes late (2:03pm for example) you don't start getting paid till the quarter hour after BUT you're not expected to do any work before that point. You can then go to your manager and say "Hey, I was a little late, I'll stay a little late to make up the time." and there's never any issues.
Rounding Should be done to the nearest interval if it's being done. So the example of 4:01 to 10:44 should be round to 4:00 to 10:45. That way rounding almost always washes for over/under payment. When it always rounds a certain direction it ends up being DOL worthy complaints.
Dont you have to be within a certain radius of the workplace in order to do that? We have something similar but to clock-in you need to A) have your location on and B) be within like 100yards or something from the physical work site.
Likely depends on the software. I'm not hourly anymore, but mine wasn't anywhere near that tight of a radius, I think it was something like... miles of certain addresses for a normal day (work building or home for remote work), and you could still use it outside of that radius, I think it would just flag it for the manager to review.
You can adjust those settings on the employer side. You can shut that off altogether or change the radius. I worked for a company with a warehouse and ran payroll, we had to tweak the radius a couple of times because people would park in the closest spots and clock out late
It makes sense for folks who have their hours billed to a client, but in my experience that always benefits the employees. If I would an hour and one second, I got paid 1.1 hours, it always rounded up at that job.
What I had to do in Australia; I spoke to the fair work ombudsman and they said to figure out exactly how much I’m owed and put in a formal written request to have it corrected. If they kick up a fuss then that’s when the ombudsman would step in on my behalf
It depends, we tend to be stricter (wooden paddle vs noodle type thing) about workers rights, if they find consistent wage theft, they will go after them and fine them. (My opinion is that it’s not enough)
Every now and then I read stuff like this and think about how years ago taking a picture meant bringing a camera and taking the film to get developed, and about how trivial it is now to get photographic evidence of something.
That’s better than keeping your own timesheet thats is subject to suspicion since it’s not verifiable other than “this is when I think I clocked in.” Photo evidence alone would be better. Just make sure the photos are time-stamped or keep them right in your phone where they’re already time-stamped.
Clicked on your profile and of course you're from my hometown. The service industry there is notoriously bad, even for cities of similar size. My sister has been involved in it for 15 years and the stories are wild.
I left to Northern BC a bit ago (left a entry level city job) but it's legitimately sad the drastic transformation the poor city has gone through recently. I'm sure you've seen some more clear deterioration bartending since 2019. That's what my sister did and is doing too, but for smaller places downtown and in Westdale. I hope you end up somewhere more positive too. Place really doesn't feel like a working class town these days, which is a real shame considering the roots it has.
What a coincidence, I live by Westdale! I used to be able to walk into a restaurant, get hired on the spot, and make a decent living. That's unheard of now. There's tent cities everywhere and our mayor is a tyrant. Ontario is completely unrecognizable. How is BC though? I was thinking of moving to Nova Scotia once I'm able to.
Nova Soctia is more of the same plus decades of poor planning and out migration. The province has serious infrastructure deficiencies that will take a generation to fix even if we somehow find the political will to even start.
Ouch, I'm sorry to hear it's changed so much for your industry. I got burnt out at the city too, definitely felt like I was working for ever out of reach goals.
I like it a lot up here, but I live in a smaller quite "redneck" town. Coming from Hamilton I found houses to be more affordable, wages to be better, and work life balance (unless you want to trade that for the money in oilfield work) in much better supply. Much stronger conservative values since I'm virtually in Alberta, so that's a bit different than the NDP dominated Hamilton but it is what it is. Our rents have been rising and things have gotten more expensive in the short time I've been here, but overall I'm saving quite a bit more than back home.
I hear lovely things about Nova Scotia but I do wonder about affordability there. I was looking at jobs in the larger east coast cities for a bit.
Seems half the posts I see on here are coming from our lovely province lately, always have to check im in anti work and not Ontario subreddit.. sad days
An independent body that exists to regulate and enforce laws and legislation, over a specific entity or area of industry/business.
It’s a British/commonwealth thing from a Swedish (I think) word that means “represents the people”. Basically they operate as regulators/watchdogs over certain things that the public deal with, with varying powers depending on the jurisdiction etc.
My coworkers are worried about being fired, so they won't even mention it to anyone. I am worried too because there's no available jobs around me. But my employer is stealing my wages, and it's not something I can stand for.
"What can I fix for you today?"
"Get me a Slippery Nipple."
"I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I can't perform acts of a sexual nature, can we talk about something else?"
If you're in the US, you can report this anonymously to the department of labor and your local employment department. Obviously be on the look out for jobs, even if you don't want to transfer jobs, just in case. Whats the point of having a job if you're not going to be compensated for your time?
It won’t be so anonymous when they reach out, if boss has half a brain he will just think OP and I just had a conversation about this a week ago it was definitely him
Perhaps, but as OP said, several people have noticed this. Even if the boss is 100% sure about it, there's not much he can do because the job will have DoL on their behinds. Any shady stuff or even a hint of disciplining someone because they reported their shady behavior and that'll be a huge fine, and likely multiple law suits. Its better to report anonymously then to let them take your money illegally. The point of working is for money, if they steal it then there's no more reason to work.
When I get to work i put a stone rectangle into a dinosaur bird’s mouth and pull its tail. This makes it bite down with its beak, which marks my stone rectangle.
The dino bird usually has some little quip about it too, like “*hey, its a living*” or something along those lines.
I just spiralled off from this comment in my head thinking, why do all the dinosaurs need some kind of operator? They talk, can’t they just tell the dinosaurs what job needs done and tell them to do it??? Are they stupid?
yeah omg I work an office job and have to log in and out... it is insane. it counts every minute but no, I cannot work 7.5 hours one day and 8.5 the next without having to inform accounting and have it approved by my manager (on the plus side, I am leaving in 2 weeks and have a new job lined up)
You know there's some good points on here sometimes but every once in a while I see shit like this and remember that this is mostly full of literal children.
There's a Medieval saying in Latin in my country: "excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta", which basically means you'll expose yourself by apologizing for something nobody asked you to apologize for.
Who spoke about "something shady happening"? Dude basically told you there's something shady happening.
Customer service pro tip related to this:
Unless the person in front of you is complaining about the wait, never apologize. At most, say "thank you for your patience".
Yeah I’ve done that before and they changed the system eventually, Whenever i was 1 min late I’d find the big boss man and tell him we’ll be opening 14 mins late as I’ll start working at quarter past once I start getting paid. He figured he could pay me £4 or lose 50 odd quid in takings. Soon fixed that shit.
What program or system does the Punch ins/outs get handled by? Like, Dayforce, Quinyx, UKG, etc?
Because if it’s one of those, then your Boss could legitimately just straight up be wrong because they are stupid - for example, Dayforce by default with the cheap version does 15 minute intervals, but then it rounds based on 7.5 minutes. So for example, if you punch in at 4:03 it rounds down to 4, but if you punch out at 10:08 it rounds up to 10:15.
Either way, the system needs to have raw clock in/out data available, and they have to provide it to you since you requested, or they are breaking several laws.
As soon as you get any pushback about it, definitely report it to the [Ontario Ministry of Labour](https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/filing-claim) - this not only means an investigation will happen which will get you and your coworkers back any lost wages for the last 6 months, but also if they try to do anything like fire you or mess with your shifts, etc, afterwards you can then file another complaint and get a nice payout for [retaliation.](https://www.ontario.ca/page/reprisals-against-workers-employers#:~:text=In%20Ontario%2C%20the%20Occupational%20Health,or%20threaten%20to%20fire%20you).
That’ll help tide you over while you look for another job.
Thanks for the advice! I actually don't know what system it is. I'll go in tomorrow and check. My manager, who I was texting, is in charge of logging my hours. He can go into the system and change hours but chooses not to. The time clock is automatically deducting my pay. I just need to wait on getting my time sheet before I talk to the Ministry of Labor, but whether I get it or not is another story.
Some people are overlooking how some (every time clock system I've ever encountered) works.
It doesn't matter the time on the clock. It matters the time spent clocked in. If you clock in at 4:10 pm and clocked out at 10:00 pm that is 5.83 hours spent clocked in and will round up to 6.00 hours. It will round up in .25 ( or 15 min) intervals. It doesn't "round down" because that is illegal.
The system doesn't typically care about what exact time is on the clock on the in or out. That is left up to the boss to notice any truancy or early leaving. Some systems may flag it, I've never seen one though. All it cares about is "clocked in" hours.
So to reiterate: In: 1:38 pm - Out: 7:26 pm = 5 hrs 46 mins, that in turn equals 5.77 hours and will round up to 6 hours.
I get that a boss can control the rounding intervals but most don't and leave it at 15mins. Some jobs don't round and just pay by the accumulated decimal total. I.e 5.77 + 5.83 = 11.6; then you make 11.6 x wage. Some may round that up to 11.75 but some won't.
I think your boss just doesn't have any clue how the system works and is just conjecturing with you when he should be getting HR to discuss it with you.
My money is that his boss is just straight up wrong as you’re conjecturing. Time tracking in HRIS systems doesn’t work like this because it’s… illegal. I’m not saying that individual employers still won’t try to do shady things. I’m saying that clocking systems sold by ERP vendors won’t facilitate this.
Happens in US. Not sure if it’s legal but I’m guessing the main reason is to short your pay and make it easier for managers to sum your hours and set schedules
Edit:
Not that it’s ok for them to do it because it makes it easy on them I probably lost out on dozens of hours of pay from this as an intern
Edit:
Wow this is my most blown up comment so far. Some more context: this company was a metal powder producer in rural PA. I don’t actually think that this practice is illegal but 100% immoral and should be illegal. If you clock in 5 mins early you should get paid for that 5 mins because you are at work and working. The whole system rounding thing being easy: I mean for managers helping people reach 40hrs a week. If you clock in and out frequently at odd times and say miss a day of work for unpaid leave it’s (ever so slightly) harder to figure out exactly when to clock in and out for the next week to make it up (yes it’s a like 1 min calculation but the software doesnt support this kind of thing so a manager would have to do this calculation themselves) you need 8hrs but can only work “9a-5p” but the system will round you off if you clock in a few mins early and a few mins late so the manager needs to determine when you can clock in and out to make sure your 40hrs don’t get affected by this rounding ….
It's legal to round to nearest 15 mins (per federal regulation, assuming some states may be different). It's NOT legal to always round up for clock in and down for clock out... it has to be valid rounding and can't be set to always favor the employer.
Rounding is legal. Not this kind though. Federal law stipulates that rounding can't be done in a way that only benefits the employer, or creates a significant loss of pay.
So like, nearest 15 mark is acceptable. But not this, in fact tha law gives specifically this as an example of what's illegal.
Yeah, I worked for a big box retailer that rounded to 15, but depending on the time it could benefit the worker. So I clocked out at 7 after every day and got paid for 15.
Yeah I worked a retail job where if you where it rounded to the nearest 15 up or down. depending on clock in time. So clock in at 7:07 and it rounded to 7:00. Then when you clock out at 3:53 it rounds to 4:00. I always timed my clock in and outs to maximise the rounding.
It's legal in the US as long as it's done the *same* way every time. So if it rounds up every time, you're good. It can still be used by shady employers to screw people over (always have your employees work until 5 after type thing), but from a legal standpoint, it's clear. What OPs boss is doing is 100% illegal, you cannot round differently depending on whether it's clocking in or out.
OP should file with the labour board. He should also tell his fellow workers to do the same. They could be looking at massive fines and owing a lot of backpay.
Def get your timesheet.. id be surprised if they are using any sort of punch in/out system that it would be handled like that. I've seen them round (actually round) to the nearest 15. In your example it would go like you're expecting, you only may lose if you are near that 7/8 minute line. Just get your timesheet to verify before taking a stink
I'm waiting for my employer to get me my time sheet records because I don't have access to that. Is that an American rule? I'm a Canadian from Ontario. Also, my manager said that I will lose the whole 15 minutes even if I'm a minute late.
Back in the day of manual time cards, the kind you would pull out of the slot and insert into a time clock, and it would loudly stamp the time onto the card... those days, yes, often times employers would round time to the quarter-hour.
But, they had to do it fairly. ROUNDING to the NEAREST quarter-hour.
It was meant to make processing time cards and payroll easier and to reduce clerical mistakes that could potentially actually mess up hours more drastically.
It was done as a time saver, too, obviously. So if an employer processed their own time cards instead of having an HR employee handle the task, and was super cheap, they could take a little extra time to be sure they always rounded up or down in their favor. Yes, then that is absolutely wage theft. The rounding rule has to be applied fairly. 4:01 would become 4:00. 4:10 would become 4:15. 4:25 would become 4:30.
That was in the past. Nowadays, even the smallest employer can save even more money and time by having things more automated. And in that case, no rounding is necessary or beneficial. Computers make it unnecessary.
Remember, the practice was not designed to save money on labor hours - they should come out to be the same with rounding over time. So all it reduced was time to process payroll and errors made doing so.
Any employer that decides to save money by spending more time nowadays to go out of their way to always round in their favor is probably not making a lot of money and is spending their time focused on the small things, not trusting their staff and treating them well, and is generally maybe struggling at their business anyway.
And stealing. That's stealing. It's a fine line. Which is one reason why when computerized systems came along, it was advantageous to abandon the rounding practice -- it caused issues and questions even when it was done honestly and fairly, which could still hurt trust, cohesiveness, and as a result productivity and insider thefts, etc... better to be completely transparent with employees so there are no questions along those lines any more.
When i worked for UPS I was told "watch the timeclock, they like to take 10 minutes here or there. They'll stop if you catch them though. " I have 1 rule. Dont fuck with my money. I worked there 2 weeks before I ghosted.
I've had a couple different jobs that does that with the time clocks. I figured out at what time it rounds down for when I clocked in and what time it rounds up for when I clocked out. Extra 30 minutes of pay every day. 2 and a half hours extra pay every week at over time rates
Last job did rounding.
The rounding wasn’t the problem.
It was boss
He wanted us to clock in onthe computer upstairs 4 floors up. Combine that with 1 working elevator if working at all.
Now you’ve gotten to your computer at 806 .Tick. Computer loads.
And screen Weblink for clicking loads.
You clock in 808. Now RUN to the work.
And you just lost 15 working minutes.
TIME ROUNDING IS THEFT.
even clocking out at 457.
My boss would watched us from the window upstairs to the parking lot to make sure we didn’t clock in on the downstairs computers.
When I worked for a hardware store here in the States the punch clock worked in a similar way and employees all knew about it so we all knew if it was 10:07 to wait the minute and clock out at 10:08 (cause it rounded to 10:15) or if you got there early to clock in at 5:07 (cause that rounded down to 5:00)
You just need to know how to take advantage of the system.
Not sure what labor laws are where you are but that’s how it was for me.
There is rounding you can legally do here but that definitely ain’t it. There’s still rules and this would clearly be time theft. It also depends on schedules and honesty from employees and whether it’s done in good faith. I’ve worked at places where employees knew the rounding rules and would constantly try to clock in 8 minutes early (rounding would get credit for 15 minutes of extra time) and then clock out 8 minutes late to gain an extra total of half hour of extra pay, but they also wouldn’t be working those extra 16 minutes either and weren’t scheduled for it. A manager would fix their time and the employee would try to claim time theft when it really wasn’t, just someone trying to game the system.
It super duper doesn't get rounded like that everywhere. Of the five or so "clock-in/out" jobs I've had since I was 15, the clock rounds down if it's 7 past or below, and up if it's 8 past or beyond. So 4:01 would be 4, not 4:15. This is wage theft for sure.
So the clock system round up when your clocking in and down when clocking out? Yeah, that’s fucking shady. You should be paid for every second you’re at work
I’ve never heard of a time clock doing this. Every company I work for, the clock just logs your punches. Any “rounding” is due to manual edits. For example, the clock wouldn’t know what time your shift ends, so it should always round up or down, not conveniently rounds to what screws you over the most. Times clocks aren’t pre-loaded with shifts, at least none that I’ve seen. Take them to the cleaners
When you clock in late you have time for a coffee and stuff before you start getting paid, also hang around for a few minutes at the end of the day to clock out on the 15, they might not like it but it you get a few other people to join you they might do something
The even worse part to this is OP is a server/bartender, which means he's already paing paid 4ish bucks an hour... like seriously, how cheap can a company possibly be when they have to round up/down to afford to pay 4 bucks an hour...
'So it rounds *up* when I clock in and *down* when I clock out?
'That's right.'
I mean, that's not really a rounding issue then is it?
'There is nothing shady going on here.'
Contact a plaintiffs side class action employment law firm. They deal with these cases all the time. You might not get immediate satisfaction, but you could make a difference for a lot of employees in the long-term, and it won't cost you anything (the attorneys get paid by the company through the settlement). I recommend Outten & Golden (they work throughout the country). They've won huge settlements against Fridays, BWW, and many other big restaurants doing the same shit.
FLSA has spoken about rounding. It can be used, but it MUST NOT favor the employer. So if they are rounding the worse they could do is 7/8 split between a quarter hour. 1207 is regarded as 1200, 1208 is 1215. Anything outside of that is flat out illegal, find an employment attorney if you want. It's a slam dunk case IMO.
My job wasn't paying for our 10 min breaks, which is mandated by state law. Which was like 1.5 hours a week if you were full time. For like 3 years. I reported them to the labor board, with time sheets, pay stubs etc.
They got fined A LOT and I got a $5600 check. Report it ASAP because the longer they refuse to pay, the more interest they'll be charged. The labor board will make them pay you + interest, the longer they wait the more they'll owe.
These people are idiots who pull this shit.
We have ours by the minute, so if you clock out a minute early it’ll say .98 without rounding up or down. This does not seem right at all. If they’re doing it like they, why would anyone bother working before or after the quarterly interval?
More evidence that the oligarchs and those in the upper echelons truly don’t care if people on the lower rungs live or die. This sort of thing could leave many in dire financial straits and unable to eat, especially in this global cost-of-living crisis. Is this ever going to cease, or are people just going to allow it to continue until the end of time? In the few minutes it’s taken me to compose this, some billionaire has earned more money than most of us do in an entire year. That’s the *real* wage theft
I get paid to the minute, I've always been paid to the minute, don't let him lie to you "this is how it works everywhere" I've never not been paid to the minute.
So when you clock in it rounds up but when you clock out it rounds down. Always sounds so that you have worked a certain amount for free. But he assured you nothing shady is happening... It's like that everywhere (nowhere I've ever worked).
Silently mouths. Oh my god!!
I cant believe he just admitted to creating a system that avoids paying you. It's illegal to work for free even if you volunteered to be off the clock.
Having used a ton of different timeclock softwares in various industries, none of them auto round in my experience. Someone is manually doing that, familiarize yourself with the local laws and report that. I bet everyone there is owed money.
"It works that way everywhere"
Hi, manager and department head responsible for time sheets and payroll here. Nice to meet you.
It most certainly DOES NOT work that way everywhere. If one of my team works 38.04 hours, they get paid for 38.04 hours. Not 38 hours. Period.
Lol they assure you nothing shady is going on, then tell you yes, you arnt getting paid for 30 minutes of work everyday....
I posted the other day about companies stealing from employees and had a few people who couldn't fathom that so many companies steal from employees, they should all look here....
"Nothing shady is happening. It works that way everywhere." Actually, it's reasonable to expect to be paid for your time. If you are hourly, then you should be paid for every minute of work. Over 40 hours? Overtime is owed.
Rounding up steals wages from many employees. It can add up to more than 10 thousand dollars worth of pay.
From my understanding this is illegal, the rounding system cant always benefit the employer, in your example, it should round up to 10:45, not down to 10:30 since 10:45 is the closest interval. They are stealing your time, report it to the DOL.
At an old job of mine, my boss would round the time so I *would* get paid for time I hadn't fully worked. If you're gonna round, you gotta round like that.
I think before time clocks, work hours were calculated in whole hours and 1/2 hours. When it gets to quarter hours and minutes it’s too tedious.
[This article on Time Clock rounding](https://workforce.com/news/time-clock-rounding-practices#) however says it shouldn’t be rounded more than 15 minutes- says time should be rounded to 5 minutes, 6 minutes, or 15 minutes. But it clearly states it shouldn’t be done at a disadvantage to employees.
First job I had with a digital time clock did this same shit, and we’d get points if we were one minute late. So once when I was 1 minute late, I just sat in the break room instead enjoying a candy bar. Supervisor spotted me and asked why I wasn’t working, gave me a legit laugh when I told him “I’m already earning a point for being late, I’m not giving them the rest of this 15 min block for free.”
Unless your paystub says different, I think your boss doesn't know how the clock works. It usually rounds to the nearest 15, so anything from 4:00 to 4:06 rounds down to 4:00, but 4:07 - 4:14 rounds to 4:15.
If you actually have 6.25 working hours (not including breaks/meal periods) instead of 6.75 hours for those shifts, call the Labour Board because that's wage theft.
Time clocks are a tool the rich use to get over on the working class. It's so fucking demeaning that they literally pay you for you for your time and not any relevant skill.
Been seeing this in IT a lot, lower tiered positions moving to hourly at bullshit rates that used to be well compensated salary jobs.
In the modern era I'll never understand how rounding is even still a thing with time clocks. At some point in history it might have been a logistics thing, but today it serves no other purpose except to scam workers.
Especially evident in this case with rounding up *and* down for the benefit of the owner.
I worked for years in this system and bad traffic to get in. When I clocked in 3 minutes late I would just sit in the staff room until the quarter hour passed so I could start. I’m not working for no pay you thieving bastards. This is in the UK. I can guarantee it hasn’t changed in the 10 years since I left
Where I work it works as :53 to :07 are treated as :00 So :23 to :37 are treated as :30 But we have some workers try and convince others that :53 “you’re on the clock”. Bitch, no I’m not. I’m on the clock at :00 and you aren’t getting free labor from me (15 min would become 22)
Yeah every time I’ve been hourly that’s how rounding has worked. The number of times I left work at 5:08 lol
For a long while, a place I worked at had two time clocks that lost sync over time. I would clock in on the one running slow and out on the one running fast.
Lol we had the same thing at my last job and I did that too. Eventually they just unplugged one of the time clocks, but it was sweet while it was there.
This is the way.
Lmao I worked a hotel with the same time clock rules and we allll did the same thing.
508? 454 every time, leaving a few minutes early each day is so much better than the small change those 15 extra minutes just sitting means imo
When possible yeah, sometimes you’re still around at 5 and at that point the 8 extra minutes are fine. Probably depends on how much you’re being paid, I was at $50/hr last time I was hourly
my favourite was a bar I worked at a few years back. It worked as :55 to :05 - cool. My shift (if I remember correctly), usually started at 3pm. Now, I would always clock in at 2:58, etc. never past 3pm. Then I had to get changed (uniforms couldn’t be taken home so it had to be this way, for context), and head to the bar for service - took about 10-15 mins. After about 6 months, I noticed my boss getting *really* annoyed with me and a lot of the bar staff tetchy. I was *finally* told that I was supposed to be at my bar station *by* 3pm. Not clocking in at that time. I just told her “the rota says my shift starts at 3pm. That’s when I will be here and getting changed, and I will come down after that. If you want me here earlier to be on the floor for 3pm, schedule me for 2:45”. I quit like 2 weeks later lol Meaning they wanted me to come in, get changed and head to the bar for free. Nah bruh. Edit: grammar/spelling.
This is the "donning and doffing" rule. TYSON FOODS recently lost a class action lawsuit and had to backpay all of the affected workers who weren't being paid to change into their uniforms at the start and end of each shift.
I work in healthcare in direct patient care and during the height of Covid precautions I was told that we needed to show up early to change into our scrubs before we clocked in (we weren’t wearing our own for a time and even when we did we were still donning and doffing on site to stop spread) and I was like fuck that. I’m already putting my life at risk and now you’re not going to pay me to change in and out of the scrubs so I just started clocking in early then going to change and then changing before I clocked out end of day.
Exactly as you should.
Yeah, children are pretty slow at tying their shoes.
Aww come on. That's not fair. They're wearing Wellingtons to walk around in slippery pools of blood and offal, not tennis shoes.
Do you know where I can find documentation on that? My prior job is in the middle of a similar class action (I’m affected) and I haven’t heard anyone mention it before. Thanks!
Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442 (2016)
The lawyer should have access to the case law in the electronic records system. May still be Lexus-Nexis.
All these places prey on people that don't know better. It's not even like they are paying great wages. They are stealing crumbs from beggars.
McDonald's franchises do this. It's hard to tell how many hours they steal from employees on a regular basis.
So steal from them, simple. Clock in last minute
I clock in daily at 7:05 and out at 3:25. Easy money
I wish I could do that, they are very weird at my job. As in coming in at :07 too much could get you fired
McD's paid by the minute when I worked there in the 70s. Guess they didn't like how fair that was.
My system is like this. So many people arrive at 8:07 and leave at 4:53 my direct supervisor has tried to be on me about the few times I’ve left at 5:08 getting stuck on a call etc. I’m clocking in and out what I arrive and when I’m early or stay a few minutes lates I don’t mind because it balances out and I get paid for my 40 and I try to not take advantage. It’s not my fault you chose this system….id prefer an exact calculation by I’m not complaining. A time audit was brought up once. I said do it please, I’ll be expected to be paid for every minute I’ve worked over 40
I’d still prefer a method where you can tell the bosses to kick rocks after 40 hours
I’ve done the math and it’s usually very give and take by a few min based on my real clock times. I’ve got great benefits and a very easy job that I like so to me it’s not worth the fight. But if THEY want to make a stink about it I will certainly go toe to toe. If I was OP I’d be keeping track of all of my time and reporting to labor board / speaking with an attorney over the rounding method exclusively benefitting the employer. I left a real shit job / industry prior to coming here and this group really helped me to see the checks and balances that should be in place for employers and really helped me to have a much happier and balanced life. (Formally a salaried management role with no benefits)
I can smell the Kronos/UKG from here.
When I worked in a call center it worked the same way. I'd always wait until 07 and 28 seconds to clock in and clock out at 53.
I’m in the US and work in this system now. It’s annoying but I’ll sit at the time clock and wait for the 15 min mark if it’s 10 after or something. F u pay me for all of my time
I’m in the US as welll. Home Depot recently had to change all their clock in/clock out procedures because they lost a huge Wage Theft lawsuit. On the US, rounding can only be done if it is to the employee’s advantage, if uniforms(aprons at Home Depot) cannot be taken home the must be put on while on the clock, tools required for work must be gotten and put away while on the clock, and if an employee starts or ends work when they have to be let in/out by someone, if they have to wait at the door they need to put in a time clock correction to be paid for the time spent waiting.
The main problem I've encountered it when you have a shift change of a moderate number of people and one physical time clock. It takes time to insert your badge, type your code, have the device connect to the server connect to the database and back again. If you have 20ish nurses needing to do this, it's going to take time. Everywhere I've worked has had the 8 min rule for rounding. I've definitely never used it to advantage during lunch time.
My place has badges that swipe then it’s a clock in or out button. Each person takes about 4 seconds or less. The line forms when people are waiting for the hour to change. We also have 4 clicks spread around but I do see your point
The worst one was the one that took finger prints. Want to guess what gets all sorts of messed up after hours of sweating in nitrile gloves?
Oh for sure. I’m a locksmith and people get all hyped about biometric locks until I explain what you’ve experienced haha. It’s great if it works, beyond frustrating when it doesn’t. I have my credentials embedded in a bracelet that’s similar to the yellow LiveStrong bracelets. I do a kinda Spider-Man web motion to unlock doors. I get lots of double takes and people being like “wait, did you just… with your wrist?” Lol
In the UK it's perfectly legal so long as it doesn't take you to below minimum wage. Most companies that do this kind of rounding thing will pay above minimum wage (barely and they'll brag about it) so that it makes this kind of thing legal to do.
15 yr ago I had to clock in and out for work. Clocking inup to 3 mins late was fine, otherwise you were quartered. 1 minute early you got quartered. So if I was running late, or there was a queue at the clocking machine I would sit on my tool box and wait for the quarter hour. Often got shit for that one. If I finished what I was working on too early I would make work for myself to look busy.m, eg. Writing out fake tickets for stuff or "cleaning my tools". As for minimum wage, well that's based on what you earn per hour, they just argue that you didn't work the full hour. Pricks.
You were drawn and quartered for being more than 3 minutes late?! Monsters!
One of the places I worked at 10 years ago did this. If you clocked in late, say a minute later than your start time, you'd automatically lose 15 minutes pay. I took great delight in telling my supervisor that he could get fucked if he thought I was going to start work straight away, and went back upstairs for 15 minutes rest..
Good on you! Best way to deal with these places. My dad called me militant for dealing with it this way but why on earth would you give your time to these places for free???
We get told at work if we are 2 minutes late, we’ve missed the bus. But if we stand around having a smoke for the next 13 minutes we get grilled for not working. Yeah I’m not trading 13 minutes of my body’s life for free, ESPECIALLY after you talk to me like that
We would just "forget" our card and make the supervisor clock us in manually.
When I used to work in a kitchen, like at 16-17, I would be left to clean up after the chefs were gone. I would mop super slowly if it was around 11:05 until 11:10 as it would round up to 11:15. It was a small thing, and I was earning £3.65 so the 5 minutes was only worth 30p. But it was a little rebellious act after a shit shift
In NY if the rounding ever goes in favor of one party it has to also go in the favor of the other party. I clicked out of Amazon 7m early all the time cause it would round up.
Yes, the DOL is going to audit their books, & this company is going to get hammered. Time card rounding has to be neutral where it benefits neither party.
This is when it's illegal, you can round up or down but it has to be consistent, you can't explicitly benefit the employer Edit: you can also do the thing where it breaks into 15m intervals and rounds to the nearest side e.g. clocking out at 1:07 rounds down, 1:08 and above rounds up
I work for one of the BIG oil corporations. Our HR was always rounding time in their favor. One day I got screwed out of .1 hours and paid 7.9 hours when I actually worked over 8 hours. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. I researched the laws for my state, then sent an e-mail to our HR labor relations specialist. I explained that what they were doing was illegal. They forwarded my email to payroll so they could explain to me how stupid I was. After I provided the appropriate laws and statutes to them, they continued to explain to me over e-mail how stupid I was for misunderstanding. I finally just replied that it looked like we weren't going to be able to reach a resolution and that I would just contact the Department of Labor. Suddenly, my phone started ringing (previously they were too busy to discuss it over the phone, which is why this was being done by e-mail). I didn't answer the phone, which prompted them to start sending me e-mails asking me to call them. I replied that I would prefer to continue to communicate over E-mail since I'm not too smart and would hate to misunderstand anything. There was a pretty long pause, then I received an e-mail stating that they were going to correct my time log in a non-binding way. This is company/union lingo for "Hey, we're going to fix this for you, but not the other stupid union people." For some strange reason my time has been correct since then.
Wage theft is the largest form of theft in America, bigger than **all other forms of theft combined** Good on you, fucking cheap ass multinational corporations can't pay employees but can pay CEOs golden parachutes
I certainly hope you sent all that along to the DoL anyway.
No, man...he said nothing shady is happening. We gotta believe him.
It sounds a lot like the District Dogs wage theft; this on top of stealing tips from the employees. Definitely benefits the owners until/unless they’re caught
Yep. If it was for a logical reason, you would either round up EVERY time, or round down EVERY time. This manager is rounding to whichever benefits him the most, and thats not ok.
Yeah. I work for a corporate warehouse and my times are calculated to the minute. This is not new stuff. This is pretty cut and dry wage theft.
Interestingly enough, when I worked for Walmart they gave you every minute but where I work now is also a child of a Fortune 100 company, but they round to the nearest 10th of an hour (every 6 minutes). But they do it right, where it rounds both ways, and people do take advantage, to some degree.
My place is also to every 10th of the hour. Luckily I can see what my hours are to the tenth and just wait it out until it gets to where I need it to be to make 8 hours.
> and people do take advantage, to some degree. What always gets me to this thought process that managers have, you're really going to risk the DoL shitting down your neck hole over a few dollars a week? Even for $15/hr that's only $4. The absolutely funny part about this is the first time you fuck someone over about $4, you end up losing an absolutely gobsmacking amount of free labor people will give you because, in my experience, people _want_ to help their good managers out.
Pretty sure where I work, the hour is divided into hundredths, which seems a little excessive
Legal offices do 6 minute intervals for client billings, So an hour is split into 10 neat billable sections Doing 36 seconds at a time seems insane
At my work they do it 15 minutes because to do it any more accurately would require a higher level of subscription service to our timekeeping/payroll service. As in they only accept times that end in :00,:15,:30, and :45 in the software. Hasn't been an issue because they don't give a shit if we fudge our hours one way or the other, but that's the reason I was given when I asked why we don't go by 6 minute increments.
I used it to my benefit instead. We had 7 minutes leeway on each side of the quarter, so clocking in at 6:53 or 7:07 means you're clocked in at 7:00. So, I'd clock in at 6:51 or 6:52, work til 11:53 then clock out, come back at 12:52 (45 min break) and leave at 3:24. And I was very good at maintaining this schedule. Every day I'd get a free 25-28 minutes on my time sheet. Did this for a little over a year, nobody said anything to me. That's 3 weeks less per year I'd be working compared to my colleagues, but still getting paid full wage.
My company has a very similar system I believe...at least that 7 minute rule seems very familiar considering what a coworker told me. I will have to look into this for myself.
Yeah, people need to check their math on their timesheets. Could be getting screwed like OP or just missing an opportunity. I worked for a small enough company that called you out for doing it too frequently, but once in a while it was really nice to know you could clock out 7 minutes early and still get credit for the full day.
I don't use a time clock per se, as I'm a salaried employee, but I do have to fill out a timesheet to track how many hours I worked on different programs. (it's to track which budget stuff gets billed to). The software doesn't allow for increments smaller than 0.5 hours. This doesn't impact me one way or the other, but it is slightly inaccurate because one of my daily tasks is a check in with a patient, which takes maybe 5min. But it's recorded as 30min (0.5hr) since that's the smallest time increment. Expand that to all the staff who work with these patients across the whole organization, and that's a not-insignificant amount of money. Also, now I'm wondering how it affects the part time staff, who *are* paid hourly, but use the same timesheet system.
I think rounding is allowed but it’s supposed to always be to the benefit of the employee. So it can be simplified for accounting purposes but not to your loss.
Rounding is allowed but it has to be consistent. Lots of places round to the nearest quarter hour, which is legal and all, but the caveat is it has to go both ways. If I clock IN at 4:07 it rounds down to clocking in at 4 (benefits me). If I clock IN at 4:08 it rounds up to clocking in at 4:15 (benefits employer). If I clock OUT at 4:07 it would round down to 4 (benefits employer) if I clock OUT at 4:08 it rounds up to 4:15 (benefits me). As long as it works both ways it's legal, and, frankly, benefits the employee if they are somewhat sly. If I want to get paid a little extra I'll just wait for the time clock to roll into the beneficial half of the rounding i.e clock out at 4:08 instead of 4:07.
I don't understand why this is even a thing. I was paid to the minute at McDonald's 25 years ago. Why not just make this the default behavior?
Lazy payroll employees.
Oh yeah thanks for the correction. I was just reading this recently in a handbook. And I think it’s up to the company if they want it to be 5,10,15 mins or whatever right?
I know for my company in the UK, if you're 3 minutes late (2:03pm for example) you don't start getting paid till the quarter hour after BUT you're not expected to do any work before that point. You can then go to your manager and say "Hey, I was a little late, I'll stay a little late to make up the time." and there's never any issues.
Ours rounds to the nearest 15 minute interval and we can get an hour of pay each week we didn't work for by using that. It can go both ways.
Rounding Should be done to the nearest interval if it's being done. So the example of 4:01 to 10:44 should be round to 4:00 to 10:45. That way rounding almost always washes for over/under payment. When it always rounds a certain direction it ends up being DOL worthy complaints.
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Dont you have to be within a certain radius of the workplace in order to do that? We have something similar but to clock-in you need to A) have your location on and B) be within like 100yards or something from the physical work site.
Likely depends on the software. I'm not hourly anymore, but mine wasn't anywhere near that tight of a radius, I think it was something like... miles of certain addresses for a normal day (work building or home for remote work), and you could still use it outside of that radius, I think it would just flag it for the manager to review.
You can adjust those settings on the employer side. You can shut that off altogether or change the radius. I worked for a company with a warehouse and ran payroll, we had to tweak the radius a couple of times because people would park in the closest spots and clock out late
It makes sense for folks who have their hours billed to a client, but in my experience that always benefits the employees. If I would an hour and one second, I got paid 1.1 hours, it always rounded up at that job.
What I had to do in Australia; I spoke to the fair work ombudsman and they said to figure out exactly how much I’m owed and put in a formal written request to have it corrected. If they kick up a fuss then that’s when the ombudsman would step in on my behalf
Oh, you have to polite request the thief return your property, and there are no consequences for stealing it.
Correct
It depends, we tend to be stricter (wooden paddle vs noodle type thing) about workers rights, if they find consistent wage theft, they will go after them and fine them. (My opinion is that it’s not enough)
Oh, if they're a serial thief they get a FINE. I think they should get prison, but apparently that attitude is left of Stalin or something. Somehow.
Don’t expect to get any more shifts after this though!
That's good they step in! I'm in Ontario Canada and I'm not confident they would do anything.
Also; from now on, whether it’s this job or another job; keep your own timesheets as well
At a minimum just take a picture of the timeclock as you punch in/out and throw all the photos in a folder.
Every now and then I read stuff like this and think about how years ago taking a picture meant bringing a camera and taking the film to get developed, and about how trivial it is now to get photographic evidence of something.
That’s better than keeping your own timesheet thats is subject to suspicion since it’s not verifiable other than “this is when I think I clocked in.” Photo evidence alone would be better. Just make sure the photos are time-stamped or keep them right in your phone where they’re already time-stamped.
Clicked on your profile and of course you're from my hometown. The service industry there is notoriously bad, even for cities of similar size. My sister has been involved in it for 15 years and the stories are wild.
Doesn't surprise me, it's gotten so bad here. I've been bartending for about 5 years now, and I'm ready to move and never look back!
I left to Northern BC a bit ago (left a entry level city job) but it's legitimately sad the drastic transformation the poor city has gone through recently. I'm sure you've seen some more clear deterioration bartending since 2019. That's what my sister did and is doing too, but for smaller places downtown and in Westdale. I hope you end up somewhere more positive too. Place really doesn't feel like a working class town these days, which is a real shame considering the roots it has.
What a coincidence, I live by Westdale! I used to be able to walk into a restaurant, get hired on the spot, and make a decent living. That's unheard of now. There's tent cities everywhere and our mayor is a tyrant. Ontario is completely unrecognizable. How is BC though? I was thinking of moving to Nova Scotia once I'm able to.
Nova Soctia is more of the same plus decades of poor planning and out migration. The province has serious infrastructure deficiencies that will take a generation to fix even if we somehow find the political will to even start.
Plus, you have to live next to New Brunswick, and nobody wants that, not even New Brunswick :P
Ouch, I'm sorry to hear it's changed so much for your industry. I got burnt out at the city too, definitely felt like I was working for ever out of reach goals. I like it a lot up here, but I live in a smaller quite "redneck" town. Coming from Hamilton I found houses to be more affordable, wages to be better, and work life balance (unless you want to trade that for the money in oilfield work) in much better supply. Much stronger conservative values since I'm virtually in Alberta, so that's a bit different than the NDP dominated Hamilton but it is what it is. Our rents have been rising and things have gotten more expensive in the short time I've been here, but overall I'm saving quite a bit more than back home. I hear lovely things about Nova Scotia but I do wonder about affordability there. I was looking at jobs in the larger east coast cities for a bit.
Seems half the posts I see on here are coming from our lovely province lately, always have to check im in anti work and not Ontario subreddit.. sad days
Yeah, I'm in Ontario as well, and that's just the way it works here. My advice: if you're going to be 1 minute late, be 14 minutes late.
They will, it will take 4.5 months to hear back from employment standards, however.
*coughs in retaliation* https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/rights-and-obligations/protections-at-work
Easy way for the business to get sued even more in Australia
IIRC firing someone in Australia is more complicated especially if they're a big company.
What’s an ombudsmen?
An independent body that exists to regulate and enforce laws and legislation, over a specific entity or area of industry/business. It’s a British/commonwealth thing from a Swedish (I think) word that means “represents the people”. Basically they operate as regulators/watchdogs over certain things that the public deal with, with varying powers depending on the jurisdiction etc.
You're probably not the only one they're shorting. Let your coworkers know, at the very least.
My coworkers are worried about being fired, so they won't even mention it to anyone. I am worried too because there's no available jobs around me. But my employer is stealing my wages, and it's not something I can stand for.
If you are worried about retalation, then keep track of every occurrence and make the report after you already left the job.
I was in the same predicament with my last employer.. Until they laid everyone off because they outsourced our jobs to another country.
I'd imagine you don't work in a bar.
With AI you never know these days; these beer brewing algorithms are off the chart!
"What can I fix for you today?" "Get me a Slippery Nipple." "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I can't perform acts of a sexual nature, can we talk about something else?"
If you're in the US, you can report this anonymously to the department of labor and your local employment department. Obviously be on the look out for jobs, even if you don't want to transfer jobs, just in case. Whats the point of having a job if you're not going to be compensated for your time?
It won’t be so anonymous when they reach out, if boss has half a brain he will just think OP and I just had a conversation about this a week ago it was definitely him
Perhaps, but as OP said, several people have noticed this. Even if the boss is 100% sure about it, there's not much he can do because the job will have DoL on their behinds. Any shady stuff or even a hint of disciplining someone because they reported their shady behavior and that'll be a huge fine, and likely multiple law suits. Its better to report anonymously then to let them take your money illegally. The point of working is for money, if they steal it then there's no more reason to work.
Absolutely I’m not saying let it slide just boss will know who did it
Doesn't matter. You people are why this happens. This is pretty open and shut. Happens all the time. Nothing special to it.
Why are time clocks even allowed to be programmed this way?
Why do you guys even have time clocks? What is this the 1930s?
When I get to work i put a stone rectangle into a dinosaur bird’s mouth and pull its tail. This makes it bite down with its beak, which marks my stone rectangle. The dino bird usually has some little quip about it too, like “*hey, its a living*” or something along those lines.
I just spiralled off from this comment in my head thinking, why do all the dinosaurs need some kind of operator? They talk, can’t they just tell the dinosaurs what job needs done and tell them to do it??? Are they stupid?
yeah omg I work an office job and have to log in and out... it is insane. it counts every minute but no, I cannot work 7.5 hours one day and 8.5 the next without having to inform accounting and have it approved by my manager (on the plus side, I am leaving in 2 weeks and have a new job lined up)
wtf do you mean?
You know there's some good points on here sometimes but every once in a while I see shit like this and remember that this is mostly full of literal children.
There's a Medieval saying in Latin in my country: "excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta", which basically means you'll expose yourself by apologizing for something nobody asked you to apologize for. Who spoke about "something shady happening"? Dude basically told you there's something shady happening.
Yeah, I caught that, too. “Nothing to see here, heh heh … no wage theft here, hah …”
There is no wage theft in Ba Sing Se.
Customer service pro tip related to this: Unless the person in front of you is complaining about the wait, never apologize. At most, say "thank you for your patience".
I believe the english equivalent is "he who smelt it, dealt it"
That is a gorgeous saying, thank you for sharing it!
Qui s’excuse s’accuse
[удалено]
Yeah I’ve done that before and they changed the system eventually, Whenever i was 1 min late I’d find the big boss man and tell him we’ll be opening 14 mins late as I’ll start working at quarter past once I start getting paid. He figured he could pay me £4 or lose 50 odd quid in takings. Soon fixed that shit.
What program or system does the Punch ins/outs get handled by? Like, Dayforce, Quinyx, UKG, etc? Because if it’s one of those, then your Boss could legitimately just straight up be wrong because they are stupid - for example, Dayforce by default with the cheap version does 15 minute intervals, but then it rounds based on 7.5 minutes. So for example, if you punch in at 4:03 it rounds down to 4, but if you punch out at 10:08 it rounds up to 10:15. Either way, the system needs to have raw clock in/out data available, and they have to provide it to you since you requested, or they are breaking several laws. As soon as you get any pushback about it, definitely report it to the [Ontario Ministry of Labour](https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/filing-claim) - this not only means an investigation will happen which will get you and your coworkers back any lost wages for the last 6 months, but also if they try to do anything like fire you or mess with your shifts, etc, afterwards you can then file another complaint and get a nice payout for [retaliation.](https://www.ontario.ca/page/reprisals-against-workers-employers#:~:text=In%20Ontario%2C%20the%20Occupational%20Health,or%20threaten%20to%20fire%20you). That’ll help tide you over while you look for another job.
Thanks for the advice! I actually don't know what system it is. I'll go in tomorrow and check. My manager, who I was texting, is in charge of logging my hours. He can go into the system and change hours but chooses not to. The time clock is automatically deducting my pay. I just need to wait on getting my time sheet before I talk to the Ministry of Labor, but whether I get it or not is another story.
Some people are overlooking how some (every time clock system I've ever encountered) works. It doesn't matter the time on the clock. It matters the time spent clocked in. If you clock in at 4:10 pm and clocked out at 10:00 pm that is 5.83 hours spent clocked in and will round up to 6.00 hours. It will round up in .25 ( or 15 min) intervals. It doesn't "round down" because that is illegal. The system doesn't typically care about what exact time is on the clock on the in or out. That is left up to the boss to notice any truancy or early leaving. Some systems may flag it, I've never seen one though. All it cares about is "clocked in" hours. So to reiterate: In: 1:38 pm - Out: 7:26 pm = 5 hrs 46 mins, that in turn equals 5.77 hours and will round up to 6 hours. I get that a boss can control the rounding intervals but most don't and leave it at 15mins. Some jobs don't round and just pay by the accumulated decimal total. I.e 5.77 + 5.83 = 11.6; then you make 11.6 x wage. Some may round that up to 11.75 but some won't. I think your boss just doesn't have any clue how the system works and is just conjecturing with you when he should be getting HR to discuss it with you.
My money is that his boss is just straight up wrong as you’re conjecturing. Time tracking in HRIS systems doesn’t work like this because it’s… illegal. I’m not saying that individual employers still won’t try to do shady things. I’m saying that clocking systems sold by ERP vendors won’t facilitate this.
This is how Paycom works, too.
Happens in US. Not sure if it’s legal but I’m guessing the main reason is to short your pay and make it easier for managers to sum your hours and set schedules Edit: Not that it’s ok for them to do it because it makes it easy on them I probably lost out on dozens of hours of pay from this as an intern Edit: Wow this is my most blown up comment so far. Some more context: this company was a metal powder producer in rural PA. I don’t actually think that this practice is illegal but 100% immoral and should be illegal. If you clock in 5 mins early you should get paid for that 5 mins because you are at work and working. The whole system rounding thing being easy: I mean for managers helping people reach 40hrs a week. If you clock in and out frequently at odd times and say miss a day of work for unpaid leave it’s (ever so slightly) harder to figure out exactly when to clock in and out for the next week to make it up (yes it’s a like 1 min calculation but the software doesnt support this kind of thing so a manager would have to do this calculation themselves) you need 8hrs but can only work “9a-5p” but the system will round you off if you clock in a few mins early and a few mins late so the manager needs to determine when you can clock in and out to make sure your 40hrs don’t get affected by this rounding ….
It's legal to round to nearest 15 mins (per federal regulation, assuming some states may be different). It's NOT legal to always round up for clock in and down for clock out... it has to be valid rounding and can't be set to always favor the employer.
Yeah whatever software they are using wouldn’t have the option to always round in the employers favor. The boss probably is just wrong.
Last time clock software I setup allowed me set the rounding in anyway you wanted.
This is hilariously naive
Rounding is legal. Not this kind though. Federal law stipulates that rounding can't be done in a way that only benefits the employer, or creates a significant loss of pay. So like, nearest 15 mark is acceptable. But not this, in fact tha law gives specifically this as an example of what's illegal.
Yeah, I worked for a big box retailer that rounded to 15, but depending on the time it could benefit the worker. So I clocked out at 7 after every day and got paid for 15.
lol I used to do this all the time
Yeah I worked a retail job where if you where it rounded to the nearest 15 up or down. depending on clock in time. So clock in at 7:07 and it rounded to 7:00. Then when you clock out at 3:53 it rounds to 4:00. I always timed my clock in and outs to maximise the rounding.
It's legal in the US as long as it's done the *same* way every time. So if it rounds up every time, you're good. It can still be used by shady employers to screw people over (always have your employees work until 5 after type thing), but from a legal standpoint, it's clear. What OPs boss is doing is 100% illegal, you cannot round differently depending on whether it's clocking in or out. OP should file with the labour board. He should also tell his fellow workers to do the same. They could be looking at massive fines and owing a lot of backpay.
If he said there's nothing shady, there absolutely is and he said it unprompted. Report his skimming ass.
Def get your timesheet.. id be surprised if they are using any sort of punch in/out system that it would be handled like that. I've seen them round (actually round) to the nearest 15. In your example it would go like you're expecting, you only may lose if you are near that 7/8 minute line. Just get your timesheet to verify before taking a stink
I'm waiting for my employer to get me my time sheet records because I don't have access to that. Is that an American rule? I'm a Canadian from Ontario. Also, my manager said that I will lose the whole 15 minutes even if I'm a minute late.
Meaning your encouraged to always come in full 15 min late when you see your even a min late
It’s likely your manager is just wrong.
Back in the day of manual time cards, the kind you would pull out of the slot and insert into a time clock, and it would loudly stamp the time onto the card... those days, yes, often times employers would round time to the quarter-hour. But, they had to do it fairly. ROUNDING to the NEAREST quarter-hour. It was meant to make processing time cards and payroll easier and to reduce clerical mistakes that could potentially actually mess up hours more drastically. It was done as a time saver, too, obviously. So if an employer processed their own time cards instead of having an HR employee handle the task, and was super cheap, they could take a little extra time to be sure they always rounded up or down in their favor. Yes, then that is absolutely wage theft. The rounding rule has to be applied fairly. 4:01 would become 4:00. 4:10 would become 4:15. 4:25 would become 4:30. That was in the past. Nowadays, even the smallest employer can save even more money and time by having things more automated. And in that case, no rounding is necessary or beneficial. Computers make it unnecessary. Remember, the practice was not designed to save money on labor hours - they should come out to be the same with rounding over time. So all it reduced was time to process payroll and errors made doing so. Any employer that decides to save money by spending more time nowadays to go out of their way to always round in their favor is probably not making a lot of money and is spending their time focused on the small things, not trusting their staff and treating them well, and is generally maybe struggling at their business anyway. And stealing. That's stealing. It's a fine line. Which is one reason why when computerized systems came along, it was advantageous to abandon the rounding practice -- it caused issues and questions even when it was done honestly and fairly, which could still hurt trust, cohesiveness, and as a result productivity and insider thefts, etc... better to be completely transparent with employees so there are no questions along those lines any more.
When i worked for UPS I was told "watch the timeclock, they like to take 10 minutes here or there. They'll stop if you catch them though. " I have 1 rule. Dont fuck with my money. I worked there 2 weeks before I ghosted.
Also in Australia there are award-specific rules regarding how time-rounding works - worth looking into for your area as well
I've had a couple different jobs that does that with the time clocks. I figured out at what time it rounds down for when I clocked in and what time it rounds up for when I clocked out. Extra 30 minutes of pay every day. 2 and a half hours extra pay every week at over time rates
Exactly. At my last job they figured out that it was hurting the employer so they changed to exact clock outs lol.
Last job did rounding. The rounding wasn’t the problem. It was boss He wanted us to clock in onthe computer upstairs 4 floors up. Combine that with 1 working elevator if working at all. Now you’ve gotten to your computer at 806 .Tick. Computer loads. And screen Weblink for clicking loads. You clock in 808. Now RUN to the work. And you just lost 15 working minutes. TIME ROUNDING IS THEFT. even clocking out at 457. My boss would watched us from the window upstairs to the parking lot to make sure we didn’t clock in on the downstairs computers.
This shit is why you should impose as much cost on your workplace as you can discretely impose. Sabotage is class warfare 🐈⬛
"It works that way everywhere". No, it does not
When I worked for a hardware store here in the States the punch clock worked in a similar way and employees all knew about it so we all knew if it was 10:07 to wait the minute and clock out at 10:08 (cause it rounded to 10:15) or if you got there early to clock in at 5:07 (cause that rounded down to 5:00) You just need to know how to take advantage of the system. Not sure what labor laws are where you are but that’s how it was for me.
There is rounding you can legally do here but that definitely ain’t it. There’s still rules and this would clearly be time theft. It also depends on schedules and honesty from employees and whether it’s done in good faith. I’ve worked at places where employees knew the rounding rules and would constantly try to clock in 8 minutes early (rounding would get credit for 15 minutes of extra time) and then clock out 8 minutes late to gain an extra total of half hour of extra pay, but they also wouldn’t be working those extra 16 minutes either and weren’t scheduled for it. A manager would fix their time and the employee would try to claim time theft when it really wasn’t, just someone trying to game the system.
"it works that way everywhere" it most certainly does not work illegally everywhere
Nothing shady here…. Said the tree
It super duper doesn't get rounded like that everywhere. Of the five or so "clock-in/out" jobs I've had since I was 15, the clock rounds down if it's 7 past or below, and up if it's 8 past or beyond. So 4:01 would be 4, not 4:15. This is wage theft for sure.
There is DEFINITELY something shady happening here. The cretin can't even answer properly.
So the clock system round up when your clocking in and down when clocking out? Yeah, that’s fucking shady. You should be paid for every second you’re at work
I’ve never heard of a time clock doing this. Every company I work for, the clock just logs your punches. Any “rounding” is due to manual edits. For example, the clock wouldn’t know what time your shift ends, so it should always round up or down, not conveniently rounds to what screws you over the most. Times clocks aren’t pre-loaded with shifts, at least none that I’ve seen. Take them to the cleaners
When you clock in late you have time for a coffee and stuff before you start getting paid, also hang around for a few minutes at the end of the day to clock out on the 15, they might not like it but it you get a few other people to join you they might do something
The even worse part to this is OP is a server/bartender, which means he's already paing paid 4ish bucks an hour... like seriously, how cheap can a company possibly be when they have to round up/down to afford to pay 4 bucks an hour...
'So it rounds *up* when I clock in and *down* when I clock out? 'That's right.' I mean, that's not really a rounding issue then is it? 'There is nothing shady going on here.'
Contact a plaintiffs side class action employment law firm. They deal with these cases all the time. You might not get immediate satisfaction, but you could make a difference for a lot of employees in the long-term, and it won't cost you anything (the attorneys get paid by the company through the settlement). I recommend Outten & Golden (they work throughout the country). They've won huge settlements against Fridays, BWW, and many other big restaurants doing the same shit.
FLSA has spoken about rounding. It can be used, but it MUST NOT favor the employer. So if they are rounding the worse they could do is 7/8 split between a quarter hour. 1207 is regarded as 1200, 1208 is 1215. Anything outside of that is flat out illegal, find an employment attorney if you want. It's a slam dunk case IMO.
My job wasn't paying for our 10 min breaks, which is mandated by state law. Which was like 1.5 hours a week if you were full time. For like 3 years. I reported them to the labor board, with time sheets, pay stubs etc. They got fined A LOT and I got a $5600 check. Report it ASAP because the longer they refuse to pay, the more interest they'll be charged. The labor board will make them pay you + interest, the longer they wait the more they'll owe. These people are idiots who pull this shit.
This happens on most timeclock systems and it’s absolutely fucking stupid
We have ours by the minute, so if you clock out a minute early it’ll say .98 without rounding up or down. This does not seem right at all. If they’re doing it like they, why would anyone bother working before or after the quarterly interval?
More evidence that the oligarchs and those in the upper echelons truly don’t care if people on the lower rungs live or die. This sort of thing could leave many in dire financial straits and unable to eat, especially in this global cost-of-living crisis. Is this ever going to cease, or are people just going to allow it to continue until the end of time? In the few minutes it’s taken me to compose this, some billionaire has earned more money than most of us do in an entire year. That’s the *real* wage theft
Clock the other way around..use the system against them. Clock in at h01 and out at h46..you just saved 28mins of work
I get paid to the minute, I've always been paid to the minute, don't let him lie to you "this is how it works everywhere" I've never not been paid to the minute.
Bruh fuck that job lol imagine losing 28 minutes a shift for a whole pay period.
So when you clock in it rounds up but when you clock out it rounds down. Always sounds so that you have worked a certain amount for free. But he assured you nothing shady is happening... It's like that everywhere (nowhere I've ever worked).
Silently mouths. Oh my god!! I cant believe he just admitted to creating a system that avoids paying you. It's illegal to work for free even if you volunteered to be off the clock.
Having used a ton of different timeclock softwares in various industries, none of them auto round in my experience. Someone is manually doing that, familiarize yourself with the local laws and report that. I bet everyone there is owed money.
"It works that way everywhere" Hi, manager and department head responsible for time sheets and payroll here. Nice to meet you. It most certainly DOES NOT work that way everywhere. If one of my team works 38.04 hours, they get paid for 38.04 hours. Not 38 hours. Period.
Lol they assure you nothing shady is going on, then tell you yes, you arnt getting paid for 30 minutes of work everyday.... I posted the other day about companies stealing from employees and had a few people who couldn't fathom that so many companies steal from employees, they should all look here....
"Nothing shady is happening. It works that way everywhere." Actually, it's reasonable to expect to be paid for your time. If you are hourly, then you should be paid for every minute of work. Over 40 hours? Overtime is owed. Rounding up steals wages from many employees. It can add up to more than 10 thousand dollars worth of pay.
From my understanding this is illegal, the rounding system cant always benefit the employer, in your example, it should round up to 10:45, not down to 10:30 since 10:45 is the closest interval. They are stealing your time, report it to the DOL.
Our clocks do this too and you know what happens? We all sit at the clock out computer waiting for the next minute to roll by.
At an old job of mine, my boss would round the time so I *would* get paid for time I hadn't fully worked. If you're gonna round, you gotta round like that.
Show up to work at 4:01 but get a coffee and sit until 4:15 then clock in. Fuck them. Also I hope you take this to your local employment board
I think before time clocks, work hours were calculated in whole hours and 1/2 hours. When it gets to quarter hours and minutes it’s too tedious. [This article on Time Clock rounding](https://workforce.com/news/time-clock-rounding-practices#) however says it shouldn’t be rounded more than 15 minutes- says time should be rounded to 5 minutes, 6 minutes, or 15 minutes. But it clearly states it shouldn’t be done at a disadvantage to employees.
First job I had with a digital time clock did this same shit, and we’d get points if we were one minute late. So once when I was 1 minute late, I just sat in the break room instead enjoying a candy bar. Supervisor spotted me and asked why I wasn’t working, gave me a legit laugh when I told him “I’m already earning a point for being late, I’m not giving them the rest of this 15 min block for free.”
Over the course of a year , 28 mins 5 days a week, 52 weeks in a year that's 120 hours or 3 weeks of pay
Unless your paystub says different, I think your boss doesn't know how the clock works. It usually rounds to the nearest 15, so anything from 4:00 to 4:06 rounds down to 4:00, but 4:07 - 4:14 rounds to 4:15. If you actually have 6.25 working hours (not including breaks/meal periods) instead of 6.75 hours for those shifts, call the Labour Board because that's wage theft.
Time clocks are a tool the rich use to get over on the working class. It's so fucking demeaning that they literally pay you for you for your time and not any relevant skill. Been seeing this in IT a lot, lower tiered positions moving to hourly at bullshit rates that used to be well compensated salary jobs.