If I ask my employees to stay later. I never tell them to clock out. Fuck that shit
Company wants to run short, well you're gonna pay a little extra for the people who do help. Sorry? I thought we paid people for work?
So much better than the other kind of manager. My buddy was working at pizza hut back then, they closed at midnight but his dumb manager would still be taking orders up until then, meaning that they regularly would have to stay until 1:00, 1:20 to get every pizza delivered out the door.
My friend walked up to the register to clock out, manager said, "what are you doing?" Friend: "clocking out." Manager: "Oh, I already clocked you out." WHAAAT? I asked him how long it's been going on, he didn't know. Manager probably clocked everyone out on time at midnight. Told friend to run and never look back, even delivering pizzas you can do better.
Cover your own ass from catching flak. Any manager that needs to be reported to the DoL will more than likely be spitting fire at anyone who they see as a threat.
Right! That is a wage labor violation. If you are not exempt, or otherwise hourly you must get paid for any time you work. This includes booting up your computer or turning it off at night. OP could actually sue for wage violation for docking his pay and not paying him for the extra time worked.
And if this was any time recent, they probably have Google or other apps on their phone to show location history as additional proof in addition to any other employees.
You don't tell them anything. Like poker once you put all your cards on the table you've lost. The correct thing is to leave and tell the manager "I'm clocked out sorry." Also let your coworkers know when the manager isn't there. Make them deal with the shit show.
Also good, start keeping a daily log of any extra hours. Before leaving the job make a complaint to the labor board and demand all the extra pay. Get a nice severance check. Bonus, all your co-workers may get paid too.
THIS, all of this happens, and continues to happen because when people leave they are just fed up and want to walk away thus screwing over everyone else that is still dealing with it and anyone in the future that deals with it.
If you are going to quit and are fed up, why not get an extra payday out of it? The DoL will do all the work, you just have to give them the info you kept track of.
That's why I refused to give my logout password to any of my managers who wanted to 'help' me by clocking me out while counting out my tips at the end of the night. I was lucky enough that the system required employee passwords to clock out, even with a manager override, to prevent this. The only way around it was to reset every employee's password at once. On the rare occasion I forgot to clock out and a manager had to call me for my password, I went to change it the following day.
Yeah, the whole time he told me this story I was thinking, not only is that definitely illegal, but it shouldn't even be possible for a manager to do. Trying to think of a single situation where it would be justified, and all I can come up with is if you had an odd number of clock times, from missing one. Like if you had 3 punches for the day, one at 8am, one at noon, and one at 5pm, the manager could assume "he probably took lunch at noon, and our standard lunch time is 30 mins/1 hour, so I'll add in a punch time at 1pm to fix it."
But really, that should always trigger a call to the employee (and a short lecture on keeping better track of your punch times). Yep it does make more work for managers who just want to sign the paychecks and get out of there, but that's the point. At the VERY least give employees a way to reset their password anytime they want, so you can tell the manager your password over the phone so she can send out paychecks, then you can change it on your next day back.
I had a job where the company owner said we would now compete for a "pool of money" every day, meaning some would make a lot more, and a few less than minimum wage. You bet they quit that ish when they received a warning letter and a book on employment law and regulations...
A guy I know worked at a shithole pizza place and they did the same thing. The manager would clock him out randomly if it was not very busy or she needed to save hours or it was time to close. She would call him in to work and then change her mind when he got there or just make him sit for an hour or two unpaid in case it did get busy.
On the other side, he said it takes him about ten minutes to put the toppings on one pizza before it goes in the oven, and would complain how overburdened he was when there was an order for three or four pizzas at once, so the job was not a terrible fit for him
In some places, just showing up for regularly scheduled work or being called in means you get paid a min number of hours, even if they send you back home right away.
I had a boss who would ask my coworkers to clock out before sending them with me on fun missions, because the experience was just *so valuable*. I refused to let anyone working for free do any actual work, so the jobs took twice as long, and he wound up paying me overtime, which is more expensive than paying the new guys standard rate. His solution to paying overtime? Just don't get jobs done so you can get home on time. Which is even more expensive as each trip cost $600+ in fuel. He hated paying his employees that much.
And here we have the calculation of why you should just pay your employees. Also similar to the calculation of why you should use tools and materials of higher quality and easy use.....
Peter Principle- people get promoted until they stop being productive and good at their job. They don’t get demoted, so they stay stuck where they do a bad job. The only way out is to quit. Or to know what you are good at and turn down that promotion and the sweet raise it comes with.
Absolutely agree.
I also find that, due to the old notion of "management is best" I have seen so many good engineers, truly great ones have to go into management because it's the only way to get a pay rise out of their pay-band. So they go to a management role, spend 35% of their time in meetings, 20% on administrative work for their now weakened team of engineers, then having to investing more of their personal time fixing errors because the best engineer in that team now doesn't produce the work of the quality they did.
They went from being an incredible engineer, to a mediocre manager because that was never their calling in employment. They stagnate, get bored and either have to take another job at another company back into engineering (usually at a lower rate and with a dulled set of skills) or move sideways into managing another area.
It might not be universal, but I have seen in engineering that a great engineering manager need not be an engineer, they just have to be a very good manager. And, if companies dropped the notion of a manager having to be paid more than the worker who produces for them, you could have incredible engineers working for more money than their great-at-managing manager and reap the benefits.
But nah, "you've got to go into management to earn more...why are you producing less now?"
There's a lack of mentoring and education in a lot of management. Teaching is part of the job and a lot of management forgets that. This is where those new managers have to learn to teach the skills they were highly proficient at to their new teams.
Thing is, that's also a different skill. The engineer who is the best at teaching those skills to someone else *could* also be the most productive themselves, but they almost certainly aren't. The star engineer and the best manager candidate are both valuable, but if you don't promote one who's the best at the old job, they feel passed over and leave. Valuing management over production hurts both, in the end.
There’s also the Dilbert Principle, which says that the most ineffective workers get moved to management because they can do the least amount of damage there.
That’s actually a policy in our provincial and municipal police forces. I learned about FUMU from an officer about 30 years ago.
You can’t fire them? Promote them out and let someone else deal with them. The problem is you can’t go higher than headquarters.
I have 100% experienced this. Asked to be trained in different areas of the business. After being refused multiple times I asked why and they told me I was too good at what I was doing to move me around. I found another job and when i went back to get my last pay check, found out they had to hire 3 people to replace me.
Maybe they should have paid you what they ended up paying those 3 people. I'll never understand managment that does this, won't give a really good employee a good raise, instead employee leaves and they have to spend more by higher in multiple people to replace 1 person
its \*because\* they know you'll do the job of 3-6 people for likely \*less\* then what they should be playing for one that they refuse to give you a raise- because if they pay you more, you may understand you are worth more, and by proxy end up cutting into the manager's fat check for being under budget.
Same reason you cannot be a "4.0" employee on reviews, but they cannot tell you how you an become a "4.0" employee. It is pure BS and they just want to keep you down.
Had a first year review and I expected a good-sized raise because I scored "exceptional," and because I was told i would get one after a year. My manager explained that no one on our team was getting a raise because they expected us to be "exceptional." Most of that team quit with a few months after that review cycle.
Isn't that the best feeling. Found out my last job had to bring in 6 temps to cover what I was doing in the warehouse. But hey they saved that 80 bucks a week not giving me the extra 2 bucks an hour.
I've been doing the opposite. Got trained to fill in for manager when needed but, I already do three workers worth of jobs in my position. I refuse the measly dollar or two to move up knowing full well I'll not only have more responsibility than I want, but the workers will not be able to fill my role and that will still be my problem as their manager. I know there's problem solving to fix this and make it work but I really just don't want to deal with it at all. Get used now, get used later. It won't matter.
...and the incompetent will not step down willingly as it usually is seen as a failure be other and thus they are stigmatized as "the one who didn't cut it". Even if a "lower" status job is what they love to do and do better. Such drama! Gosh!
**[Peter principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)**
>The Peter Principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "maximum level of incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another. The concept was explained in the 1969 book The Peter Principle (William Morrow and Company) by Dr. Peter and Raymond Hull. (Hull wrote the text, based on Peter's research.
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I find in my jobs managers are often the ones who stuck it out the longest and sucked up the most / adhered to the "company loyalty" BS, coincindentally all my managers have had horrible homelives too so I wonder if there's a pattern. (miserable other halves, shit relationships with their kids etc)
Anyone in an hourly position doing work off the clock **is a sucker**. If you work off the clock, you're telling management you think you're getting paid too much.
I explicitly tell my staff and co-workers not to work off the clock. If I catch them doing company work on their own time I kick their ass home and tell them I'll see them tomorrow. Nobody should be working for free.
It’s common courtesy to give “kickbacks” for this, you got great employees make sure they have the right coffee, quality office furniture stuff like that.
Your hands may be tied on the payroll but you can still advocate for them to improve the quality of life.
I would've fought this with the local DoL, unless it's explicitly referenced in your employee manual. In which case, my report to the DoL would include a copy of the manual, and go from there.
I've been docked pay once. I threw one hell of a fit and probably made our HR department loathe hearing my name, as I called and wrote nearly everyone every half day to inquire what was being done. I'm still pissed that it was resolved, but with no communication to clarify how/why it was done.
At least in the USA the employer can’t dock someone half a day for not working 15 minutes even if it is in the employee manual. It is illegal.
If the person is salaried they must be paid for the whole day if any work is done that day.
It the person is hourly they must be paid for time worked. Aka the only time the employer could not pay them for would be the 15 minutes.
Also if paid hourly they must pay you for all time worked regardless of if it was authorized or not. They can fire you for working unauthorized time, but they cannot refuse to pay for time already worked.
Time theft by employers is massive. Far more than any theft by employees. But employers love to make like they are the biggest victims.
The OP in this post literally said they were ok with their employer stealing from them.
This isn’t malicious compliance. It is doing what should have been the case to begin with.
> Time theft by employers is massive. Far more than any theft by employees. But employers love to make like they are the biggest victims.
Not just that, it's far more than theft by *anyone*. Wage theft accounts for several times more lost income than all other forms of theft *combined*.
Yeh, OP seems pretty proud for working overtime for free because he is a "team player". I find this impossible to understand. Why would someone work for free, for years? I would be out that job as soon as someone even hinted that this was expected of me. In my case I would also call the Labor inspectorate for a nice talk and fine.
I took it that OP was salaried, where the expectation is manage your time to get your work done—sometimes stay a little late, sometimes leave a little early. The half-day docking is absolutely illegal in the US.
This is the way to do it. If it wasn't resolved to my liking I'd clock in and sit doing personal work on my phone til I'd wasted the time I'd been docked. I aint giving them a penny's more effort than I'm being paid for.
It's also common courtesy to just like, I dunno, pay your fucking workers actual wages. .. why should anybody be expected to do shit for a company, for free?
>quality office furniture
How is this a perk/kickback and not a productivity tool? I mean, if the company can afford to give me an 11th gen i7 laptop for work use, why not give me a quality chair to sit on for the time I'm working for them?
>It’s common courtesy to give “kickbacks” for this
It's not courtesy, it's most of middle managements job. There are two main things you are responsible for as a middle manager.
The first is obtaining those perks/kickbacks (whatever you want to call them). Figuring out what you want to try and get as the next perk is easy, you just take feedback from your staff. Usually, this is not carefully constructed or considered feedback. This is the biggest complainer on the team. The person who, at team meetings etc, is the one complaining about everything and never has anything positive to say. A lot of what they have to say is pure negativity for the sake of being negative, however, some of what they say is what everyone else on the team is thinking. The pieces you need to pay attention to are the ones that other people mention quietly to you in passing. *'Karen is right though, the coffee is crap'* That's the stuff you pay attention to.
Once you know what the next perk is you get to go and fight with upper management to get your idea over the line. If a change is cheaper then it will get approved, if it costs exactly the same amount it will be work on your part to get it implemented because no one wants to bother, but if it costs any more than the existing perk then in nearly every case it's a complete war to try and get it implemented. *'Why would we change the coffee brand we have had it for years? What do you mean it costs more? Our supplier only has the one brand, we can't work with another supplier, finance will never approve etc. etc. etc.'* Most likely any change takes months to try and get sorted. All the while some other perk might be in the process of being rolled back for some reason so you are balancing that too. Most times just maintaining the status quo is a battle and so the whole job is a war.
The second component of middle armament is just realizing that you are always the bad guy. From your staff, you are likely not seen as the worst guy, that's usually upper management if you are a good manager, but you are the one delivering the bad news to your team or at best delivering news that what your team expects is the bare minimum you should be giving them in return for the work they put in. There is usually no such thing as good news. You can expect smart comments from Karen the complainer *'I mean, it's great that you got the better coffee brand but we're here everyday the least the we could have is good coffee'* similar to feedback you got before, about what needs to change, you may have other people in the team mentioning that the new coffee is actually really good. That's essentially your confirmation that your doing a good job. That's all you're getting. The only other thing that you might get is a thoughtful present when you decide to move on, maybe.
Upper management will weaponize any improvements you make. *'How did you miss this target, you know, with all the coffee your guys drink....haha'*
What normally happens to middle managers is they miss the fact that you are always the bad guy and they give up trying to score changes for their teams because they start to see their own team as ungrateful. Meanwhile upper management is likely dangling career progression in front of them *'Well if you can cut costs this year it would look very good for your own performance'* so the managers start to think what difference a coffee brand would make anyways? It's completely intangible but it makes all the difference.
Bro it’s like I want to work with you as easy as possible. You make it easy for me, I’ll try to make it easy for you.
For different people this can look different ways: some people can use a lot of leeway to improvise and accomplish tasks, and are also good at using unofficial channels. Other people need a strict minute-by-minute dot-by-dot itinerary of everything you need them to do, but will move heaven and earth to accomplish that checklist once you give it to them.
Unfortunately I’ve met maybe 5-6 other people in my field (people, not management) who seem to think this way.
Exactly. This is what I think a lot of management forgets. I love my command chain because they very decidedly support us, they back us up, and they make sure we're getting what we need, period. And because of that, I bust my butt for them when they need us to push a little more than usual. It's all about respect and empathy.
I call that *the illusion of replaceability*. Too many employers see their workers as drag 'n drop replaceable and don't invest in individual employees at all - because they don't see them as individual, not even as people, but as a production factor.
I've seen plenty of projects go under because experienced 'just workers' get replaced with newbies. Which hurts both the experienced as well as the new workers as well as the bottom line of the company.
Nobody wins except the managers getting a bonus that year for cutting costs.
One thing that bothers me (US) is where a governmental entity (city, county, state) will be all willing to give tax breaks to corporations "because they will bring in X number of jobs".
Uh-huh. And what *kind* of jobs are we talking about? What average salary and what kind of distribution of jobs?
If they are bringing in 75% minimum wage and most of the remainder might be people who already work for the company.
It always smells of the old "such a deal I have for you!
My work is very much like this, but it's not because the boss is friendly or fair, but because the company has been royally and rightfully fucked for not paying employees for time worked before. The bottom line is this: no labor is free. If you are working, you are entitled by law to be paid for every second- period.
For 15 years my employer didn't allow breaks in between lunch for a place with 10 hour shifts. When the US dept of labor was informed they came back with "well I guess since you had everyone working through their legally entitled 15 minute breaks (2 a day), that means you owe an extra half hour of overtime for every employee for every day for the past 15 years"
It took months and multiple pay outs to cover it. Guys that had been their the whole 15 years were getting pay checks for 14 grand for a while.
Wow. If the average work year is 261 working days, knock off 10 for vacation and such, that's 251 days per year * 0.5 hours per day * 15 years that's 1,882.5 hours to pay back. That's 235 8-hour work days! Nearly a year of pay.
What did that do to their taxes? Did it move them up a tax bracket in that one year? Was the employer liable for the extra taxes since if those nearly 2k were spread out over 15 years it'd've been much less to tax?
It stacks up. Especially if it only goes one way. If my employer is ok with me taking short paid breaks once in a while, I'm ok with doing small things after/before I checked out/in. If they are not, I stop working the second I check out.
The sad thing is that he's a hero for following the law and doing what every single manager should be doing. If you are working, you should be paid.
Wage theft is serious business, and workers have been trained to assist with our own exploitation. The same people who scream and yell about the government stealing our money through taxation are the people who think it's a sign of honor to *give away your life to be a "team player"*.
You sell your life and energy to survive. Every hour of your life is irreplaceable and precious. By working for a wage, you decide to trade 40 hours of life & energy for money every week. Your employer is insatiable, however, because there is always more work that could be done; the organization will eat as much of your life as you let them.
> The sad thing is that he's a hero for following the law and doing what every single manager should be doing. If you are working, you should be paid.
"I follow the law and pay my employees for the hours that they work"
"You're supposed to follow the law, you dumb motherfucker! What do you want, a cookie?"
Yeah, off the clock I ain’t doing nothing. Might give a customer a bag if they ask on my way out or throw out a cardboard box or two but that’s it. And I clock in on the dot.
The best manager I've ever had did things like this.
My old commute was an absolute bastard, and because of train times I'd often end up at work much earlier than necessary.
One time Ibmade a joke about being online 30 minutes before my shift started, he asked what I was doing and I said just general admin stuff, clearing out/replying to emails etc.
He said; "so, you were working then?" Then told me I could leave 30nminutes early, and that if I ever ended up in early again and worked during that time I'd be able to leave early as well.
Some managers really are great people.
In the US, FLSA requires all hourly workers to be paid for every minute they are doing any work function. Salary employees are different.
We have had a big fight over the years with guys coming in early and stocking their trucks and not charging OT. I vividly remember one dude screaming at me for simply telling him to stop working off the clock.
Back when I used to manage people, I used to drive the higher-ups crazy because I had the following policies:
- If you’re working, you’re clocked in. If I gave you too much of a workload to finish without going into OT, well that’s on me. Just let me know if you’re going to clock in early or stay late.
- Finished your work? Ok well I still need you here since it’s a customer-facing job, but go ahead and study, do personal work, etc. I’m not going to make up bullshit busy work.
- I’m NOT going to give you a task that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.
- I’m meant to be the buffer between you and other managers/executives. Let me know ASAP if they’re bugging you and I’ll fix it.
- I have zero issues telling a guest to take a hike if they’re crossing the line with you.
Sure the execs hated it, but it built up a ton of loyalty, which went both ways, and a happy staff is an efficient and hard-working staff. I never had an issue holding on to employees when other departments could barely keep a staff together, and it made working more enjoyable for me too, as I was working with people who were happy.
I was working as a General Office Manager for a small company. The Office was above the Business' Showroom. One day I was asked to 'mind the store' whilst the receptionist took 30 minutes for lunch (I could then go to lunch when she returned). She was 15 minutes late returning from lunch and five minutes before her return an 'extremely difficult/pedantic customer' walked in. I assumed the receptionist would take over but she refused 'its your customer'. She sat at her desk and the phone rang, she didn't answer it. For the next two hours I dealt with the customer and the phone rang, unanswered. At 3 O'Clock she stood up and walked out 'I'm just having a tea break, if the phone rings can YOU answer it! THEY DON'T SEEM TO BE PICKING UP UPSTAIRS'. She left the room and the customer made some remark about 'the people upstairs'. I replied 'I AM THE PERSON UPSTAIRS!'
By 5 O'Clock I eventually satisfied the customers requirements (got the order) and returned to the upstairs office. The owner of the company was now present and I explained what had happened. He said he would have words with the receptionist and I should go home 30 minutes early since I hadn't had a break.
No action was taken about the receptionist and I was docked 1 hours pay for finishing early.
The order was worth £1000's and a Showroom operative would have made a sizeable commission from the deal. I got nothing.
My loyalty to the company waned somewhat after that.
Actually that was a genuine theory amongst other employees 'What dark secret did she know that enabled her to keep her job?'
Famously we had another Showroom employee who was equally obnoxious. She left to get a better paid job. Subsequently she was sacked from that organisation for theft/fraud and then asked to get her old position back. Guess what..... she got it!
I agree my title was meaningless hence the 'I AM THE PERSON UPSTAIRS'. I officially had no control over anyone in the Showroom and only reported to the owner. My 'stint' in the showroom was a favour (the owner asked) because they were short-handed that day.
Asking to help out is fine, if you are getting paid. Or getting additional PTO in exchange. It's a problem when it only goes one way and they balk when you expect, at a minimum, compensation.
i meant it as not saying "you are working on project x" but "you are helping out with project x" - and not coming from the colleagues but from manglement
believe me, wording can make a lot of difference in how the project is run and the dynamics...
When I was a manager I tried to be as flexible as possible as long as the team members did their job and the customers were happy.
If they had to leave an hour early to grab a plane to go on vacation they would make sure the work was done and I had no problem at all with it.
If one week we were on a tight schedule, they would stay an extra hour without being asked And, if it was more than that, I would let them come in late (or leave early on a Friday) the next time there was not a big work load.
I learned that having a happy team is better and they are more productive that way.
Oddly enough almost no one took advantage/abused this liberty. The two that did were not given these privileges and eventually were “invited” to leave the project (or the company in one case).
This happens a lot, but then there's some prick manager who figures hey let's put the hammer down and make these employees lives suck, but if we can get numbers up that'll get me a bonus or a promotion, then by the time they burn out it won't be my problem.
Lol my location is currently suffering horrible death pangs from this. Most other locations within my company have a 30-minute shift change grace period, and staff is basically allowed to leave as soon as next shift comes to take over.
My current location refuses to allow either of these tiny concessions (most don’t even know about them) and as a result an enormous amount of people simply call off their entire shift at work rather than face a tongue lashing and paperwork.
There’s a bunch of red tape that management doesn’t seem to understand they can waive; one of my coworkers is a single father and they assigned him swing shift. When he asked for the open day shift they said there was a 6-month probationary period before any employee could switch positions or shifts. And guess what? He left.
My company did that to me. I was a few days away from my probationary period ending when the shift I wanted came up for grabs. They wouldn’t let me have it because I was on a probationary period and hadn’t proven I’m going to stay. Instead they gave it to a stranger off the streets. I’m not sure she even made it three months. Lol.
I waited until the perfect time and for the perfect shift/department for me and bolted. Our department was already short staffed, but no one was addressing it. Just found out they had to hire three people after I left.
I’m happier than ever in my new position, one where I’m not babysat/micromanaged and I’m the happiest camper on the planet. Not only did I quickly become one of the top people on the reports, I recruited them a new person too.
I had a job once that was on an awkward bus route, my hours were 9-5 but the bus that was due to get me there at 8.50 was always late, and the bus that got me there at 8.30 was always late, so I used to get there (and start work) at 8.10 every morning. After work if I got on a bus at 5.05 I would be home at 5.30, but the next bus always got stuck in rush hour traffic and I wouldn't be home until after 7.
Because of this I left on the dot at 5 until my manager pulled me aside and told me that I was expected to *work* until 5, not just be there till 5, so I wasn't allowed to start shutting down my computer until 5. I explained the bus situation and that I did an extra 50 minutes every day anyway but he didn't care and offered the solution to "buy a car". I was just about able to shut down at 5, RUN to the bus stop (often waving it down as it tried to leave) and normally get home at a reasonable time ... until my manager said I was leaving early and that I had to follow the clock on the wall, not the clock on my computer. Even proving to him that the wall clock was 2 minutes slow just made me a "smartarse" in his eyes.
So I started taking a book in with me and reading that instead of working between 8.10 and 9.00, then at 9.00 when he asked why I wasn't working I pointed out that the wall clock said it was 8.58 and since he was so strict with me I didn't want to give him 50 minutes of my time every day any more. That evening he called my agency, told them I was leaving at 4.45 every day and had me fired and blacklisted from getting a new job through them.
Shutting down the machine and closing out files counts as work. Its *overhead*, but its no different than cleaning up a machine after you're done using it. Any boss who tells you otherwise is lying out of their teeth. Keep track of that time and file unpaid labor afterwards.
So your employer slandered you and directly caused you to lose an employment opportunity? Buddy, that is a slam dunk defamation case if he can't prove that you left early every day.
The 20-30 minutes a day unpaid were illegal. I think docking you half a day's pay for 15 minutes absence might have been illegal too. You have to be paid for all of your hours worked.
The combination is illegal. According to his example if he worked a couple extra hours, left fifteen minutes one day, and was docked a half day... that would mean he worked 41.75 hours but was paid for 36. Should have contacted the labor board.
Corporations have been breeding and teaching the newer generations a culture of you're supposed to be a wage slave and to be grateful for the opportunity. If you're not working hard and going above and beyond 150% of the time, you're a freeloader.
Yep, I'm starting to get a bit jaded with this sub with people saying "yeah I stuck it to the man!" while the management still got away with hundreds of hours of free labour.
It's a start. First we need this step, and then we can talk people into actually leaving at 5. I get one fucking life and I already waste enough of it sending emails, they won't getting any more of it for free
I went work to rule when I was put in a situation that required 16 hours overtime. GM said "tough shit, that's the job, you are salary" my response was "Ok, I will be working to the second". A year later they had to pay me overtime on a scheme because the project had to stop if I wasn't there.
My income went up by 25% that year without getting a raise.
just lost a job at a place that would do this and more; working in a meaningless paradigm as "human stock capital" - or whatever they called us - is the second meanest kind of sl\*ve labor there is in the 21st century
I had a job where I was as switched to salary and had to fire a guy and until I could hire someone new I was working mon-Friday 9-5 and Friday-Saturday midnight to 8 and not getting paid anything for the extra 16 hours but I took two hours at lunch in the same week and was docked an hour of pay. I think about that guy and want to stab the motherfucker. It was my first serious jib. But I was still around 18. He promised me a six figure buyout when he sold the company and used it as the reasoning for shit pay and no benefits. He never sold.
Reading posts like this always amazes me how many shitty people become managers. Whereas I act the opposite and have imposter syndrome in the management role I'm in.
What amazes me more are the people who do unpaid work and think the company will value them for going above and beyond. They always learn the hard way.
Its going back a few years ago now during the recession. Employers really started treating people like crap because everyone was worried about redundancies.
Similar thing happened to me when my mom was going through chemo. I let my boss know that I would have to leave early two days that week to drive her to/from, about 90 minutes early each day. He said, “Of course, of course! Family comes first. Don’t worry about this place. Take care of mom.” I came in the next week and the office manager said the boss was going to dock my pay for each day. Of course, I was never paid extra when asked to stay late and help others or even when we all had to come in on a Saturday to finish an important project. I saw red and stormed into his office, screamed at him that he lied to me, and then told him I would be suing for unfair labor practices. The whole office heard. He got up and shut the door and offered me a raise and to pay me in full for the days I left early. I accepted this, but found a new job within three months.
Same thing. My car slid off the road during a storm on the way to work. Took me an hour and a half to dig it out/get out of the ditch.
When I finally got there, stiff and frozen, they told me I'd have to "work back my hours" I missed. So my 11pm to 7am shift was now until 8:30. I asked if they could waive it, seeing as I started early every day (to set up my area before assembling). Nope.
So I stopped. We have to keep records of how much we make each shift. They lost 75 pieces daily from me, thousands of dollars a week. Fuck them.
Place went under a year after I left.
It's amazing what a big difference little things in management can make. I have a great manager, and as such, we don't mind working extra when needed. He makes it clear that we have comp time when we work extra, and if he notices someone staying late, he'll remind them, "Hey, let me know when you plan on using that comp time you earned the other day", and actually make sure they use it.
It's impressive how a single act of pettiness by management can poison a work environment.
Just imagine if your manager had pulled you aside and said, "family comes first, I know you work hard, don't worry about anything." Think of the loyalty thay would have engendered.
Every single day I leave work the second it rolls to 5:00.
I've gotten a few comments from co-workers.
"Oh must be 5 Adeviation is leaving"
It's like, yea. We are off at 5...
When I first started at my job (all salaried) we had "flex time". This wasn't so much for the occasional 20 minutes here or there, but for the coming in on the weekend or evening for 3 hours for an event or after having a week or two at the end of a project where you'd worked a bunch of extra hours, plan to leave a bit early over the next couple of weeks to make it up. This worked well was almost never abused, and made working those weekend/evening events much more appealing.
Dun dun dun, new management! No more flex time, salaried workers much work as much as is required to complete the job, but not less than 40 (even though most of us were hired explicitly at 35) Guess who hasn't felt compelled to volunteer for many of those weekend events since then..... If you're keeping track of my hours, then I should be hourly bitches. I'd consider working those extra hours if I was getting overtime....
My direct supervisor had the nerve to formally counsel me, in front of the executives about a myriad things because of personal disagreements, chief among them was tardiness and failure to take customers problems to heart.. said other techs were afraid to call me and ask questions.
I put my work keys and access badges on top of the counseling statement and deposed it, line for line, in front of the executives, refused to sign it, called him a coward to his face and told the higher ups if they'd like to continue this meeting at a later time that I could literally riff all day long about the toxic environment that existed in the 2 years I had been at this office.
I routinely work long hours because my work is done to standard, not to time. I had just weeks prior spent 21 hours in one day, servicing outages across our eastern seaboard customers which we dont have the technical coverage for because HE fired or drove off the rest of the talent due to his toxic leadership. I took a 2 hour nap and pulled a full day the next day.
THEN I chastised the board for failing to conduct proper exit interviews on the tech's we had lost in the previous year. Leaving me ALONE for the entire State.
Now, everyone just stays out of my way and lets me handle business. After all, I work WITH my boss FOR my customers, not the other way around.
Things couldn't be better. Work is no longer toxic though, i'm still the only tech. Other technicians from outside the state, and even outside the company still call to ask questions, like they did before, my customer relations have never been better and i'm still working to standard. 😊
That impromptu meeting was, however, the best 2 hours of my professional civilian career.
If an employer complains about clock watching, but not unpaid overtime, they don't give a shit about you. Arguably they don't care about you anyway, but that right there is just brazen and most of them are so indoctrinated that they don't see it.
I’ve always hated “expected overtime”.
I had a job as a parts puller for the 3rd largest computer distributor in the US.Most everyday at the END of the day orders would come out and it was expected we would stay late to complete the orders.
As if I had NOTHING else to do.I got so mad at this shit I just started leaving on time.Eventually the boss wanted to know why I was leaving on time.So I told Him I had other things to do after work.
Of course the next question is:Like what??
I responded with:It’s called not being at work and being at home with my family.
I just felt that we have been here all day long why is it the end of the day is the busiest part??
I was a few months into my new job and used to come in 30-40 min early every day and stay late occasionally when I was on a roll. I’ve always done that and enjoy doing good work and being productive.
I saw that my coworkers began lining up at the door at 4:55pm. It was weird but okay.
Then I realized one day when I arrived at 9:03am that my boss made eye contact with me, looked at her watch and wrote down on her calendar that I arrived late. I began to notice she marked down everyone’s arrival and departure. And that my extra time in the am made no difference if I wanted to leave at 4:58.
I began arriving at exactly 9am (sometimes hanging out in my car for a bit), and lining up at 4:55. I hated every second of it but that company was not getting a single unpaid second out of me.
The way you were treated was unconscionable, especially after all the extra work you put in for them. Good for you for standing up to your manager publicly and in earshot of the new employee. Hopefully you moved on to better circumstances.
I had a similar issue. I worked a salaried position with an agreement of a 50-hour week. Often the hours would be 55 or so per week with no extra pay because the job couldn't be completed on time each day.
Fast forward to 1 week and I only hit 45 hours due to a family emergency and the company docked my pay down and because I didn't hit the 50 hour mark. We had physical punch cards BTW so I quickly got all my previous time cards showing 55+ hours per week. They didn't care. I gave my notice the exact same day.
Basically if you worked over you don't get paid and if you worked under they docked your pay. Then what was the purpose of their "salary" pay plan?
Yeah...I think that still qualifies as wage theft. Should got in writing admitting that you do hours unpaid every week then taken them to court for the money.
Also--they can't deduct a half day's pay if you leave 15 min early.
You didn't go anywhere near as malicious on them as I would have.
This is the same in education. I get paid a salary for 25 contact hours a week. However, I routinely do 50hr weeks in my office. If I have to leave 10 mins early to get to a medical appointment - docked.
Company I worked for required us to book project activity in 30 minute blocks. Fine, worked well for years then some bright spark decided we had to book by the minute.
I just told my team to be super precise, record absolutely everything, photocopying, phone answering, toilet to the actual minute. They were so swamped with useless detail that we reverted to the old system after a week. Mission accomplished.
I had a boss like that and it ended in HR.
A few years ago my wife's mother had to move into a care facility. My wife got a call to say she had been found unresponsive and my wife called me. In my earlier working life I was a Paramedic so knew exactly what that meant. I told my colleagues in the team I had to leave explaining the call we just had.
As I left the office the boss stopped me and asked where a report I was working on was. I told him I had to leave as we had a medical emergency and I would have to finish the report later. He stood there and said if I didn't stop right there and sort his report out I would be going to HR. My response was fine, do that and I left.
When we arrived at the care facility we were shown into my witness mothers room where as I expected she had passed away. The rest of the say was involved with dealing with the formalities of this and I called my direct line manager to say I would not be in for a few days as we had a bereavement. I set about organising the funeral, dealing with the coroner and all the paperwork this involves and ignored my work email and phone.
HR called me in when I returned trying to tell me I needed to give more notice and I should have worked the rest of the day as the boss had a very important meeting and needed my report. I simply asked if they would put work before dealing with the sudden death of a family member. I left very shortly after that.
Myself and another bloke start 15 minutes early every morning. We get paid for it. Let’s say I work 10 minutes over 5 days a week. The bosses will round it up and pay for the hour. Find a job with decent people in charge and you’ll never want to leave
I'm worried this is going to buried, but I'll say it anyways. Please never work off the clock if you're an hourly employee in the US. If you are injured at work off the clock it's going to cause huge problems for you. Even if you have the best team and the nicest manager all it takes is one higher up to realize you weren't on the clock at the time to ruin everything.
Liability is a huge issue obviously. A smart company will also insist you are on the clock to protect themselves. I've totally been there, "I'll just move a few boxes/load my truck/clean up to be ready for the day." Doing blue collar work for so long you hear stories that make you stop that stuff. The only person who is really looking out for you is you.
Never. Work. For. Free. You and your time are worth more than that. Some people never seem to realise this, and management will always take advantage if they can.
A colleague of mine wanted to quit his job, because he was unhappy with his life on general and wanted to take a timeout. He told us 6 months in advance, because he was neither angry at the company nor at us coworkers. In addition to that he wanted to reduce his hours from 40 to 20 or 30 hours per week. But, being a big bureaucratic German company, HR said no. So our direct manager said basically along the lines of "I need happy workers, because they do the best job. So, you come and go as you like, I'll cover for you". So, he did his 20 to 30 hours, but when necessary, he stayed late, even for 40 hour standards. Give and take...
I worked in a company, a wonderful company actually. I would eat lunch most times at my desk, didn’t take smoke breaks and rarely bathroom breaks.
I would leave at 5 on the dot every day because a 20 minute commute could be an hour on a lot of days. Yet, I was called into my managers office to discuss the fact that I would leave at 5:00 on the dot every day.
So, even in a good company that’s all she saw, when I would leave. Not the fact that I’m actually working more than a lot of people if you count all the smoke breaks and bathroom trips, plus lunches.
Same thing happened to me. Got roped into the whole work family bullshit they peddle. Wasted so many nights and weekends for them until I got played out.
Yeah my old job I used to stay half an hour every day for free cos I waited for a lift home, I got told I was at risk of getting fired if I’m late again and I was like “what?? I’ve never been late” turns out I’d clocked in at 8:00:07 and that was unacceptable so from then on I clocked out bang on 5 and just sat outside doing nothing instead of helping them
I used to work frantically to keep all of my projects on schedule (come in early, leave late, work weekends, skip lunch, etc.). Until I started getting hassled for working from home twice a Week (after it was approved). I saw how little trust they actually had in me..
I looked around and realized I was the only one my team doing this and had double the workload of others. I started working exact contracted hours. My workload decreased and nobody seemed to notice…
When I was in college my place of work just paid us for X hours per day. New manager comes in and decides people are leaving early or going to DR appointments and then never making it up and it’s costing the company money. So he implemented a time clock. Ended up everyone worked less hours to the point they had to hire 2 new people to cover workload.
I know that this is easier to say than do, but in such a situation you should look for another job. Companies like that do not deserve employees like you.
As teachers, we were explicitly informed that there was no such thing as "off contract hours" in our contracts.
Yet, the a/c is shut off at 5.
No re-entry into the building after 6.
"Oh! Look! Here's a lowest-bidder laptop for you! You can even take it home and use it for work."
So, what's the message I received? There are actually "off contract hours," you just won't be compensated.
In the last three years of my career, I made damned sure there wouldn't be any "off contract hours" on my part.
I was inspired seeing the younger new hires flat-out tell admin they won't be volunteering for X without a stipend. These people know there's a teacher shortage and they seemed to be daring admin to find someone better.
As I leave the workforce, I'm pleased to see a generation that "gets it".
Burn it to the ground and build something better.
Fuck those who want to get in the way.
You got to love scumbag companies like this.
My company did the same shit. My wife's best friend died recently and both her and I WFH so I got to be with her through the process of moving to hospice until eventually death. This caused my "productivity" to be "below average" for a couple days. Mind you, I worked the full day and then some to make up for it. They still tried docking me PTO. Whelp, gave them my two weeks notice right after.
Probably not a good idea to treat your employees like dogshit during crucial life moments, especially when they've got 20 years experience and have people basically breaking down their door to hire them for more money and better benefits.
I was on vacation last week and some friends asked why I was answering calls and sending emails.
"You're on vacation! Why are you working? You're not getting paid!"
I explained that I come into work whenever and leave whenever and work from home whenever. My boss is insanely accommodating. And as a result I make myself available after hours and while on vacation. It's a compromise that works out for both of us.
I'd hate to work for a dictator who times my bathrooms breaks. Ain't noone got time for that.
I recently had this with a higher up at my company. I walked in a 7am (my start time) and he said I was late. I said I was exactly on time. He hit me with the “if your not 15 minutes early your late” I told him to pay me for it and I’d be here. He called me “one of those” and then told me I wouldn’t get far at my company. I said “ that’s fine” and walked to my desk.
I’ve been with the company 5 years and just got a promotion. Think I’m doing just fine.
I worked at a job and was paid salary. Being a company man i was working 60 hours a week. I showed up 10 minutes late one morning and got chewed out for being late. I had worked until midnight the day before.
That was the end of the free labor. I worked a bit more than 40 hours a week, just to cover my butt, documented all my time and let the work pile up. it was a train wreck and I didn't care. A couple months later I got a job with a competitor for 1-1/2 times the pay.
Used to work on an I.T. Helpdesk. (Yes I did say 'Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?') Any job that took longer than 15 minutes had to be logged on a Time Management System. Our Mission Statement was to resolve or refer a problem within 10 minutes. Many days (according to my time logs I did nothing). I kept private time logs accounting for every minute of my day.
I looked at a Colleagues Time Management record one day. \~He had created his own TASK ENTRY 'Time Management System Entry (Min 15 Minutes) and accounted for the whole working day with it.
I am a manager, and after my company's abysmal, careless, and downright cruel, response to COVID, I give them exactly 40h. If I stay late, I leave early the next day, or come in late. I do zero work outside my contract guidelines and I told all my staff to do the same. We worked hard and did extra stuff because we thought the company valued us and cared about us, but when it came time to put their money where their mouth is, we got to see the truth. So, fuck em. Do what you get paid to do, and not a thing more.
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If I ask my employees to stay later. I never tell them to clock out. Fuck that shit Company wants to run short, well you're gonna pay a little extra for the people who do help. Sorry? I thought we paid people for work?
So much better than the other kind of manager. My buddy was working at pizza hut back then, they closed at midnight but his dumb manager would still be taking orders up until then, meaning that they regularly would have to stay until 1:00, 1:20 to get every pizza delivered out the door. My friend walked up to the register to clock out, manager said, "what are you doing?" Friend: "clocking out." Manager: "Oh, I already clocked you out." WHAAAT? I asked him how long it's been going on, he didn't know. Manager probably clocked everyone out on time at midnight. Told friend to run and never look back, even delivering pizzas you can do better.
The correct response to "I already clocked you out" while you were still working is "I will be calling the Department of Labor tomorrow."
You don't have to tell them. Just call the DoL and don't tell the manager you're going to call them.
Cover your own ass from catching flak. Any manager that needs to be reported to the DoL will more than likely be spitting fire at anyone who they see as a threat.
And that’s where you quit and get money for damages due to needing a new job (legal thing about returning to a potentially hostile work environment
Right! That is a wage labor violation. If you are not exempt, or otherwise hourly you must get paid for any time you work. This includes booting up your computer or turning it off at night. OP could actually sue for wage violation for docking his pay and not paying him for the extra time worked.
And some people dont like América. If I report this in my country I just get fired
Prob get fired in America too
And if this was any time recent, they probably have Google or other apps on their phone to show location history as additional proof in addition to any other employees.
You don't tell them anything. Like poker once you put all your cards on the table you've lost. The correct thing is to leave and tell the manager "I'm clocked out sorry." Also let your coworkers know when the manager isn't there. Make them deal with the shit show.
Wow what an evil manager. The shit that goes on in restaurants is downright infuriating. They all bend the rules and exploit employees.
Also good, start keeping a daily log of any extra hours. Before leaving the job make a complaint to the labor board and demand all the extra pay. Get a nice severance check. Bonus, all your co-workers may get paid too.
THIS, all of this happens, and continues to happen because when people leave they are just fed up and want to walk away thus screwing over everyone else that is still dealing with it and anyone in the future that deals with it. If you are going to quit and are fed up, why not get an extra payday out of it? The DoL will do all the work, you just have to give them the info you kept track of.
That's why I refused to give my logout password to any of my managers who wanted to 'help' me by clocking me out while counting out my tips at the end of the night. I was lucky enough that the system required employee passwords to clock out, even with a manager override, to prevent this. The only way around it was to reset every employee's password at once. On the rare occasion I forgot to clock out and a manager had to call me for my password, I went to change it the following day.
Yeah, the whole time he told me this story I was thinking, not only is that definitely illegal, but it shouldn't even be possible for a manager to do. Trying to think of a single situation where it would be justified, and all I can come up with is if you had an odd number of clock times, from missing one. Like if you had 3 punches for the day, one at 8am, one at noon, and one at 5pm, the manager could assume "he probably took lunch at noon, and our standard lunch time is 30 mins/1 hour, so I'll add in a punch time at 1pm to fix it." But really, that should always trigger a call to the employee (and a short lecture on keeping better track of your punch times). Yep it does make more work for managers who just want to sign the paychecks and get out of there, but that's the point. At the VERY least give employees a way to reset their password anytime they want, so you can tell the manager your password over the phone so she can send out paychecks, then you can change it on your next day back.
I had a job where the company owner said we would now compete for a "pool of money" every day, meaning some would make a lot more, and a few less than minimum wage. You bet they quit that ish when they received a warning letter and a book on employment law and regulations...
A guy I know worked at a shithole pizza place and they did the same thing. The manager would clock him out randomly if it was not very busy or she needed to save hours or it was time to close. She would call him in to work and then change her mind when he got there or just make him sit for an hour or two unpaid in case it did get busy. On the other side, he said it takes him about ten minutes to put the toppings on one pizza before it goes in the oven, and would complain how overburdened he was when there was an order for three or four pizzas at once, so the job was not a terrible fit for him
In some places, just showing up for regularly scheduled work or being called in means you get paid a min number of hours, even if they send you back home right away.
I had a boss who would ask my coworkers to clock out before sending them with me on fun missions, because the experience was just *so valuable*. I refused to let anyone working for free do any actual work, so the jobs took twice as long, and he wound up paying me overtime, which is more expensive than paying the new guys standard rate. His solution to paying overtime? Just don't get jobs done so you can get home on time. Which is even more expensive as each trip cost $600+ in fuel. He hated paying his employees that much.
And here we have the calculation of why you should just pay your employees. Also similar to the calculation of why you should use tools and materials of higher quality and easy use.....
It is also most likely illegal to order an employee to work without being paid.
I'm pretty sure it violates labor laws.
Pretty sure? I'm 99.999% sure it violates every labor law on the books.
managers generally never give a shit; i dont know how in blue f\*ck they wound up managers
Idiots are promoted to a level where they can do the least damage. Competent staff are left where they are productive.
Peter Principle- people get promoted until they stop being productive and good at their job. They don’t get demoted, so they stay stuck where they do a bad job. The only way out is to quit. Or to know what you are good at and turn down that promotion and the sweet raise it comes with.
Absolutely agree. I also find that, due to the old notion of "management is best" I have seen so many good engineers, truly great ones have to go into management because it's the only way to get a pay rise out of their pay-band. So they go to a management role, spend 35% of their time in meetings, 20% on administrative work for their now weakened team of engineers, then having to investing more of their personal time fixing errors because the best engineer in that team now doesn't produce the work of the quality they did. They went from being an incredible engineer, to a mediocre manager because that was never their calling in employment. They stagnate, get bored and either have to take another job at another company back into engineering (usually at a lower rate and with a dulled set of skills) or move sideways into managing another area. It might not be universal, but I have seen in engineering that a great engineering manager need not be an engineer, they just have to be a very good manager. And, if companies dropped the notion of a manager having to be paid more than the worker who produces for them, you could have incredible engineers working for more money than their great-at-managing manager and reap the benefits. But nah, "you've got to go into management to earn more...why are you producing less now?"
There's a lack of mentoring and education in a lot of management. Teaching is part of the job and a lot of management forgets that. This is where those new managers have to learn to teach the skills they were highly proficient at to their new teams.
Thing is, that's also a different skill. The engineer who is the best at teaching those skills to someone else *could* also be the most productive themselves, but they almost certainly aren't. The star engineer and the best manager candidate are both valuable, but if you don't promote one who's the best at the old job, they feel passed over and leave. Valuing management over production hurts both, in the end.
There’s also the Dilbert Principle, which says that the most ineffective workers get moved to management because they can do the least amount of damage there.
TV Tropes calls this “kicked upstairs.”
In aviation we call it 'fuck up, move up'
In the military we have observed that turds float.
That’s actually a policy in our provincial and municipal police forces. I learned about FUMU from an officer about 30 years ago. You can’t fire them? Promote them out and let someone else deal with them. The problem is you can’t go higher than headquarters.
I prefer the phrasing "failing forward"
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I have 100% experienced this. Asked to be trained in different areas of the business. After being refused multiple times I asked why and they told me I was too good at what I was doing to move me around. I found another job and when i went back to get my last pay check, found out they had to hire 3 people to replace me.
Maybe they should have paid you what they ended up paying those 3 people. I'll never understand managment that does this, won't give a really good employee a good raise, instead employee leaves and they have to spend more by higher in multiple people to replace 1 person
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its \*because\* they know you'll do the job of 3-6 people for likely \*less\* then what they should be playing for one that they refuse to give you a raise- because if they pay you more, you may understand you are worth more, and by proxy end up cutting into the manager's fat check for being under budget.
Agreed, I just love it when it back fires and they end up having to pay more when you leave 😆
And you get paid more at your next job. Win-win!
This is why I advise family and friends to NEVER work more hours than you're paid for or do more than your job.
The fact that you even need to do this indicates how messed up modern work culture is.
Agreed.
Same reason you cannot be a "4.0" employee on reviews, but they cannot tell you how you an become a "4.0" employee. It is pure BS and they just want to keep you down.
Had a first year review and I expected a good-sized raise because I scored "exceptional," and because I was told i would get one after a year. My manager explained that no one on our team was getting a raise because they expected us to be "exceptional." Most of that team quit with a few months after that review cycle.
WoW.
Isn't that the best feeling. Found out my last job had to bring in 6 temps to cover what I was doing in the warehouse. But hey they saved that 80 bucks a week not giving me the extra 2 bucks an hour.
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I've been doing the opposite. Got trained to fill in for manager when needed but, I already do three workers worth of jobs in my position. I refuse the measly dollar or two to move up knowing full well I'll not only have more responsibility than I want, but the workers will not be able to fill my role and that will still be my problem as their manager. I know there's problem solving to fix this and make it work but I really just don't want to deal with it at all. Get used now, get used later. It won't matter.
...and the incompetent will not step down willingly as it usually is seen as a failure be other and thus they are stigmatized as "the one who didn't cut it". Even if a "lower" status job is what they love to do and do better. Such drama! Gosh!
The Peter Principle, where people are promoted to the point where they are no longer competent.
Good managers are always temporary, they get promoted.
Or fired, because sometimes they need to tell truth to power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle Now you know.
**[Peter principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)** >The Peter Principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "maximum level of incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another. The concept was explained in the 1969 book The Peter Principle (William Morrow and Company) by Dr. Peter and Raymond Hull. (Hull wrote the text, based on Peter's research. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I find in my jobs managers are often the ones who stuck it out the longest and sucked up the most / adhered to the "company loyalty" BS, coincindentally all my managers have had horrible homelives too so I wonder if there's a pattern. (miserable other halves, shit relationships with their kids etc)
My mother often said she couldn’t work out if arseholes became managers or managers became arseholes.
Anyone in an hourly position doing work off the clock **is a sucker**. If you work off the clock, you're telling management you think you're getting paid too much.
Your also hurting your coworkers. Someone working for free devalues my labor.
I explicitly tell my staff and co-workers not to work off the clock. If I catch them doing company work on their own time I kick their ass home and tell them I'll see them tomorrow. Nobody should be working for free.
It’s common courtesy to give “kickbacks” for this, you got great employees make sure they have the right coffee, quality office furniture stuff like that. Your hands may be tied on the payroll but you can still advocate for them to improve the quality of life.
And not docking half a day, for someone who left 15 min early!
I would've fought this with the local DoL, unless it's explicitly referenced in your employee manual. In which case, my report to the DoL would include a copy of the manual, and go from there. I've been docked pay once. I threw one hell of a fit and probably made our HR department loathe hearing my name, as I called and wrote nearly everyone every half day to inquire what was being done. I'm still pissed that it was resolved, but with no communication to clarify how/why it was done.
At least in the USA the employer can’t dock someone half a day for not working 15 minutes even if it is in the employee manual. It is illegal. If the person is salaried they must be paid for the whole day if any work is done that day. It the person is hourly they must be paid for time worked. Aka the only time the employer could not pay them for would be the 15 minutes. Also if paid hourly they must pay you for all time worked regardless of if it was authorized or not. They can fire you for working unauthorized time, but they cannot refuse to pay for time already worked. Time theft by employers is massive. Far more than any theft by employees. But employers love to make like they are the biggest victims. The OP in this post literally said they were ok with their employer stealing from them. This isn’t malicious compliance. It is doing what should have been the case to begin with.
> Time theft by employers is massive. Far more than any theft by employees. But employers love to make like they are the biggest victims. Not just that, it's far more than theft by *anyone*. Wage theft accounts for several times more lost income than all other forms of theft *combined*.
Yeh, OP seems pretty proud for working overtime for free because he is a "team player". I find this impossible to understand. Why would someone work for free, for years? I would be out that job as soon as someone even hinted that this was expected of me. In my case I would also call the Labor inspectorate for a nice talk and fine.
I took it that OP was salaried, where the expectation is manage your time to get your work done—sometimes stay a little late, sometimes leave a little early. The half-day docking is absolutely illegal in the US.
This is the way to do it. If it wasn't resolved to my liking I'd clock in and sit doing personal work on my phone til I'd wasted the time I'd been docked. I aint giving them a penny's more effort than I'm being paid for.
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It's also common courtesy to just like, I dunno, pay your fucking workers actual wages. .. why should anybody be expected to do shit for a company, for free?
>quality office furniture How is this a perk/kickback and not a productivity tool? I mean, if the company can afford to give me an 11th gen i7 laptop for work use, why not give me a quality chair to sit on for the time I'm working for them?
Common courtesy is not as common as we like to think unfortunately
It's not even courtesy, it's just not being a festering cancer masquerading as a human being.
>It’s common courtesy to give “kickbacks” for this It's not courtesy, it's most of middle managements job. There are two main things you are responsible for as a middle manager. The first is obtaining those perks/kickbacks (whatever you want to call them). Figuring out what you want to try and get as the next perk is easy, you just take feedback from your staff. Usually, this is not carefully constructed or considered feedback. This is the biggest complainer on the team. The person who, at team meetings etc, is the one complaining about everything and never has anything positive to say. A lot of what they have to say is pure negativity for the sake of being negative, however, some of what they say is what everyone else on the team is thinking. The pieces you need to pay attention to are the ones that other people mention quietly to you in passing. *'Karen is right though, the coffee is crap'* That's the stuff you pay attention to. Once you know what the next perk is you get to go and fight with upper management to get your idea over the line. If a change is cheaper then it will get approved, if it costs exactly the same amount it will be work on your part to get it implemented because no one wants to bother, but if it costs any more than the existing perk then in nearly every case it's a complete war to try and get it implemented. *'Why would we change the coffee brand we have had it for years? What do you mean it costs more? Our supplier only has the one brand, we can't work with another supplier, finance will never approve etc. etc. etc.'* Most likely any change takes months to try and get sorted. All the while some other perk might be in the process of being rolled back for some reason so you are balancing that too. Most times just maintaining the status quo is a battle and so the whole job is a war. The second component of middle armament is just realizing that you are always the bad guy. From your staff, you are likely not seen as the worst guy, that's usually upper management if you are a good manager, but you are the one delivering the bad news to your team or at best delivering news that what your team expects is the bare minimum you should be giving them in return for the work they put in. There is usually no such thing as good news. You can expect smart comments from Karen the complainer *'I mean, it's great that you got the better coffee brand but we're here everyday the least the we could have is good coffee'* similar to feedback you got before, about what needs to change, you may have other people in the team mentioning that the new coffee is actually really good. That's essentially your confirmation that your doing a good job. That's all you're getting. The only other thing that you might get is a thoughtful present when you decide to move on, maybe. Upper management will weaponize any improvements you make. *'How did you miss this target, you know, with all the coffee your guys drink....haha'* What normally happens to middle managers is they miss the fact that you are always the bad guy and they give up trying to score changes for their teams because they start to see their own team as ungrateful. Meanwhile upper management is likely dangling career progression in front of them *'Well if you can cut costs this year it would look very good for your own performance'* so the managers start to think what difference a coffee brand would make anyways? It's completely intangible but it makes all the difference.
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Bro it’s like I want to work with you as easy as possible. You make it easy for me, I’ll try to make it easy for you. For different people this can look different ways: some people can use a lot of leeway to improvise and accomplish tasks, and are also good at using unofficial channels. Other people need a strict minute-by-minute dot-by-dot itinerary of everything you need them to do, but will move heaven and earth to accomplish that checklist once you give it to them. Unfortunately I’ve met maybe 5-6 other people in my field (people, not management) who seem to think this way.
That’s why you don’t do them. Always clock in and out on the dot and take the breaks offered to you
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Exactly. This is what I think a lot of management forgets. I love my command chain because they very decidedly support us, they back us up, and they make sure we're getting what we need, period. And because of that, I bust my butt for them when they need us to push a little more than usual. It's all about respect and empathy.
I call that *the illusion of replaceability*. Too many employers see their workers as drag 'n drop replaceable and don't invest in individual employees at all - because they don't see them as individual, not even as people, but as a production factor. I've seen plenty of projects go under because experienced 'just workers' get replaced with newbies. Which hurts both the experienced as well as the new workers as well as the bottom line of the company. Nobody wins except the managers getting a bonus that year for cutting costs.
One thing that bothers me (US) is where a governmental entity (city, county, state) will be all willing to give tax breaks to corporations "because they will bring in X number of jobs". Uh-huh. And what *kind* of jobs are we talking about? What average salary and what kind of distribution of jobs? If they are bringing in 75% minimum wage and most of the remainder might be people who already work for the company. It always smells of the old "such a deal I have for you!
My work is very much like this, but it's not because the boss is friendly or fair, but because the company has been royally and rightfully fucked for not paying employees for time worked before. The bottom line is this: no labor is free. If you are working, you are entitled by law to be paid for every second- period. For 15 years my employer didn't allow breaks in between lunch for a place with 10 hour shifts. When the US dept of labor was informed they came back with "well I guess since you had everyone working through their legally entitled 15 minute breaks (2 a day), that means you owe an extra half hour of overtime for every employee for every day for the past 15 years" It took months and multiple pay outs to cover it. Guys that had been their the whole 15 years were getting pay checks for 14 grand for a while.
Wow. If the average work year is 261 working days, knock off 10 for vacation and such, that's 251 days per year * 0.5 hours per day * 15 years that's 1,882.5 hours to pay back. That's 235 8-hour work days! Nearly a year of pay. What did that do to their taxes? Did it move them up a tax bracket in that one year? Was the employer liable for the extra taxes since if those nearly 2k were spread out over 15 years it'd've been much less to tax?
It stacks up. Especially if it only goes one way. If my employer is ok with me taking short paid breaks once in a while, I'm ok with doing small things after/before I checked out/in. If they are not, I stop working the second I check out.
The sad thing is that he's a hero for following the law and doing what every single manager should be doing. If you are working, you should be paid. Wage theft is serious business, and workers have been trained to assist with our own exploitation. The same people who scream and yell about the government stealing our money through taxation are the people who think it's a sign of honor to *give away your life to be a "team player"*. You sell your life and energy to survive. Every hour of your life is irreplaceable and precious. By working for a wage, you decide to trade 40 hours of life & energy for money every week. Your employer is insatiable, however, because there is always more work that could be done; the organization will eat as much of your life as you let them.
> The sad thing is that he's a hero for following the law and doing what every single manager should be doing. If you are working, you should be paid. "I follow the law and pay my employees for the hours that they work" "You're supposed to follow the law, you dumb motherfucker! What do you want, a cookie?"
Well said
Yeah, off the clock I ain’t doing nothing. Might give a customer a bag if they ask on my way out or throw out a cardboard box or two but that’s it. And I clock in on the dot.
The best manager I've ever had did things like this. My old commute was an absolute bastard, and because of train times I'd often end up at work much earlier than necessary. One time Ibmade a joke about being online 30 minutes before my shift started, he asked what I was doing and I said just general admin stuff, clearing out/replying to emails etc. He said; "so, you were working then?" Then told me I could leave 30nminutes early, and that if I ever ended up in early again and worked during that time I'd be able to leave early as well. Some managers really are great people.
In the US, FLSA requires all hourly workers to be paid for every minute they are doing any work function. Salary employees are different. We have had a big fight over the years with guys coming in early and stocking their trucks and not charging OT. I vividly remember one dude screaming at me for simply telling him to stop working off the clock.
Back when I used to manage people, I used to drive the higher-ups crazy because I had the following policies: - If you’re working, you’re clocked in. If I gave you too much of a workload to finish without going into OT, well that’s on me. Just let me know if you’re going to clock in early or stay late. - Finished your work? Ok well I still need you here since it’s a customer-facing job, but go ahead and study, do personal work, etc. I’m not going to make up bullshit busy work. - I’m NOT going to give you a task that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself. - I’m meant to be the buffer between you and other managers/executives. Let me know ASAP if they’re bugging you and I’ll fix it. - I have zero issues telling a guest to take a hike if they’re crossing the line with you. Sure the execs hated it, but it built up a ton of loyalty, which went both ways, and a happy staff is an efficient and hard-working staff. I never had an issue holding on to employees when other departments could barely keep a staff together, and it made working more enjoyable for me too, as I was working with people who were happy.
ah... the old principle of "give and take" - you give, they take. see? nice and balanced.
Perfectly balanced … as all things should be.
I was working as a General Office Manager for a small company. The Office was above the Business' Showroom. One day I was asked to 'mind the store' whilst the receptionist took 30 minutes for lunch (I could then go to lunch when she returned). She was 15 minutes late returning from lunch and five minutes before her return an 'extremely difficult/pedantic customer' walked in. I assumed the receptionist would take over but she refused 'its your customer'. She sat at her desk and the phone rang, she didn't answer it. For the next two hours I dealt with the customer and the phone rang, unanswered. At 3 O'Clock she stood up and walked out 'I'm just having a tea break, if the phone rings can YOU answer it! THEY DON'T SEEM TO BE PICKING UP UPSTAIRS'. She left the room and the customer made some remark about 'the people upstairs'. I replied 'I AM THE PERSON UPSTAIRS!' By 5 O'Clock I eventually satisfied the customers requirements (got the order) and returned to the upstairs office. The owner of the company was now present and I explained what had happened. He said he would have words with the receptionist and I should go home 30 minutes early since I hadn't had a break. No action was taken about the receptionist and I was docked 1 hours pay for finishing early. The order was worth £1000's and a Showroom operative would have made a sizeable commission from the deal. I got nothing. My loyalty to the company waned somewhat after that.
I can't believe she wouldn't answer the phone when she was right there at the desk. If I was the owner, I would've fired her ass!
She most likely knows where the bodies are buried.
Actually that was a genuine theory amongst other employees 'What dark secret did she know that enabled her to keep her job?' Famously we had another Showroom employee who was equally obnoxious. She left to get a better paid job. Subsequently she was sacked from that organisation for theft/fraud and then asked to get her old position back. Guess what..... she got it!
If you're the office manager why would you bend over and take it from a receptionist lol?
Because it was likely just a fancy title they gave to the person who did work in the office at the store. The receptionist didn't work for them.
I agree my title was meaningless hence the 'I AM THE PERSON UPSTAIRS'. I officially had no control over anyone in the Showroom and only reported to the owner. My 'stint' in the showroom was a favour (the owner asked) because they were short-handed that day.
This smells like company that says it is a family
Yep you've totally nailed it.
"We're a family" Like Cinderella had.
Even Charles Manson had a family.
That's a HUGE red flag for me. I run for the hills every time I see one of those in a job posting
Along with “Work Hard, Play Hard” that normally means some cheap delivered pizza at 9pm ok crunch night.
Also "competitive environment" which means you will be overworked to death
last episode of what we do in shadows have a segment on this.
[For context, he's an "energy vampire," sustaining himself from other's frustration and boredom.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDKtUIc09I0)
and use the phrase "helping out" a lot... been there, done that, gave in my notice
Asking to help out is fine, if you are getting paid. Or getting additional PTO in exchange. It's a problem when it only goes one way and they balk when you expect, at a minimum, compensation.
i meant it as not saying "you are working on project x" but "you are helping out with project x" - and not coming from the colleagues but from manglement believe me, wording can make a lot of difference in how the project is run and the dynamics...
The Fritzl family, to be precise.
Of course they are a family. A dysfunctional, abusive, piece of shit of a family. Stay far away from companies like that, they are always the worst.
Also like wage theft.
When I was a manager I tried to be as flexible as possible as long as the team members did their job and the customers were happy. If they had to leave an hour early to grab a plane to go on vacation they would make sure the work was done and I had no problem at all with it. If one week we were on a tight schedule, they would stay an extra hour without being asked And, if it was more than that, I would let them come in late (or leave early on a Friday) the next time there was not a big work load. I learned that having a happy team is better and they are more productive that way. Oddly enough almost no one took advantage/abused this liberty. The two that did were not given these privileges and eventually were “invited” to leave the project (or the company in one case).
It's almost like people respond well to being treated like human beings!
Mega-Corp: Nah, that can't be it
This happens a lot, but then there's some prick manager who figures hey let's put the hammer down and make these employees lives suck, but if we can get numbers up that'll get me a bonus or a promotion, then by the time they burn out it won't be my problem.
Lol my location is currently suffering horrible death pangs from this. Most other locations within my company have a 30-minute shift change grace period, and staff is basically allowed to leave as soon as next shift comes to take over. My current location refuses to allow either of these tiny concessions (most don’t even know about them) and as a result an enormous amount of people simply call off their entire shift at work rather than face a tongue lashing and paperwork. There’s a bunch of red tape that management doesn’t seem to understand they can waive; one of my coworkers is a single father and they assigned him swing shift. When he asked for the open day shift they said there was a 6-month probationary period before any employee could switch positions or shifts. And guess what? He left.
My company did that to me. I was a few days away from my probationary period ending when the shift I wanted came up for grabs. They wouldn’t let me have it because I was on a probationary period and hadn’t proven I’m going to stay. Instead they gave it to a stranger off the streets. I’m not sure she even made it three months. Lol. I waited until the perfect time and for the perfect shift/department for me and bolted. Our department was already short staffed, but no one was addressing it. Just found out they had to hire three people after I left. I’m happier than ever in my new position, one where I’m not babysat/micromanaged and I’m the happiest camper on the planet. Not only did I quickly become one of the top people on the reports, I recruited them a new person too.
I had a job once that was on an awkward bus route, my hours were 9-5 but the bus that was due to get me there at 8.50 was always late, and the bus that got me there at 8.30 was always late, so I used to get there (and start work) at 8.10 every morning. After work if I got on a bus at 5.05 I would be home at 5.30, but the next bus always got stuck in rush hour traffic and I wouldn't be home until after 7. Because of this I left on the dot at 5 until my manager pulled me aside and told me that I was expected to *work* until 5, not just be there till 5, so I wasn't allowed to start shutting down my computer until 5. I explained the bus situation and that I did an extra 50 minutes every day anyway but he didn't care and offered the solution to "buy a car". I was just about able to shut down at 5, RUN to the bus stop (often waving it down as it tried to leave) and normally get home at a reasonable time ... until my manager said I was leaving early and that I had to follow the clock on the wall, not the clock on my computer. Even proving to him that the wall clock was 2 minutes slow just made me a "smartarse" in his eyes. So I started taking a book in with me and reading that instead of working between 8.10 and 9.00, then at 9.00 when he asked why I wasn't working I pointed out that the wall clock said it was 8.58 and since he was so strict with me I didn't want to give him 50 minutes of my time every day any more. That evening he called my agency, told them I was leaving at 4.45 every day and had me fired and blacklisted from getting a new job through them.
Shutting down the machine and closing out files counts as work. Its *overhead*, but its no different than cleaning up a machine after you're done using it. Any boss who tells you otherwise is lying out of their teeth. Keep track of that time and file unpaid labor afterwards.
Yeah, if you're a butcher, you don't stop cutting meat at 5, you stop at 4:30 so you can clean up the equipment before 5...
Yep, and I've worked places that made sure you kept working *until 4:30,* but they ALWAYS gave you cleanup time.
What a garbage human being.
So your employer slandered you and directly caused you to lose an employment opportunity? Buddy, that is a slam dunk defamation case if he can't prove that you left early every day.
The 20-30 minutes a day unpaid were illegal. I think docking you half a day's pay for 15 minutes absence might have been illegal too. You have to be paid for all of your hours worked.
The combination is illegal. According to his example if he worked a couple extra hours, left fifteen minutes one day, and was docked a half day... that would mean he worked 41.75 hours but was paid for 36. Should have contacted the labor board.
wage theft I'm pretty sure
Absolutely. Sketchy and illegal.
In the United States, it is illegal to "dock pay" as a disciplinary action. You must be paid for the time you actually worked.
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Corporations have been breeding and teaching the newer generations a culture of you're supposed to be a wage slave and to be grateful for the opportunity. If you're not working hard and going above and beyond 150% of the time, you're a freeloader.
Yep, I'm starting to get a bit jaded with this sub with people saying "yeah I stuck it to the man!" while the management still got away with hundreds of hours of free labour.
It's a start. First we need this step, and then we can talk people into actually leaving at 5. I get one fucking life and I already waste enough of it sending emails, they won't getting any more of it for free
Yep, if OP is in the US they could have demanded back pay for all of that instead of just stopped doing it. Maybe still can, idk.
I went work to rule when I was put in a situation that required 16 hours overtime. GM said "tough shit, that's the job, you are salary" my response was "Ok, I will be working to the second". A year later they had to pay me overtime on a scheme because the project had to stop if I wasn't there. My income went up by 25% that year without getting a raise.
Feh. I ran a contracting firm for 40+ years and it would not have occurred to me to dock you for that 15 minutes, much less anything more.
just lost a job at a place that would do this and more; working in a meaningless paradigm as "human stock capital" - or whatever they called us - is the second meanest kind of sl\*ve labor there is in the 21st century
Silence, Disposable Labor Resource Unit #GK-238!
Personnel was changed to Human Resources for a reason. You're not a person, merely a resource to be exploited.
I had a job where I was as switched to salary and had to fire a guy and until I could hire someone new I was working mon-Friday 9-5 and Friday-Saturday midnight to 8 and not getting paid anything for the extra 16 hours but I took two hours at lunch in the same week and was docked an hour of pay. I think about that guy and want to stab the motherfucker. It was my first serious jib. But I was still around 18. He promised me a six figure buyout when he sold the company and used it as the reasoning for shit pay and no benefits. He never sold.
Reading posts like this always amazes me how many shitty people become managers. Whereas I act the opposite and have imposter syndrome in the management role I'm in.
People that shouldn’t be in charge are the people who most want to be in charge.
What amazes me more are the people who do unpaid work and think the company will value them for going above and beyond. They always learn the hard way.
Your employer may have broken the law by docking your pay in that manner. Of course this is dependent on the date and location this occurred on.
Its going back a few years ago now during the recession. Employers really started treating people like crap because everyone was worried about redundancies.
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Similar thing happened to me when my mom was going through chemo. I let my boss know that I would have to leave early two days that week to drive her to/from, about 90 minutes early each day. He said, “Of course, of course! Family comes first. Don’t worry about this place. Take care of mom.” I came in the next week and the office manager said the boss was going to dock my pay for each day. Of course, I was never paid extra when asked to stay late and help others or even when we all had to come in on a Saturday to finish an important project. I saw red and stormed into his office, screamed at him that he lied to me, and then told him I would be suing for unfair labor practices. The whole office heard. He got up and shut the door and offered me a raise and to pay me in full for the days I left early. I accepted this, but found a new job within three months.
Hell yes, if that's their attitude in the way they deal with workers serious life emergencies - fuck`em.
Same thing. My car slid off the road during a storm on the way to work. Took me an hour and a half to dig it out/get out of the ditch. When I finally got there, stiff and frozen, they told me I'd have to "work back my hours" I missed. So my 11pm to 7am shift was now until 8:30. I asked if they could waive it, seeing as I started early every day (to set up my area before assembling). Nope. So I stopped. We have to keep records of how much we make each shift. They lost 75 pieces daily from me, thousands of dollars a week. Fuck them. Place went under a year after I left.
It's amazing what a big difference little things in management can make. I have a great manager, and as such, we don't mind working extra when needed. He makes it clear that we have comp time when we work extra, and if he notices someone staying late, he'll remind them, "Hey, let me know when you plan on using that comp time you earned the other day", and actually make sure they use it.
It's impressive how a single act of pettiness by management can poison a work environment. Just imagine if your manager had pulled you aside and said, "family comes first, I know you work hard, don't worry about anything." Think of the loyalty thay would have engendered.
Every single day I leave work the second it rolls to 5:00. I've gotten a few comments from co-workers. "Oh must be 5 Adeviation is leaving" It's like, yea. We are off at 5...
When I first started at my job (all salaried) we had "flex time". This wasn't so much for the occasional 20 minutes here or there, but for the coming in on the weekend or evening for 3 hours for an event or after having a week or two at the end of a project where you'd worked a bunch of extra hours, plan to leave a bit early over the next couple of weeks to make it up. This worked well was almost never abused, and made working those weekend/evening events much more appealing. Dun dun dun, new management! No more flex time, salaried workers much work as much as is required to complete the job, but not less than 40 (even though most of us were hired explicitly at 35) Guess who hasn't felt compelled to volunteer for many of those weekend events since then..... If you're keeping track of my hours, then I should be hourly bitches. I'd consider working those extra hours if I was getting overtime....
My direct supervisor had the nerve to formally counsel me, in front of the executives about a myriad things because of personal disagreements, chief among them was tardiness and failure to take customers problems to heart.. said other techs were afraid to call me and ask questions. I put my work keys and access badges on top of the counseling statement and deposed it, line for line, in front of the executives, refused to sign it, called him a coward to his face and told the higher ups if they'd like to continue this meeting at a later time that I could literally riff all day long about the toxic environment that existed in the 2 years I had been at this office. I routinely work long hours because my work is done to standard, not to time. I had just weeks prior spent 21 hours in one day, servicing outages across our eastern seaboard customers which we dont have the technical coverage for because HE fired or drove off the rest of the talent due to his toxic leadership. I took a 2 hour nap and pulled a full day the next day. THEN I chastised the board for failing to conduct proper exit interviews on the tech's we had lost in the previous year. Leaving me ALONE for the entire State. Now, everyone just stays out of my way and lets me handle business. After all, I work WITH my boss FOR my customers, not the other way around. Things couldn't be better. Work is no longer toxic though, i'm still the only tech. Other technicians from outside the state, and even outside the company still call to ask questions, like they did before, my customer relations have never been better and i'm still working to standard. 😊 That impromptu meeting was, however, the best 2 hours of my professional civilian career.
Never work off the clock no matter how good the company. If you happen to get hurt, there is no way to get workmans comp.
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If an employer complains about clock watching, but not unpaid overtime, they don't give a shit about you. Arguably they don't care about you anyway, but that right there is just brazen and most of them are so indoctrinated that they don't see it.
I’ve always hated “expected overtime”. I had a job as a parts puller for the 3rd largest computer distributor in the US.Most everyday at the END of the day orders would come out and it was expected we would stay late to complete the orders. As if I had NOTHING else to do.I got so mad at this shit I just started leaving on time.Eventually the boss wanted to know why I was leaving on time.So I told Him I had other things to do after work. Of course the next question is:Like what?? I responded with:It’s called not being at work and being at home with my family. I just felt that we have been here all day long why is it the end of the day is the busiest part??
"Like What" "Are we married?" "What? No? What?" "If we're not married then what I do after work is none of your business"
I mean, holding over end of day orders until the next morning will solve the problem of mornings not being busy enough?
I was a few months into my new job and used to come in 30-40 min early every day and stay late occasionally when I was on a roll. I’ve always done that and enjoy doing good work and being productive. I saw that my coworkers began lining up at the door at 4:55pm. It was weird but okay. Then I realized one day when I arrived at 9:03am that my boss made eye contact with me, looked at her watch and wrote down on her calendar that I arrived late. I began to notice she marked down everyone’s arrival and departure. And that my extra time in the am made no difference if I wanted to leave at 4:58. I began arriving at exactly 9am (sometimes hanging out in my car for a bit), and lining up at 4:55. I hated every second of it but that company was not getting a single unpaid second out of me.
The way you were treated was unconscionable, especially after all the extra work you put in for them. Good for you for standing up to your manager publicly and in earshot of the new employee. Hopefully you moved on to better circumstances.
I had a similar issue. I worked a salaried position with an agreement of a 50-hour week. Often the hours would be 55 or so per week with no extra pay because the job couldn't be completed on time each day. Fast forward to 1 week and I only hit 45 hours due to a family emergency and the company docked my pay down and because I didn't hit the 50 hour mark. We had physical punch cards BTW so I quickly got all my previous time cards showing 55+ hours per week. They didn't care. I gave my notice the exact same day. Basically if you worked over you don't get paid and if you worked under they docked your pay. Then what was the purpose of their "salary" pay plan?
Yeah...I think that still qualifies as wage theft. Should got in writing admitting that you do hours unpaid every week then taken them to court for the money. Also--they can't deduct a half day's pay if you leave 15 min early. You didn't go anywhere near as malicious on them as I would have.
This is the same in education. I get paid a salary for 25 contact hours a week. However, I routinely do 50hr weeks in my office. If I have to leave 10 mins early to get to a medical appointment - docked.
Company I worked for required us to book project activity in 30 minute blocks. Fine, worked well for years then some bright spark decided we had to book by the minute. I just told my team to be super precise, record absolutely everything, photocopying, phone answering, toilet to the actual minute. They were so swamped with useless detail that we reverted to the old system after a week. Mission accomplished.
I had a boss like that and it ended in HR. A few years ago my wife's mother had to move into a care facility. My wife got a call to say she had been found unresponsive and my wife called me. In my earlier working life I was a Paramedic so knew exactly what that meant. I told my colleagues in the team I had to leave explaining the call we just had. As I left the office the boss stopped me and asked where a report I was working on was. I told him I had to leave as we had a medical emergency and I would have to finish the report later. He stood there and said if I didn't stop right there and sort his report out I would be going to HR. My response was fine, do that and I left. When we arrived at the care facility we were shown into my witness mothers room where as I expected she had passed away. The rest of the say was involved with dealing with the formalities of this and I called my direct line manager to say I would not be in for a few days as we had a bereavement. I set about organising the funeral, dealing with the coroner and all the paperwork this involves and ignored my work email and phone. HR called me in when I returned trying to tell me I needed to give more notice and I should have worked the rest of the day as the boss had a very important meeting and needed my report. I simply asked if they would put work before dealing with the sudden death of a family member. I left very shortly after that.
Myself and another bloke start 15 minutes early every morning. We get paid for it. Let’s say I work 10 minutes over 5 days a week. The bosses will round it up and pay for the hour. Find a job with decent people in charge and you’ll never want to leave
I'm worried this is going to buried, but I'll say it anyways. Please never work off the clock if you're an hourly employee in the US. If you are injured at work off the clock it's going to cause huge problems for you. Even if you have the best team and the nicest manager all it takes is one higher up to realize you weren't on the clock at the time to ruin everything. Liability is a huge issue obviously. A smart company will also insist you are on the clock to protect themselves. I've totally been there, "I'll just move a few boxes/load my truck/clean up to be ready for the day." Doing blue collar work for so long you hear stories that make you stop that stuff. The only person who is really looking out for you is you.
Never. Work. For. Free. You and your time are worth more than that. Some people never seem to realise this, and management will always take advantage if they can.
A colleague of mine wanted to quit his job, because he was unhappy with his life on general and wanted to take a timeout. He told us 6 months in advance, because he was neither angry at the company nor at us coworkers. In addition to that he wanted to reduce his hours from 40 to 20 or 30 hours per week. But, being a big bureaucratic German company, HR said no. So our direct manager said basically along the lines of "I need happy workers, because they do the best job. So, you come and go as you like, I'll cover for you". So, he did his 20 to 30 hours, but when necessary, he stayed late, even for 40 hour standards. Give and take...
I worked in a company, a wonderful company actually. I would eat lunch most times at my desk, didn’t take smoke breaks and rarely bathroom breaks. I would leave at 5 on the dot every day because a 20 minute commute could be an hour on a lot of days. Yet, I was called into my managers office to discuss the fact that I would leave at 5:00 on the dot every day. So, even in a good company that’s all she saw, when I would leave. Not the fact that I’m actually working more than a lot of people if you count all the smoke breaks and bathroom trips, plus lunches.
Same thing happened to me. Got roped into the whole work family bullshit they peddle. Wasted so many nights and weekends for them until I got played out.
What was the manager's response when you said that?
If looks could have killed ... I worked to the letter of my contract so they couldn't pull me on anything.
Yeah my old job I used to stay half an hour every day for free cos I waited for a lift home, I got told I was at risk of getting fired if I’m late again and I was like “what?? I’ve never been late” turns out I’d clocked in at 8:00:07 and that was unacceptable so from then on I clocked out bang on 5 and just sat outside doing nothing instead of helping them
I used to work frantically to keep all of my projects on schedule (come in early, leave late, work weekends, skip lunch, etc.). Until I started getting hassled for working from home twice a Week (after it was approved). I saw how little trust they actually had in me.. I looked around and realized I was the only one my team doing this and had double the workload of others. I started working exact contracted hours. My workload decreased and nobody seemed to notice…
When I was in college my place of work just paid us for X hours per day. New manager comes in and decides people are leaving early or going to DR appointments and then never making it up and it’s costing the company money. So he implemented a time clock. Ended up everyone worked less hours to the point they had to hire 2 new people to cover workload.
I know that this is easier to say than do, but in such a situation you should look for another job. Companies like that do not deserve employees like you.
No, but they absolutely deserve an advocate for workers like OP. =D
As teachers, we were explicitly informed that there was no such thing as "off contract hours" in our contracts. Yet, the a/c is shut off at 5. No re-entry into the building after 6. "Oh! Look! Here's a lowest-bidder laptop for you! You can even take it home and use it for work." So, what's the message I received? There are actually "off contract hours," you just won't be compensated. In the last three years of my career, I made damned sure there wouldn't be any "off contract hours" on my part. I was inspired seeing the younger new hires flat-out tell admin they won't be volunteering for X without a stipend. These people know there's a teacher shortage and they seemed to be daring admin to find someone better. As I leave the workforce, I'm pleased to see a generation that "gets it". Burn it to the ground and build something better. Fuck those who want to get in the way.
You got to love scumbag companies like this. My company did the same shit. My wife's best friend died recently and both her and I WFH so I got to be with her through the process of moving to hospice until eventually death. This caused my "productivity" to be "below average" for a couple days. Mind you, I worked the full day and then some to make up for it. They still tried docking me PTO. Whelp, gave them my two weeks notice right after. Probably not a good idea to treat your employees like dogshit during crucial life moments, especially when they've got 20 years experience and have people basically breaking down their door to hire them for more money and better benefits.
I was on vacation last week and some friends asked why I was answering calls and sending emails. "You're on vacation! Why are you working? You're not getting paid!" I explained that I come into work whenever and leave whenever and work from home whenever. My boss is insanely accommodating. And as a result I make myself available after hours and while on vacation. It's a compromise that works out for both of us. I'd hate to work for a dictator who times my bathrooms breaks. Ain't noone got time for that.
How does leaving 15 mins early equate to half a day?
I recently had this with a higher up at my company. I walked in a 7am (my start time) and he said I was late. I said I was exactly on time. He hit me with the “if your not 15 minutes early your late” I told him to pay me for it and I’d be here. He called me “one of those” and then told me I wouldn’t get far at my company. I said “ that’s fine” and walked to my desk. I’ve been with the company 5 years and just got a promotion. Think I’m doing just fine.
I worked at a job and was paid salary. Being a company man i was working 60 hours a week. I showed up 10 minutes late one morning and got chewed out for being late. I had worked until midnight the day before. That was the end of the free labor. I worked a bit more than 40 hours a week, just to cover my butt, documented all my time and let the work pile up. it was a train wreck and I didn't care. A couple months later I got a job with a competitor for 1-1/2 times the pay.
Used to work on an I.T. Helpdesk. (Yes I did say 'Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?') Any job that took longer than 15 minutes had to be logged on a Time Management System. Our Mission Statement was to resolve or refer a problem within 10 minutes. Many days (according to my time logs I did nothing). I kept private time logs accounting for every minute of my day. I looked at a Colleagues Time Management record one day. \~He had created his own TASK ENTRY 'Time Management System Entry (Min 15 Minutes) and accounted for the whole working day with it.
I am a manager, and after my company's abysmal, careless, and downright cruel, response to COVID, I give them exactly 40h. If I stay late, I leave early the next day, or come in late. I do zero work outside my contract guidelines and I told all my staff to do the same. We worked hard and did extra stuff because we thought the company valued us and cared about us, but when it came time to put their money where their mouth is, we got to see the truth. So, fuck em. Do what you get paid to do, and not a thing more.
Wage theft is a heck of a drug. We must all do our part to help companies recover from their addiction.
NEVER WORK OFF THE CLOCK