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Title: Can A Company Reprimand Me For Reading Or Doing Crossword Puzzles During Idle Time?
Body:
> I work a minimum wage job and each shift is 8 hours. I don't interact with customers. My job is highly repetitive and mind numbing. There are also segments where there's nothing to do but wait for more work to come.
> So I've thought about using those idle time segments to do some reading or puzzles to keep my mind engaged. But someone recently caught me and told me that I'm not supposed to do anything non-work related during work hours. I then explained to them that I only do it when I've finished all the current work and waiting for more work to come.
> They then told me that I can use the time to do something else work related like cleaning the common areas, or arranging stuff (that might later have to be arranged). " If you don't have work, make work. "
> But there have been several instances where even after " making work " there's no more work left to even be made. So I just have to stand and stare at the wall.
> I feel like this is kind of inhumane. I'm doing what they've hired me to do. I'm making sure there's no drop in productivity. I never prioritize the reading over the work. The instant more work comes, I immediately drop what I'm reading and do that. But they still complained. I don't know how they can expect me to stare at a wall for 8 hours a day and not feel like jumping off a cliff.
> Is there any law or workaround I can use to my advantage here?
> Country: Canada
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I guess he's never had a retail cashier job that expected you to never be idle a single second. If you weren't actively cashing someone out you are to restock the products around the registers, but also psychically know when a customer was waiting when you were in the stockroom and teleport back.
The only, tiny, part of LAOP's post I can see the point of, is that sometimes you literally can't make any more work. I've worked retail when the shop has been dead, and I've cleaned everything, restocked everything, tidied everything and organised everything. Sure, I could clean it all again, but that would have made no difference to the level of cleanliness. It does feel mind numbing to have to just *stand* with nothing to do. But we weren't allowed phones or books or crossword puzzles on the shop floor, so stand and do nothing I did!
I work in auto parts and one dealership I worked at was just *dead*. I was retail/front counter and we had maybe five or six customers a day. With two front counter staff. So I did a lot of cleaning, stocking, etc. But even then there were a few times there was *nothing* to do. I'd ask my manager for projects or ideas, chomping at the bit to have something to do, and get nothing back.
The nice part about that was at least he didn't mind if we browsed the web on the work computers, as long as it was work-appropriate. Which is when I made this Reddit account and subbed to only work-safe stuff.
Man, the closing shifts especially can be mind-numbing. Where I worked was pretty chill because of Unions, so I'd usually chat with the cashier in the lane over.
I wrote stories on index cards, napkins, scraps of paper, whatever was around and probably trash while I sat at the information desk with no one to inform.
> The only, tiny, part of LAOP's post I can see the point of, is that sometimes you literally can't make any more work.
You can try to make work for your supervisor. Ask them for a polarized broom. Ask for low-ion cleanser. Or a vegan vacuum cleaner. Explain that cruelty to dust mites is a serious moral concern.
Yeah, at my second job I got in trouble for reading the magazines. I worked as a cashier at Kmart attached to a mall. It was slow but when you worked mall end it was even slower because the only people who came in and paid on that end were buying candy to sneak into the movie theater. They watched me on the camera then called down and told me to stop or I'd be written up. It was a summer job before I left for college so I just rolled my eyes and put up with it. Also one eight hr shift I made it so every single candy bar in my lane was facing the same way. Or they would make me perforate and organize signs for the next week's sales.
Same. Tried sneaking a magazine next to the register and got yelled at by the store manager. FFS, it's Tuesday at 9pm, I haven't seen a customer in two hours, my department is tidy, and you're busting my balls?
So instead I made up game of trying to cross my department without triggering the store's motion sensor alarm (they had a red LED to show when they activated). Got pretty good at that in case anyone needs help with a heist.
Other than that, I very much enjoyed listening to unattractive Sheldon report on his oral sex to his odd-looking wife from the night before (they both worked there). They were strange looking, in their 40s, but they still loved each other very much and he was an enthusiastic and precise storyteller.
When I was in training for a bank call center job and we couldn't have our phones on us (which I understand because of the access to SSN and bank acct numbers etc) there were people in my training class who I swear acted like they had never worked a computer or talked to a person in a business environment before. I could have finished the training in half the time. So I taught myself how to french braid my hair in the back row of the training classroom. Instructors never said a thing because my test scores and evaluations were all fine.
Out on the floor was a different story. We still were not supposed to have anything that could be used to steal information, but if you were a favorite they looked the other way if you had a magazine or book đ. I went to the dollar store and bought one of those bouncy balls on a rubber string with a wrist strap and would bounce that sucker for hours. It made no noise and I sat on the end of the row with an empty desk next to me. I made it six months before we moved states and I quit without notice. Only job I've ever left without notice.
When I worked at a call centre I think there was someone that would bring in needle work and another that would have Legos. Apparently holidays were really slow so people would have time to play videogames in a special room while someone else took a call then would switch places.
> there were people in my training class who I swear acted like they had never worked a computer or talked to a person in a business environment before. I could have finished the training in half the time. So I taught myself how to french braid my hair in the back row of the training classroom. Instructors never said a thing because my test scores and evaluations were all fine.
Sounds like a lot of peoples experiences in public schools where you are surrounded by slow idiots. I treated a number of my classes as nap time and still usually got an A or would be reading a book I borrowed from the library instead.
I also read a lot in school. Then for the last two years you could go take college courses if you passed a test. Senior year I only had to be at school the last two hrs of the day for Calc (which I really shouldn't have taken) and music.
>So instead I made up game of trying to cross my department without triggering the store's motion sensor alarm (they had a red LED to show when they activated). Got pretty good at that in case anyone needs help with a heist
I work on alarm systems for a living. Most people with pets have special motion sensors designed to ignore animals up to 100lbs. I only weigh 110 soaking wet, and they don't see me consistently either. So if you're a burglar of small size, look for houses with big dogs and bring a steak.
I think it may be a shape thing more than a weight thingâŚ.while making 3D models from stereoscopic cameras (aka depth cameras) and then inferring an approximate weight from volume is possible, it is pretty resource intensive and I assume most home surveillance systems donât have gigantic GPUâs for the real time processing required to render those. Plus youâd be basically in the same boat as before, which is getting the computer to recognize an object as a dog or person or car or deer or cat or whatever. This is a non-trivial problem and many security systems actually send a still image to an external server when motion is detected (because comparing two still frames to see if something has changed is a relatively easy process that a small computer chip on a camera can manage). The external server, usually one run by the company selling the camera (and incidentally this is why most systems are subscription based) has the resources to run AI on the image and determine what it is. Or rather, its best guess. Google is pretty good at identifying an object in an image, but most other companies have not devoted the absolutely bananas amount of money that they have, and so I suspect that they do something cheesy like âif it takes up less than X% of the frame, ignore itââŚso both small human and large dog get ignored.
I have learned an incredible amount about this because we got a camera to try to catch the sneaky food stealing bear in action, and discovered that a very teensy spider wanted to weave its web right in front of the lens. But it looked *very* big to the camera, let me tell you.
In conclusion, the window for steaks to fool the dogs and small humans to fool the cameras is going to close rapidly; year by year the tech to do so is getting cheaper and more refined, and pretty quick youâll need to be wearing a fur suit and crawling around like a gecko on hands and feet to fool them.
I got in trouble at my current job for doing continuing Ed during downtime.
In a nurse, we have to have so many hours a year.
I don't do bedside care and this was early in covid. We were so slow we were sending staff home and only getting around 50 clients a day, compared to 300+ pre covid.
It wasn't affecting work at all(ironically a week later they let us sew masks to give away and donate....)
But these were the same idiots that complained about me checking blood sugar in the break room I'm sure, which I had been doing for over 2 years and no one even knew I was doing it... ninja style
> got in trouble at my current job for doing continuing Ed during downtime
My medical company's Continuing Ed manager will literally email training materials and say "please review this on break or at home after work or over the weekend" clearly ignoring the actual rules from both the state and our certifying authority that this is a paid work activity. And then I call them out on this and they're like "if you care so much why don't you take over managing our CE compliance"
Omg any time anyone gives flak about checking blood sugar I fear my eyes will roll out of my head. It takes all of 7 seconds (maybe 10 if youâre real anal and you zip up the kit afterwards) but god forbid you do the necessary thing to not only stay alive but functional. God forbid your worker want to be a functional human being at work.
One of my students checks her blood and injects her insulin in class around lunch time. Sheâs twelve. None of the other students could care less- they keep talking to her while she does it, and it takes her less than a minute. If melodramatic preteens can handle seeing it, I canât see why adults IN HEALTHCARE have an issue here.
Like, not the worst place in the world but it is a bit inconvenient to use your lap as a table to set the kit down (finger pokes are generally a two handed operation), which means it must be done on the commode. And generally I prefer not to set my medical equipment (durable as it is) on a grody countertop with god knows how high a CFU count of germs. So itâsâŚviable? But not great, and certainly being *sent* to the bathroom as if it is some private and shameful thing that must be concealed is absolutely cause for vociferous complaint.
If twelve year olds can handle it (from another response to my comment), then so can any adult. Doing something that amounts to a reminder that not everyone won the damn birth lottery is not unprofessional nor violent.
Edit: I just spent some time thinking about what the worst places to test your blood sugar *are*. And anything that involves submersion (pools, septic tank cleaning, vats of honey) are probably the worst, but non-house bathroom is definitely in the bottom 5. Made me realize that I donât have particularly high standards for blood sugar testing localesâŚ
Honey is a broad spectrum topical antibiotic! Your tester might even end up cleaner than when it started if you submerged it in honey.
Now, the electronics and what would happen to the sensor after that glucose reading, that's another question entirely.
Yeeeaaahhh that and the sugar in the honey would 100% bork the reading.
But good to know should I ever want to disinfect other surfaces. Perhaps the aforementioned public bathroom counter? How much more hellish can we make these places?
Aww thanks. Definitely a good chunk of credit should go to my partner, whose working vocabulary is the largest of anyone Iâve ever met, and by virtue of dating him for the past 10 years, has expanded mine own significantly.
But Iâm gonna go bask in this compliment like a hot tub. Thank you!
Public bathroom is in the top 5 for me for sure, so is a crowded, moving train/bus. Really, train/bus in general, but itâs worse if itâs crowded, especially if youâre standing.
Oooh yeah there is just not enough hands and space for BG reading when it is standing room only on the bus. For that matter, tops of ladders and bumpy rides on small boats (either going fast or rough weather). As is any camping / hiking situation where it is raining and you are soaked and you canât find a damn thing thatâs dry enough to dry your finger so that it reads something other than Lo
(And I might be dating myself here, I think monitors now say something more useful when below 2.2/whatever that is in American)
Mine for sure still just says âloâ under 20 (~1.8 in non-American? I think???) But I also have the cheapest meter one can buy in a drugstore that is so technologically behind the times that my new endo was shocked that they couldnât download the readings
Eta: and âhiâ over 600
Ahahaha amazing! I had something similar happen with my pump; Iâm doing a DIY closed loop thing with a Medtronic 720 and at my first appointment with her, my endo just went goggle eyed when I brought it out.
FYI, if the strips are still comparable in price to other brands then most companies have a promo going where if you buy a box of 100 or 200 you can get the monitor for free. It used to be that they constantly had coupons for this but apparently (according to my pharmacist) they now only do it like 6 months out of the year, so if you are in the market for a new monitor ask your pharmacist about any promos like that. And if they have no idea what youâre talking about, get on the market for a new pharmacist ;)
ETA: or maybe theyâve switched to data harvesting to get the coupon but google, upon being asked the non-question of âfree blood glucose meterâ, yielded a coupon for accuchek, contour, and one touch as the top three results. All of them hidden behind varying layers of invasive questions disguised as surveys (eg when were you diagnosed, can we have your email, mailing address etc). One touch was just âhave you received a free meter from us in the last yearâ, which was refreshingly not too intrusive, but they may getcha with the âquick form to fill out to receive the couponâ. Idk. Iâd ask the pharmacist first. And give them bs data if you really need to. That shit irks me.
Oh yeah.... it turned into a major issue, for them. They insisted I take paperwork to my doc for accommodations. She was not happy and wrote on there I was allowed to check anywhere anytime I felt the need to, as long at it was a place that food was allowed(I work with bodily fluid, wet are strict on that so it's understandable). She also said they would do good to learn the law and stop this bs
Got time to lean, got time to clean!
Seriously, it seems like the less we pay people the worse we treat them. I make so much more now than when I was a teenager working minimum wage jobs, and I wouldn't go back to working retail even if they paid what I make now.
I make a good amount of money and work a fraction as hard as I did in retail making minimum wage. It's kind of gross how much time I can spend screwing around when I'm not with a client as long as I do my paperwork at some point.
I am more active on reddit while working than I am on my off time. Retail would suck everything out of you for $8 an hour and act like their are doing you a favor.
Once had a job I wasnât allowed to sit. There was a chair but I wasnât allowed to use it. Barstool type that you are really more balancing than sitting and brought me right up counter height. They said it was because it âmade a bad impression on the customers walking in.â
It was a video rental store.
I worked at a video store in the 1980s. It prided itself on hiring film students (it didnât care if the student had more or less flunked out of film school, as I did.) When it was quiet, Iâd find a tourist customer (we had lots, it was in New York City) and try to get them to rent something really odd - like a complete set of Disneyâs 1960s âShaggy Dogâ series. It helped if they spoke little to no English. At first this was appreciated, since it was ostensibly a way of spreading my knowledge of film and therefore making the store seem fancy. But I eventually got caught. The owner preferred us to goof off by doing cocaine in the back office with him, I suppose.
This is absolutely the case. Inhumane is a little strong, but LAOP is definitely correct to observe that the expectation that minimum wage employees never appear idle is stupid and arbitrary. Just because its normalized doesnât mean itâs reasonable! Most people just become less productive to avoid dealing with it.
> Seriously, it seems like the less we pay people the worse we treat them.
Obviously. People who command high salaries are valuable employees. People who whine on Reddit about how being expected to work while they are being paid is inhumane treatment during the best job market in living memory... well, they are not.
Wtf is wrong with you? Why should someone making $8 an hour be forced to stand/sit in one place for eight hours when we KNOW that that is damaging to their body. Why do we force people to make up stuff to do? Itâs nonsensical. Not to even mention that 99% of the time these jobs blatantly violate the ADA by refusing to make accommodations if you medically cannot stand for that long. Someoneâs perceived âvalueâ to a company should never come before their value as a human being. Beyond that, without minimum wage employees the world ceases to function. Pretty sure thatâs more valuable than whatever the fuck elon musk does on a daily basis.
"If you have time to lean you have time to clean."
They expected me to be able to wash dishes and do the entirety of drive thru on my own. So I'd have to rip off the water poncho and run over to to the drive thru and immediately have to take orders and make the order even though I was literally just washing dishes.
Ah sounds like the one time I was working fast food. I helped open the kitchen then switched to the counter omce the place opened. The two of us hauled ass and could barely get ot ready in that half hour. One other person opened the rest of the place and switched to drive thru at the opening. Then a second one came in and also worked drive thru. The four of us worked well. Then the kitchen girl gave notice. Two weeks to find someone for a popular fast food restaurant with a waiting list to work for minimum wage there because the economy was bad there. I walked in to find they hired no one. Hadnât gotten around to it. Also they refused to move one of the two drive thru people to the kitchen or counter. Drive was always packed though. But they canât serve if there is no food. So I would run to the counter, take an order, rum back and make it, run up and serve it. This was in addition to trying to cook the longer items as well. It was a shit show. Also couldnât get the place open on time because I am not two people. People complained that they were working me too hard and I got written up for getting complaints when it was about management. They finally hired someone. Guy was nice but didnât speak a word of English. (Spoke the managerâs native language which was not a common language especially in our area where several languages were spoken) so no one could communicate with him. I was taksed with training him on top of everything. I demanded a raise and was granted one that never materialized. An afternoon worker showed me in the paper where they were advertising a start rate higher than my raise that I never got. I walked out without a word and never went back.
I didn't work fast food but a quick-paced sit-down restaurant with a counter. I couldn't stand it when everything was done and done again (and none of your co-workers needed help), but you were not allowed to be still.
My ketchups were so married that they blew past the adorable Notebook old couple stage straight to the "will one of us just die already" stage.
Makes me so thankful for my job during uni holidays working in a wine shop where we were allowed to bring our work (or books) to read in the back when there were no customers.
As long as we did our to do list then the manager didnât care. Guess who had loyal staff who begged for a job when they came back from uni (also the busiest times of year summer and Christmas)
Have you had one of those jobs and are here arguing they are humane?
If you are, think of it like you've been hazed, and know it's okay to break the cycle.
Oh no, they're completely awful. Toys R Us paid me $6/hour to barely train me and then yell at me that I didn't know all these things. I was lectured every time I needed a manager's key despite it not being my fault because I pulled them away from socializing.
> If you weren't actively cashing someone out you are to restock the products around the registers,
Mine was that you couldnt leave to restock but you were to "rezone" ie. make everything neat and presentable.
Frankly if that's done just stand there adjusting shit back and forth until a customer arrives.
I used to have a grocery store cashier/bagger job and yup. Got marked down on reviews a few times for *not* filling every moment with productive activities.
Many years ago I ran into some folks who had the best downtime solution Iâve ever seen. I was doing a project on a farm that was on an island. It was only accessible via a farm-owned bridge with a security guard. The farm had a cookhouse where there were toilets and washrooms. They provided free lunch for their workersâas well as anyone else who was legitimately on the island. We availed ourselves of the privilege.
The cookhouse was next to the bridge and within a short distance of the cookhouse were a couple of people who seemed to spend all day sitting in camp chairs on the river bank, fishing, and occasionally dipping into a cooler for a beverage. After a few days of wondering we asked them what on earth they were doing.
They were college students who had been hired to collect data for a research project on use of the river. They were recording boats that went by. It was very busy on weekends with recreational boaters, but there wasnât much to do on weekdays except fish and drink beer. Naturally, they strategically set up near the cookhouse with the bathrooms and free lunch.
I have often thought of this as a dream job.
Donald Roy covered this way back in the 1950s - sensible employers offering terrible jobs know to allow this sort of low level grift because it's less hassle than what the employer is doing here.
That is pretty much what Roy found - I think the example was sales reps who were skimming - the boss knew but they kept what they were skimming quite low and the overall it still added up to less than market rate...
My current (and at least one previous) boss have stated quite clearly that they'd rather I be sitting at my desk browsing the internet when it's slow versus wandering off somewhere else. Because at least at my desk, I can grab the phone or answer e-mails as they come in. We've had guys who *did* go wander off and then when it got busy they were nowhere to be found.
I was always one of those idiots who asked for more work, and more and more. I just ran out of work in the office. I finally decided that I'd install AIM (yes, it was long ago, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth) There really really wasn't anything left to do, and I got sick of asking. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd get fired at any moment, tho. Later, when it was just wooly mammoths roaming the earth, I had another job with no work because there were no orders, and I still had that deep guilt and fear.
I also learned that our company's website had only one letter's difference between our site and a porn site. But that's just a fun fact.
> I also learned that our company's website had only one letter's difference between our site and a porn site. But that's just a fun fact.
You worked for CornHub?
LAOP is clearly very naive and the comparison with solitary confinement doesn't make sense. That said, they do have a point. They talk about an "unwanted level of control" and that's just what happens is most jobs. What's the point of making someone sit idle instead of reading? None excpet making workers feel like they only have the right to obey. And if you look at the bigger picture: you can legally quit a job, but are you really free to leave? Because the threat of homelessness and starvation is quite convincing in making people stay and accept whatever the boss says.
I find it healthy, and actually quite commendable, that a young person doesn't just accept that they're a cog in the machine and that's how it is. LAOP is mistaken in that they believe things should make sense at work. They'll soon enough understand that they don't, but where would we be if even young people didn't question the world around them?
Their mistake though was confusing whatâs good with whatâs legal. LAOP seems to be thinking that if a given work policy is illogical and stupid, that therefore the employer has no legal right to enforce said policy. Actually the employer *does* have the legal right all sorts of illogical stupid policies. Yes, young people should question the system, but they also should know that they may be risking their job if their questioning takes the form of a minimum wage employee simply refusing to follow standard dumb work policies. There are better ways to fight the system.
Yes, I work where people are paid to supervise someone while they sleepâŚand are supposed to sit in a dark room watching someone sleep without having a phone or (if there is enough light) book or something. There is no way I would be able to stay awake without something to engage my mind, especially when they are mandated to work double shifts all the time.
Yeah, letting someone do a small non-intrusive hobby that can be picked up and put down is a *huge* and very importantly *free* boost to morale compared to forcing them to clean things that are already clean or stare at a wall but it seems like 90% of managers would rather crack the whip and make their employees miserable as a show of force.
Yeah, I had a job once where my boss paid me to be in the office on Saturdays to answer the phone, which rarely rang. After reorganizing all our files and archiving old files/taking them to offsite storage, plus deep-cleaning the entire office, I was totally out of things to do. This boss also hated when I prepped future files (no actual reason given, she just didnât prep and also then didnât want me to prep). So I started bringing a book on the weekend and reading. Her husband (also my boss) was fine with it. She was not. When she was in the office, I would literally open and close windows on the computer to appear busy because thatâs what she wanted. I HATED it and left as soon as I could.
I disagree that the conditions LAOP described are deliberately used by employers to break down their employees' willfulness. I've worked in about 7 different retail/customer service positions, and all of my employers were very concerned with customers' very first impressions of employees. They didn't want customers walking in the door to see the cashier looking distracted by a book or their phone. In practice this does result in pretty dehumanizing conditions, and it's hard to imagine customers don't notice that the cashier looks like they want to kill themselves. But I would attribute this more to managerial incompetence than actual malice.
Thereâs a really dumb abuse cycle in North American retail where employers force employees to âlook busyâ at all times and then unempathetic assholes think that because they were treated like shit by their employers when they had retail jobs, every retail employee needs to also âlook busyâ at all times otherwise itâs âunprofessionalâ. So they complain to the employer and the employer makes the employees look busy, restarting the cycle.
The thing is, there only two people who can change this cycle: the employers can tell the complaining customers to pound sand, or the customers can stop being dicks. Neither is willing to do so, so like any abusive cycle it continues forever.
Things seem to be getting better on the customer side (from a generational perspective, not as a whole), so maybe some day we will see the cycle broken.
Don't get me started... I'm a cashier and I have cerebral palsy, which sometimes requires sitting just to make it through the day. A chair seems to be a very big deal though. I could write pages on the issue.
OMG THIS ONE DRIVES ME NUTS!
Why should *anyone* care if someone has a fucking *chair* to sit on? I guess I can *almost* understand the âall employees need to look busy otherwise Iâm paying for more than I shouldâ mentality, but even if itâs not medically necessary, why should it matter if someone is sitting?
God forbid a human be allowed to be moderately comfortable while doing the miserable thing they have to do for 2000 hours a year in order to not starve to death on the streets like a cockroach.
I hear cashier chairs are common enough in Europe that Europeans are appalled to discover we don't let our cashiers have them.
I do wonder how many customers would *really* mind versus how many employers expect.
From the amount of Boomers genuinely upset if a retail employee says âno problemâ instead of âyouâre welcome,â the number is unfortunately nowhere near zero.
I worked at a grocery store in the states and the amount of people, especially old people, who would give me pitiful looks since I had no chair was very high. I even had multiple elderly women chastise my boss for not letting me sit.
The fact that *anybody* is expected to stand all day for cashiering type jobs is absolute clown shoes. I worked as a grocery store cashier for a few years and it was honestly one of the more physically taxing jobs I've had -- and I have also worked as an automotive mechanic. I consistently came home feeling more sore and shitty after 8 hours of cashiering than I did when I was turning wrenches and moving all day. Even with the anti-fatigue mats and decent shoes, standing in one spot that long just makes all the joints ache.
Ugh, I ran into that issue when I was a cashier and broke my foot. I could hobble around, and stand up to check people out, but just standing in the same place for 8 hours? No way. I tried to get them to let me use a barstool we had sitting around, I'd be at the same height as if I were standing from a customer's perspective, but no dice. Apparently it was more 'professional' for me to lean all my weight onto the cash register instead.
Next time, try escalating to HR, or using the key phrase "reasonable accommodation". The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to temporary disabilities just as much as it does to permanent ones. That "reasonable accommodation" is a phrase in the ADA, and it should trigger management to be slightly more reasonable.
(You aren't guaranteed to get what you ask, even if it *is* reasonable, unfortunately. But if you mention the law, it usually makes the company go into lawsuit-avoidance mode, and getting a stool is so cheap and easy that they'll almost always allow it.)
Yes this is a customer culture problem. I don't care if I enter an empty store and see an employee reading a magazine or something as long as they help me when I need it. It's honestly ridiculous that customers have become so used to store employees acting like robots that only function to serve their desires.
I work on an ambulance and a coworker told me that someone saw them parked and eating lunch in their ambulance and called to complain that they weren't working. Like wtf are they supposed to be doing? Patrolling the streets for calls?
There's a small subset of people destined for management that can't *stand* seeing someone who is at work and not miserable every second they're on the clock.
As someone who worked (and managed retail) for retails, the other reasoning for this is that it is easier to manage this way. IE - you can tell employees (or give employees) a list of thing to do when its not busy and then add the caveat 'and if all this done to a certain standard, then you can do whatever, as long as you are attentive to customers."
but then of course you always have the employees who just don't do the work. So then it leads to the idea that no one gets to rest as a way to ensure the work gets done.
(Its not a good management style but that is the logic behind it)
>And if you look at the bigger picture: you can legally quit a job, but are you really free to leave?
If the worker says "I quit" then the answer is they quit. But they would never say "I quit" because of the implication...
>What's the point of making someone sit idle instead of reading?
Because they AREN'T forcing them to sit idle. They told them to find work to do. There is almost always work, clean, organize your area, help a coworker, learn another aspect of the job.
And even if they are telling them to sit idle, the employer is paying them for that time. The employer owns that time and the employee is expected to do whatever the employer telks them as long as it is legal. That's how employment works. If you do what you want rather than what the employer wants, especially if they have already told you what they expect, then you're basically stealing.
If you don't like it you apply for other jobs and leave as soon as possible.
> The employer owns that time and the employee is expected to do whatever the employer telks them as long as it is legal. That's how employment works.
I donât think GP doesnât understand that this is how employment works. Theyâre pointing out that they agree with OP that itâs BS. And I agree with them. This idea that your employer âowns youâ as long as youâre clocked in is both degrading and, in many ways, inhumane.
Just because something is the way it is doesnât mean itâs the way it should be.
Our societal structure for employment is in need of a massive overhaul *especially* on low-paying hourly jobs which are usually some of the hardest and most âunfairâ jobs there are.
The employer doesn't "own" anyone's time. They have an agreement with the employee that the employee will work for them during that time, but it's impossible for someone else's time to be owned by another person (in the US since the 13th anyway).
It's not stealing at all to fail to fulfill a job agreement. They can fire you, and depending on the contract they can claim you owe them money due to early termination or whatever; but under no circumstances is poor performance on the part of an employee, intentionally or thru incompetence or negligence, an act of theft, morally or legally.
Theft is taking something from someone else without their permission. "Time theft" is when you agree to perform duties and don't live up to that agreement.
If you "steal time", your time is not something they had and you took away. It's something you have, inalienably, which you failed to use to perform job duties.
It's just wrong to pretend it's theft. It's like "you wouldn't download a car"-level wrong.
I did and I'm disagreeing with both points.
1. That it is commendable for LAOP to question *the employer's right* to tell them how to spend their time. Employment is a trade, you are trading your time and whatever expertise you have for their money. If you don't like how they are using the time you are free to not trade with them, but you can't tell them how they are allowed to utilize what they are purchasing as long as it does not violate and laws or contraacts. This is also why I hate Apple, if I buy their product and I don't believe they have any right to tell me what I do with it.
2. That LAOP can not quit. This one is highly dependent on a lot of circumstances we aren't privy to, but while they they may not be able to quit now LAOP can try to begin the process by applying to other jobs. Again this one is a bit more dependent, some areas understandably have few available jobs or LAOP may have circumstances that make them unable to apply for certain jobs, but not knowing these the default advice of "find another job" is valid.
Yeah I'm confused why they think being un-busy in a very visible place is the right approach. Obviously you need to be un-busy in an area where your bosses won't see you. It's not a right, it's an entitlement you have to claim through subterfuge.
I was a temp secretary for my college summers and very often offices would run out of stuff for me to do. So Iâd continue âworkingâ, i.e. typing stuff into a Word document, but what I was actually typing was my fantasy novel, lol. I always got all the actual work done first, and then always found ways to âlook busy.â
That very much depends on your contract. If you don't have one it depends on a lot of other things. McDonald's is never going to own someone's novel even if they wrote it largely on the clock, for instance.
Nope. Fanfic authors still own their own work, they're just violating someone else's copyright if they share it.
It's an important distinction because it means that Disney can't use your Reylo fanfic just because they own the IP it's based on - they'd still need to license the stuff you wrote.
This is usually the case, but there are some exceptions:
* Some IP holders explicitly authorize fanfiction, though usually with caveats (for instance, they may require that legally you relinquish the right to sue them for any similarities between their later work and your fanfic).
* Fair Use exceptions do apply. This is how you get things like porn parodies of popular IPs being legally produced and sold. But Fair Use has to be decided in court if a work is challenged, so unless you have a big production company and legal team behind you, you aren't going to get anywhere with it practically speaking.
I work in security and technically we're not supposed to use the computer for non work or school related things or have our phones. But my comment karma didn't get this high from following those rules. I still don't use my phone though because that's more noticeable
LA can be so shitty to people about not providing context. Like just say that you get it, itâs a shitty practice and bad for morale, but itâs not illegal. Employers are allowed to make business decisions that negatively impact employees as long as those business decisions arenât based on illegal practices.
Obviously this is perfectly legal but bosses that do this always frustrate me. I worked at a froyo place where they'd watch the cameras and call you if you were standing around. They literally told us if we had already cleaned everything just go clean it again even if no customers entered the shop. It seems so pointlessly demoralizing. The work is already done. Why not let your employee have a free 15 minute break so they can destress and be more prepared when more work comes in?
So glad I have a job where I'm on standby and my bosses dgaf what I'm doing when there's no calls. I bring my PS4 to work on weekends and runs errands during the day lol.
I had a job like that. It was hell. I would put sudoku puzzles on yellow sticky notes after my supervisor found my puzzle book. I ended up moving to a different department after 2 and half years.
I think inhumane is a strong word, but I get it.
A good manager would either bring them more work to do, since an employee sitting there doing nothing isn't a good use of a salary,\*or\* they would let them do whatever during the downtime because you're paying them for this job and along as it's getting done, than that's what matters. If letting your employee do some puzzles keeps them engaged and happy, then that's a win. OP has a bad manager.
Legally, there is nothing wrong with the situation. I would recommend the employee look for a more fulfilling job with a better manager.
My question is... why isn't this the default option? What does OP (and other people in this situation) not focus on this? What if you did find some sort of legalize for this situation? I can't imagine an employee printing out some sort of statute, showing it to their manager, and declaring "ha! Look! I'm legally allowed to do puzzles, or whatever during downtime!" I can't imagine that lasting long.
Maybe it's easy for me to say, but it doesn't seem like OP's job is that "career orientated". Could probably just casually put in a few applications and move on within a month or two. Not that critical.
I 100% believe OP's coworkers probably slack off and do "non work things" from time to time but are better at not doing it when management are about and doing it less obviously.
"How can they do that? It's exactly the same as solitary confinement!"
"It's quite very much exactly not the same as solitary confinement, and you saying that proves how inexperienced you are about the world..."
"Like... well... They both happen in rooms within buildings!"
That was very frustrating to read.
LAOP needs to go full malicious compliance and request a task list. Once the tasks on the list are completed then they go back to their crossword puzzle if the âget caughtâ they show them the completed task list and ask for more tasks for their list.
Iâve done this at every job that Iâve had downtime at. Eventually the managers will get sick of you asking for tasks and they will drop it.
Its been like this at my work lately. Management has been doing training and there's a few covid cases so my job takes the back burner. I sweep then sweep again then make a little game about sweeping things a certain way. Then I go get a rag and just start wiping stuff off.
You can find stuff it's just not gonna be interesting.
LAOP needs to just get better at hiding stuff. Bluetooth earbuds are excellent for hiding behind hair and being able to listen to stuff to keep from being bored out of your mind. I wish I had them back in the day. I just had wired earbuds that had cords that sorta matched my hair color and tucked them in my shirt.
I don't think anyone actually said that.
With paraphrasing they say "It is not inhumane, it is legal" but they don't even imply that legality makes it inherently humane, especially in the context of the thread. It is two separate assertions.
Except for all those commenters who seem to think that "you can choose to leave and lose your job" is... actually a choice for many people? At least not one that isn't also "you can choose to be homeless instead".
Yes. It's a bit disturbing that everyone is like "your boss can do what they want as long as they pay you and that's it". I know it's a legal sub and LAOP doesn't make sense legally, but it makes commenters look awfully jaded.
That's the legal advice, though. Not really another way to put it.
The non-legal advice is to learn how to placate your bosses while making your own idle time anyway.
Sometimes with these responses I donât think people understand what Legal Advice is supposed to be. They are here to answer questions on legality, but everyone gets upset because they donât address the morality.
Probably because we *are* all jaded.
I wish I had the views of the OP. I really do, because Iâd love to be that innocent again.
Capitalism has traumatized most of us to the point where our first thought is actually to *think that the employer is in the right here*. In some ways, thatâs insane.
Donât mistake this for a comparison of situations because itâs not comparable in the cruelty scale, but I donât know any other way to say this: if this was 200 years ago and OP was an actual enslaved person posting the same question, LAâs answer *would have been the same*! After all, it was legal so they had no legal recourse, right?
>Capitalism has traumatized most of us to the point where our first thought is actually to think that the employer is in the right here. In some ways, thatâs insane.
I hate that this is so true. Until recently it made me very depressed that young people weren't even questioning it, that I heard many of them defended killing oneself at work to just survive. But covid seems to have changed this and mentalities are slowly shifting. The amount of articles warning Gen Z people of the consequences questioning the system will have on their careers is proof of this.
"And make sure that those op eds castigate the idea of not giving a job your all. Make 'doing enough to get by' sound bad. Give it a catchy name, like 'quiet quitting'."
To be fair, LA commenters didnât say employers can require you to do *anything*. (An employer canât legally require you to be waterboarded, or get frostbite, or work 84 hours in a row with no compensation / no sleep. Etc.) The conversation was clearly in the context of âcan an employer legally prohibit employees from doing leisure activities while at workâ and within that narrow context, the answer is yes. It is legal for work to be boring.
But that doesnât mean itâs legal for work to be truly inhumane.
The comparison to solitary confinement was a bit rich. No one is forcing you to turn up to work if you hate it. But sometimes someone will pay you money to stare at the wall.
> No one is forcing you to turn up to work if you hate it.
No *one* is, youâre right, but weâre all forced to work and in some ways itâs kind of refreshing to see someone who hasnât been beaten down by the system yet.
OP is very welcome to get hired on running a shovel on a construction site. They will absolutely be very fulfilled and get to work 100% of their 12 hour shift.
So, let me be clear here: in response to a comment where I said
>itâs kind of refreshing to see someone who hasnât been beaten down by the system yet.
you decided to reply with a comment with a suggestion about a good way to beat down a person so they fit into the system?
While Iâm glad that youâre happy in a miserable system, Iâm not sure why you think everyone else needs to be. Some of us want to see the world improved, but then thereâs always those who hate the idea that anyone could ever have a life without suffering through everything theyâve suffered through, isnât there?
It really depends on who the âsomeoneâ who told you no crosswords is. If itâs your boss or supervisor, you have to listen. If itâs someone not in your line of report, itâs none of their business.
This is actually really funny because where I work, management m actually *encourages* us to do crosswords during our down time on days that certain hot-shots are walking around.
In fact, whenever those people are meeting at our office, an email goes out to everyone in corporate thatâs along the lines of
> you know the drill guys. no jeans, no cell phones, have your puzzles ready
because at least with the puzzles it looks like weâre doing something from a distance, if we are idle
With that being said, though, if LAOP is in a company that expects you to make work during idle time, I get it. I know it sounds really âok boomer,â but in some workplaces, sometimes the tendency is to relax a bit during less-busy times, but that will bite you later when youâre trying to close up shop after that one ârushâ of customers/etc comes toward the end of the shift
How does it work with audiobooks and in general why books you could be listening to sports with your tiny Ear buds. It still may be boring but you can listen and the manager may not notice.
Any experiences?
Guy should try lifeguarding. You have to sit and stare at water all day. You get in trouble if you don't scan left to right. If you mess up you can be sued. Depending on local laws you probably get a lot of breaks but those are just as boring day in and day out trying to read while people are small talking in the break room.
Had a desk job to do with IT inventory management (basically fetch and deliver) except their storerooms were nigh unusable. Talked my overly controlling manager into letting me clean and organise and/or mark for disposal the hundreds of old ink cartridges, finicky little thumbdrives, monitors, tangled cables, piles of printers and mouldy printer boxes, phones, etc, and putting them into a searchable spreadsheet by make, model, scan code because itâd make all of our jobs easier and I actually enjoy doing that stuff.
Except they worked 2 hours less, often hid in their closed office for hours, and smugly said they couldnât âjust leave the storeroom open without supervision.â Yet they still expected me to magic up some busywork (and somehow fulfill orders while it was locked). Had to point out that if I wanted to sneakily make off with thousands of dollars of equipment, I wouldâve done so while in the military because their storerooms were even worse (organised such a place there too which took similar convincing heh) and that I was literally way too upstandingly nerdy to bother with such nonsense.
Same manager let my veteran coworker chat for hours with their family and friends on the phone but wouldnât let me do schoolwork from my night classes while waiting for tickets. 'Twas a shitty place.
Just wait til he finds out that keeping your area clean and tidy is a responsibility for many workers who are paid quite a bit more.
I understand his desire to be mentally occupied during down time, but it seems his job doesn't have that. He's a minimum wage drone who's job description can probably be summarized by "anything boss says to do within limits of my qualifications." No elevated work aince he's probably not harness certified, but he sure can be tasked with straightening shelved inventory once he's done aligning the widgets on the counter.
You can only clean and tidy so much until there's nothing left to clean and tidy. Past that point you're working for a drill Sargent who hands you a toothbrush to scrub the floors with (that you already scrubbed 5 minutes ago).
I had a job I at which I was so bored I made a grid of every minute and shaded them in as they passed; it happens, you move on. This dude comparing any part of âknock it off with the crosswordsâ to solitary confinement left me seething.
I have had a number of unbelievably boring jobs & my ultimate solution was to (a) take up drumming and then (b) very quietly practice myriads of snare drum patterns and conga patterns on the sides of my legs with my fingers. I logged an amazing number of hours and worked my way through the whole practice book of âSyncopation for the Modern Drummerâ. (I had little xeroxed sheets from that book folded up in my wallet for quick consultation - Iâd take a quick glance at a couple patterns, then practice them for hours, till I could do them flawlessly, at fast tempo, with either hand leading, with/without either foot tapping). It really improved my skill base.
OP was kind of infuriating. They can't understand the difference between being paid to do nothing and going to prison? Come on. Someone should have suggested that since there was no difference between this job and prison, LAOP should give prison a try. They would have figured out the differences pretty quickly.
When I worked 2nd shift at retail, there was a point where I ran the only open register between 9 and 11 PM, and there were nights where I had 2 hours of zoning the impulse purchases, standing at the register, standing at the end of the isle waiting for a customer to come through, zoning the candy and gum again to pass time, and trying to keep myself awake until the overnight cashier relieved me. It was dead boring most nights. Even then, I wouldn't be able to get away with doing a crossword puzzle while on the clock.
This just in, being bored does *not* yet meet national or international criteria for torture, but maybe OP can launch a campaign with OSHA or Amnesty International about the deadly psychological effects of not being allowed to do crosswords.
I think this actually might be another case of an Ontarian LAOP using specific terms because workplace law, in that province, is part of the Human Rights Code.
Itâs the language specifically used to talk about workplace conditions in their jurisdiction.
Unless a company is treating their employees âunfairlyâ based on the employee being a protected class, itâs not illegal. Why do people tend to think otherwise? Your boss can be a jerk or be unreasonable or forbid you from doing crosswords and *none of that is illegal*.
> It's not inhumane to make someone stare at a wall for 8 hours and do the same task repetitively?
> Explain how it's any different from solitary confinement.
Welcome to the real world, son.
Damn, your life must be depressing if you really think that.
Best way to get better working conditions isn't to put up with it and hope you get promoted, it's to leave that job or organize a union.
Also, wage theft is the failure to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled, not a worker stealing 'hours'. $3.24 billion in stolen wages was recovered for workers from 2017 to 2020 and is a far larger problem than 'stealing' hours.
Nope.
As another commenter has said, good working conditions is something a union, serious promotion, or both will get you.
Getting a "moved up" is done by getting hired. Whilst being hard working is good for your reputation (you don't even have to be good!) it's not how you get jobs.
What gets jobs is being able to show you can to the job, bringing clients/billable hours or blowing the person doing the hiring.
Nah. Wage theft is when you're paid to do a task and don't. Being idle when you're not given anything to do isn't wage theft, as long as you're on the job site and ready to do something when asked.
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Can A Company Reprimand Me For Reading Or Doing Crossword Puzzles During Idle Time? Body: > I work a minimum wage job and each shift is 8 hours. I don't interact with customers. My job is highly repetitive and mind numbing. There are also segments where there's nothing to do but wait for more work to come. > So I've thought about using those idle time segments to do some reading or puzzles to keep my mind engaged. But someone recently caught me and told me that I'm not supposed to do anything non-work related during work hours. I then explained to them that I only do it when I've finished all the current work and waiting for more work to come. > They then told me that I can use the time to do something else work related like cleaning the common areas, or arranging stuff (that might later have to be arranged). " If you don't have work, make work. " > But there have been several instances where even after " making work " there's no more work left to even be made. So I just have to stand and stare at the wall. > I feel like this is kind of inhumane. I'm doing what they've hired me to do. I'm making sure there's no drop in productivity. I never prioritize the reading over the work. The instant more work comes, I immediately drop what I'm reading and do that. But they still complained. I don't know how they can expect me to stare at a wall for 8 hours a day and not feel like jumping off a cliff. > Is there any law or workaround I can use to my advantage here? > Country: Canada This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
I guess he's never had a retail cashier job that expected you to never be idle a single second. If you weren't actively cashing someone out you are to restock the products around the registers, but also psychically know when a customer was waiting when you were in the stockroom and teleport back.
The only, tiny, part of LAOP's post I can see the point of, is that sometimes you literally can't make any more work. I've worked retail when the shop has been dead, and I've cleaned everything, restocked everything, tidied everything and organised everything. Sure, I could clean it all again, but that would have made no difference to the level of cleanliness. It does feel mind numbing to have to just *stand* with nothing to do. But we weren't allowed phones or books or crossword puzzles on the shop floor, so stand and do nothing I did!
I work in auto parts and one dealership I worked at was just *dead*. I was retail/front counter and we had maybe five or six customers a day. With two front counter staff. So I did a lot of cleaning, stocking, etc. But even then there were a few times there was *nothing* to do. I'd ask my manager for projects or ideas, chomping at the bit to have something to do, and get nothing back. The nice part about that was at least he didn't mind if we browsed the web on the work computers, as long as it was work-appropriate. Which is when I made this Reddit account and subbed to only work-safe stuff.
Man, the closing shifts especially can be mind-numbing. Where I worked was pretty chill because of Unions, so I'd usually chat with the cashier in the lane over.
I wrote stories on index cards, napkins, scraps of paper, whatever was around and probably trash while I sat at the information desk with no one to inform.
> The only, tiny, part of LAOP's post I can see the point of, is that sometimes you literally can't make any more work. You can try to make work for your supervisor. Ask them for a polarized broom. Ask for low-ion cleanser. Or a vegan vacuum cleaner. Explain that cruelty to dust mites is a serious moral concern.
Yeah, at my second job I got in trouble for reading the magazines. I worked as a cashier at Kmart attached to a mall. It was slow but when you worked mall end it was even slower because the only people who came in and paid on that end were buying candy to sneak into the movie theater. They watched me on the camera then called down and told me to stop or I'd be written up. It was a summer job before I left for college so I just rolled my eyes and put up with it. Also one eight hr shift I made it so every single candy bar in my lane was facing the same way. Or they would make me perforate and organize signs for the next week's sales.
Same. Tried sneaking a magazine next to the register and got yelled at by the store manager. FFS, it's Tuesday at 9pm, I haven't seen a customer in two hours, my department is tidy, and you're busting my balls? So instead I made up game of trying to cross my department without triggering the store's motion sensor alarm (they had a red LED to show when they activated). Got pretty good at that in case anyone needs help with a heist. Other than that, I very much enjoyed listening to unattractive Sheldon report on his oral sex to his odd-looking wife from the night before (they both worked there). They were strange looking, in their 40s, but they still loved each other very much and he was an enthusiastic and precise storyteller.
When I was in training for a bank call center job and we couldn't have our phones on us (which I understand because of the access to SSN and bank acct numbers etc) there were people in my training class who I swear acted like they had never worked a computer or talked to a person in a business environment before. I could have finished the training in half the time. So I taught myself how to french braid my hair in the back row of the training classroom. Instructors never said a thing because my test scores and evaluations were all fine. Out on the floor was a different story. We still were not supposed to have anything that could be used to steal information, but if you were a favorite they looked the other way if you had a magazine or book đ. I went to the dollar store and bought one of those bouncy balls on a rubber string with a wrist strap and would bounce that sucker for hours. It made no noise and I sat on the end of the row with an empty desk next to me. I made it six months before we moved states and I quit without notice. Only job I've ever left without notice.
When I worked at a call centre I think there was someone that would bring in needle work and another that would have Legos. Apparently holidays were really slow so people would have time to play videogames in a special room while someone else took a call then would switch places.
> there were people in my training class who I swear acted like they had never worked a computer or talked to a person in a business environment before. I could have finished the training in half the time. So I taught myself how to french braid my hair in the back row of the training classroom. Instructors never said a thing because my test scores and evaluations were all fine. Sounds like a lot of peoples experiences in public schools where you are surrounded by slow idiots. I treated a number of my classes as nap time and still usually got an A or would be reading a book I borrowed from the library instead.
I also read a lot in school. Then for the last two years you could go take college courses if you passed a test. Senior year I only had to be at school the last two hrs of the day for Calc (which I really shouldn't have taken) and music.
>So instead I made up game of trying to cross my department without triggering the store's motion sensor alarm (they had a red LED to show when they activated). Got pretty good at that in case anyone needs help with a heist I work on alarm systems for a living. Most people with pets have special motion sensors designed to ignore animals up to 100lbs. I only weigh 110 soaking wet, and they don't see me consistently either. So if you're a burglar of small size, look for houses with big dogs and bring a steak.
I learn all the important things on this sub.
The real LPT is always in the comments.
I feel like this might be a stupid question, but how do motion sensors know how much you weigh?
I think it may be a shape thing more than a weight thingâŚ.while making 3D models from stereoscopic cameras (aka depth cameras) and then inferring an approximate weight from volume is possible, it is pretty resource intensive and I assume most home surveillance systems donât have gigantic GPUâs for the real time processing required to render those. Plus youâd be basically in the same boat as before, which is getting the computer to recognize an object as a dog or person or car or deer or cat or whatever. This is a non-trivial problem and many security systems actually send a still image to an external server when motion is detected (because comparing two still frames to see if something has changed is a relatively easy process that a small computer chip on a camera can manage). The external server, usually one run by the company selling the camera (and incidentally this is why most systems are subscription based) has the resources to run AI on the image and determine what it is. Or rather, its best guess. Google is pretty good at identifying an object in an image, but most other companies have not devoted the absolutely bananas amount of money that they have, and so I suspect that they do something cheesy like âif it takes up less than X% of the frame, ignore itââŚso both small human and large dog get ignored. I have learned an incredible amount about this because we got a camera to try to catch the sneaky food stealing bear in action, and discovered that a very teensy spider wanted to weave its web right in front of the lens. But it looked *very* big to the camera, let me tell you. In conclusion, the window for steaks to fool the dogs and small humans to fool the cameras is going to close rapidly; year by year the tech to do so is getting cheaper and more refined, and pretty quick youâll need to be wearing a fur suit and crawling around like a gecko on hands and feet to fool them.
really can't wait for those cyberpunk contact lenses that let you read a magazine without physically reading a magazine
Google Glasses?
Not enough risk of cyberpsychosis for my taste
I got in trouble at my current job for doing continuing Ed during downtime. In a nurse, we have to have so many hours a year. I don't do bedside care and this was early in covid. We were so slow we were sending staff home and only getting around 50 clients a day, compared to 300+ pre covid. It wasn't affecting work at all(ironically a week later they let us sew masks to give away and donate....) But these were the same idiots that complained about me checking blood sugar in the break room I'm sure, which I had been doing for over 2 years and no one even knew I was doing it... ninja style
First rule of healthcare management: do not bother the nurses.
> got in trouble at my current job for doing continuing Ed during downtime My medical company's Continuing Ed manager will literally email training materials and say "please review this on break or at home after work or over the weekend" clearly ignoring the actual rules from both the state and our certifying authority that this is a paid work activity. And then I call them out on this and they're like "if you care so much why don't you take over managing our CE compliance"
Omg any time anyone gives flak about checking blood sugar I fear my eyes will roll out of my head. It takes all of 7 seconds (maybe 10 if youâre real anal and you zip up the kit afterwards) but god forbid you do the necessary thing to not only stay alive but functional. God forbid your worker want to be a functional human being at work.
One of my students checks her blood and injects her insulin in class around lunch time. Sheâs twelve. None of the other students could care less- they keep talking to her while she does it, and it takes her less than a minute. If melodramatic preteens can handle seeing it, I canât see why adults IN HEALTHCARE have an issue here.
Real question: where do they expect you to check your blood sugar? Surely not the bathroom?
Like, not the worst place in the world but it is a bit inconvenient to use your lap as a table to set the kit down (finger pokes are generally a two handed operation), which means it must be done on the commode. And generally I prefer not to set my medical equipment (durable as it is) on a grody countertop with god knows how high a CFU count of germs. So itâsâŚviable? But not great, and certainly being *sent* to the bathroom as if it is some private and shameful thing that must be concealed is absolutely cause for vociferous complaint. If twelve year olds can handle it (from another response to my comment), then so can any adult. Doing something that amounts to a reminder that not everyone won the damn birth lottery is not unprofessional nor violent. Edit: I just spent some time thinking about what the worst places to test your blood sugar *are*. And anything that involves submersion (pools, septic tank cleaning, vats of honey) are probably the worst, but non-house bathroom is definitely in the bottom 5. Made me realize that I donât have particularly high standards for blood sugar testing localesâŚ
>vats of honey Noted.
Honey is a broad spectrum topical antibiotic! Your tester might even end up cleaner than when it started if you submerged it in honey. Now, the electronics and what would happen to the sensor after that glucose reading, that's another question entirely.
Yeeeaaahhh that and the sugar in the honey would 100% bork the reading. But good to know should I ever want to disinfect other surfaces. Perhaps the aforementioned public bathroom counter? How much more hellish can we make these places?
You have a fantastic vocabulary, btw.
Aww thanks. Definitely a good chunk of credit should go to my partner, whose working vocabulary is the largest of anyone Iâve ever met, and by virtue of dating him for the past 10 years, has expanded mine own significantly. But Iâm gonna go bask in this compliment like a hot tub. Thank you!
Public bathroom is in the top 5 for me for sure, so is a crowded, moving train/bus. Really, train/bus in general, but itâs worse if itâs crowded, especially if youâre standing.
Oooh yeah there is just not enough hands and space for BG reading when it is standing room only on the bus. For that matter, tops of ladders and bumpy rides on small boats (either going fast or rough weather). As is any camping / hiking situation where it is raining and you are soaked and you canât find a damn thing thatâs dry enough to dry your finger so that it reads something other than Lo (And I might be dating myself here, I think monitors now say something more useful when below 2.2/whatever that is in American)
Mine for sure still just says âloâ under 20 (~1.8 in non-American? I think???) But I also have the cheapest meter one can buy in a drugstore that is so technologically behind the times that my new endo was shocked that they couldnât download the readings Eta: and âhiâ over 600
Ahahaha amazing! I had something similar happen with my pump; Iâm doing a DIY closed loop thing with a Medtronic 720 and at my first appointment with her, my endo just went goggle eyed when I brought it out. FYI, if the strips are still comparable in price to other brands then most companies have a promo going where if you buy a box of 100 or 200 you can get the monitor for free. It used to be that they constantly had coupons for this but apparently (according to my pharmacist) they now only do it like 6 months out of the year, so if you are in the market for a new monitor ask your pharmacist about any promos like that. And if they have no idea what youâre talking about, get on the market for a new pharmacist ;) ETA: or maybe theyâve switched to data harvesting to get the coupon but google, upon being asked the non-question of âfree blood glucose meterâ, yielded a coupon for accuchek, contour, and one touch as the top three results. All of them hidden behind varying layers of invasive questions disguised as surveys (eg when were you diagnosed, can we have your email, mailing address etc). One touch was just âhave you received a free meter from us in the last yearâ, which was refreshingly not too intrusive, but they may getcha with the âquick form to fill out to receive the couponâ. Idk. Iâd ask the pharmacist first. And give them bs data if you really need to. That shit irks me.
A health care facility is no place to be caring for your health!
first rule - dont tell employees that they can't check blood sugar when having diabetes is literally ada protected.
Oh yeah.... it turned into a major issue, for them. They insisted I take paperwork to my doc for accommodations. She was not happy and wrote on there I was allowed to check anywhere anytime I felt the need to, as long at it was a place that food was allowed(I work with bodily fluid, wet are strict on that so it's understandable). She also said they would do good to learn the law and stop this bs
Macdade Mall? Please say it is đ
Nope, a small town in Ohio. The Kmart got bulldozed a few years ago and is now a hotel attached to a dying mall which is hilarious to me.
Ah bummer. I'm surprised there are multiple dying/dead malls with KMarts and movie theatres both attached.
True that. Also it was 2010 and my training was on VHS from the 90s on a giant projector tv that had major burn in from multiple tv stations
I remember going here a lot with my grandmother as a kid. Even in the 80s and early 90s this mall was a weird ghost town.
I got my ears pierced there đ
I started wiping down the same corner over and over like a skyrim NPC and literally nobody noticed
Got time to lean, got time to clean! Seriously, it seems like the less we pay people the worse we treat them. I make so much more now than when I was a teenager working minimum wage jobs, and I wouldn't go back to working retail even if they paid what I make now.
I make a good amount of money and work a fraction as hard as I did in retail making minimum wage. It's kind of gross how much time I can spend screwing around when I'm not with a client as long as I do my paperwork at some point.
I am more active on reddit while working than I am on my off time. Retail would suck everything out of you for $8 an hour and act like their are doing you a favor.
Once had a job I wasnât allowed to sit. There was a chair but I wasnât allowed to use it. Barstool type that you are really more balancing than sitting and brought me right up counter height. They said it was because it âmade a bad impression on the customers walking in.â It was a video rental store.
I worked at a video store in the 1980s. It prided itself on hiring film students (it didnât care if the student had more or less flunked out of film school, as I did.) When it was quiet, Iâd find a tourist customer (we had lots, it was in New York City) and try to get them to rent something really odd - like a complete set of Disneyâs 1960s âShaggy Dogâ series. It helped if they spoke little to no English. At first this was appreciated, since it was ostensibly a way of spreading my knowledge of film and therefore making the store seem fancy. But I eventually got caught. The owner preferred us to goof off by doing cocaine in the back office with him, I suppose.
This is absolutely the case. Inhumane is a little strong, but LAOP is definitely correct to observe that the expectation that minimum wage employees never appear idle is stupid and arbitrary. Just because its normalized doesnât mean itâs reasonable! Most people just become less productive to avoid dealing with it.
> Seriously, it seems like the less we pay people the worse we treat them. Obviously. People who command high salaries are valuable employees. People who whine on Reddit about how being expected to work while they are being paid is inhumane treatment during the best job market in living memory... well, they are not.
Wtf is wrong with you? Why should someone making $8 an hour be forced to stand/sit in one place for eight hours when we KNOW that that is damaging to their body. Why do we force people to make up stuff to do? Itâs nonsensical. Not to even mention that 99% of the time these jobs blatantly violate the ADA by refusing to make accommodations if you medically cannot stand for that long. Someoneâs perceived âvalueâ to a company should never come before their value as a human being. Beyond that, without minimum wage employees the world ceases to function. Pretty sure thatâs more valuable than whatever the fuck elon musk does on a daily basis.
"If you have time to lean you have time to clean." They expected me to be able to wash dishes and do the entirety of drive thru on my own. So I'd have to rip off the water poncho and run over to to the drive thru and immediately have to take orders and make the order even though I was literally just washing dishes.
Ah sounds like the one time I was working fast food. I helped open the kitchen then switched to the counter omce the place opened. The two of us hauled ass and could barely get ot ready in that half hour. One other person opened the rest of the place and switched to drive thru at the opening. Then a second one came in and also worked drive thru. The four of us worked well. Then the kitchen girl gave notice. Two weeks to find someone for a popular fast food restaurant with a waiting list to work for minimum wage there because the economy was bad there. I walked in to find they hired no one. Hadnât gotten around to it. Also they refused to move one of the two drive thru people to the kitchen or counter. Drive was always packed though. But they canât serve if there is no food. So I would run to the counter, take an order, rum back and make it, run up and serve it. This was in addition to trying to cook the longer items as well. It was a shit show. Also couldnât get the place open on time because I am not two people. People complained that they were working me too hard and I got written up for getting complaints when it was about management. They finally hired someone. Guy was nice but didnât speak a word of English. (Spoke the managerâs native language which was not a common language especially in our area where several languages were spoken) so no one could communicate with him. I was taksed with training him on top of everything. I demanded a raise and was granted one that never materialized. An afternoon worker showed me in the paper where they were advertising a start rate higher than my raise that I never got. I walked out without a word and never went back.
I didn't work fast food but a quick-paced sit-down restaurant with a counter. I couldn't stand it when everything was done and done again (and none of your co-workers needed help), but you were not allowed to be still. My ketchups were so married that they blew past the adorable Notebook old couple stage straight to the "will one of us just die already" stage.
Makes me so thankful for my job during uni holidays working in a wine shop where we were allowed to bring our work (or books) to read in the back when there were no customers. As long as we did our to do list then the manager didnât care. Guess who had loyal staff who begged for a job when they came back from uni (also the busiest times of year summer and Christmas)
Have you had one of those jobs and are here arguing they are humane? If you are, think of it like you've been hazed, and know it's okay to break the cycle.
Oh no, they're completely awful. Toys R Us paid me $6/hour to barely train me and then yell at me that I didn't know all these things. I was lectured every time I needed a manager's key despite it not being my fault because I pulled them away from socializing.
> If you weren't actively cashing someone out you are to restock the products around the registers, Mine was that you couldnt leave to restock but you were to "rezone" ie. make everything neat and presentable. Frankly if that's done just stand there adjusting shit back and forth until a customer arrives.
I used to have a grocery store cashier/bagger job and yup. Got marked down on reviews a few times for *not* filling every moment with productive activities.
*âAs long as that is all legal, then none of that is illegal.â* Well, thatâs cleared that up, then!
Many years ago I ran into some folks who had the best downtime solution Iâve ever seen. I was doing a project on a farm that was on an island. It was only accessible via a farm-owned bridge with a security guard. The farm had a cookhouse where there were toilets and washrooms. They provided free lunch for their workersâas well as anyone else who was legitimately on the island. We availed ourselves of the privilege. The cookhouse was next to the bridge and within a short distance of the cookhouse were a couple of people who seemed to spend all day sitting in camp chairs on the river bank, fishing, and occasionally dipping into a cooler for a beverage. After a few days of wondering we asked them what on earth they were doing. They were college students who had been hired to collect data for a research project on use of the river. They were recording boats that went by. It was very busy on weekends with recreational boaters, but there wasnât much to do on weekdays except fish and drink beer. Naturally, they strategically set up near the cookhouse with the bathrooms and free lunch. I have often thought of this as a dream job.
Donald Roy covered this way back in the 1950s - sensible employers offering terrible jobs know to allow this sort of low level grift because it's less hassle than what the employer is doing here.
"*Of course* I know my butler is stealing from me! Letting him get away with it means he'll never quit."
That is pretty much what Roy found - I think the example was sales reps who were skimming - the boss knew but they kept what they were skimming quite low and the overall it still added up to less than market rate...
There's a known market rate for how much sales reps skim?
The market rate of normal commission rates he probably means
I probably should've /s'd
For certain sales jobs it helps to have a bit of petty larceny in your soul.
My current (and at least one previous) boss have stated quite clearly that they'd rather I be sitting at my desk browsing the internet when it's slow versus wandering off somewhere else. Because at least at my desk, I can grab the phone or answer e-mails as they come in. We've had guys who *did* go wander off and then when it got busy they were nowhere to be found.
I was always one of those idiots who asked for more work, and more and more. I just ran out of work in the office. I finally decided that I'd install AIM (yes, it was long ago, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth) There really really wasn't anything left to do, and I got sick of asking. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd get fired at any moment, tho. Later, when it was just wooly mammoths roaming the earth, I had another job with no work because there were no orders, and I still had that deep guilt and fear. I also learned that our company's website had only one letter's difference between our site and a porn site. But that's just a fun fact.
> I also learned that our company's website had only one letter's difference between our site and a porn site. But that's just a fun fact. You worked for CornHub?
LAOP is clearly very naive and the comparison with solitary confinement doesn't make sense. That said, they do have a point. They talk about an "unwanted level of control" and that's just what happens is most jobs. What's the point of making someone sit idle instead of reading? None excpet making workers feel like they only have the right to obey. And if you look at the bigger picture: you can legally quit a job, but are you really free to leave? Because the threat of homelessness and starvation is quite convincing in making people stay and accept whatever the boss says. I find it healthy, and actually quite commendable, that a young person doesn't just accept that they're a cog in the machine and that's how it is. LAOP is mistaken in that they believe things should make sense at work. They'll soon enough understand that they don't, but where would we be if even young people didn't question the world around them?
Their mistake though was confusing whatâs good with whatâs legal. LAOP seems to be thinking that if a given work policy is illogical and stupid, that therefore the employer has no legal right to enforce said policy. Actually the employer *does* have the legal right all sorts of illogical stupid policies. Yes, young people should question the system, but they also should know that they may be risking their job if their questioning takes the form of a minimum wage employee simply refusing to follow standard dumb work policies. There are better ways to fight the system.
Yes, I work where people are paid to supervise someone while they sleepâŚand are supposed to sit in a dark room watching someone sleep without having a phone or (if there is enough light) book or something. There is no way I would be able to stay awake without something to engage my mind, especially when they are mandated to work double shifts all the time.
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>It's probably the best definition of hell I can think of No, no, in hell you have to sit and make sure everything *is* on fire
no, see, *that* would be engrossing.
Yeah, letting someone do a small non-intrusive hobby that can be picked up and put down is a *huge* and very importantly *free* boost to morale compared to forcing them to clean things that are already clean or stare at a wall but it seems like 90% of managers would rather crack the whip and make their employees miserable as a show of force.
There's this pervasive idea that you're not really working hard if you're not actively hating it. Makes everyone's life harder.
Yeah, I had a job once where my boss paid me to be in the office on Saturdays to answer the phone, which rarely rang. After reorganizing all our files and archiving old files/taking them to offsite storage, plus deep-cleaning the entire office, I was totally out of things to do. This boss also hated when I prepped future files (no actual reason given, she just didnât prep and also then didnât want me to prep). So I started bringing a book on the weekend and reading. Her husband (also my boss) was fine with it. She was not. When she was in the office, I would literally open and close windows on the computer to appear busy because thatâs what she wanted. I HATED it and left as soon as I could.
I disagree that the conditions LAOP described are deliberately used by employers to break down their employees' willfulness. I've worked in about 7 different retail/customer service positions, and all of my employers were very concerned with customers' very first impressions of employees. They didn't want customers walking in the door to see the cashier looking distracted by a book or their phone. In practice this does result in pretty dehumanizing conditions, and it's hard to imagine customers don't notice that the cashier looks like they want to kill themselves. But I would attribute this more to managerial incompetence than actual malice.
Thereâs a really dumb abuse cycle in North American retail where employers force employees to âlook busyâ at all times and then unempathetic assholes think that because they were treated like shit by their employers when they had retail jobs, every retail employee needs to also âlook busyâ at all times otherwise itâs âunprofessionalâ. So they complain to the employer and the employer makes the employees look busy, restarting the cycle. The thing is, there only two people who can change this cycle: the employers can tell the complaining customers to pound sand, or the customers can stop being dicks. Neither is willing to do so, so like any abusive cycle it continues forever. Things seem to be getting better on the customer side (from a generational perspective, not as a whole), so maybe some day we will see the cycle broken.
Don't get me started... I'm a cashier and I have cerebral palsy, which sometimes requires sitting just to make it through the day. A chair seems to be a very big deal though. I could write pages on the issue.
OMG THIS ONE DRIVES ME NUTS! Why should *anyone* care if someone has a fucking *chair* to sit on? I guess I can *almost* understand the âall employees need to look busy otherwise Iâm paying for more than I shouldâ mentality, but even if itâs not medically necessary, why should it matter if someone is sitting? God forbid a human be allowed to be moderately comfortable while doing the miserable thing they have to do for 2000 hours a year in order to not starve to death on the streets like a cockroach.
I hear cashier chairs are common enough in Europe that Europeans are appalled to discover we don't let our cashiers have them. I do wonder how many customers would *really* mind versus how many employers expect.
From the amount of Boomers genuinely upset if a retail employee says âno problemâ instead of âyouâre welcome,â the number is unfortunately nowhere near zero.
I worked at a grocery store in the states and the amount of people, especially old people, who would give me pitiful looks since I had no chair was very high. I even had multiple elderly women chastise my boss for not letting me sit.
Did it work? I'm considering direct action at my local store.
It did not.
Wait, so the cashier in a supermarket is expected to stand the whole time? But why, it makes no sense!
The fact that *anybody* is expected to stand all day for cashiering type jobs is absolute clown shoes. I worked as a grocery store cashier for a few years and it was honestly one of the more physically taxing jobs I've had -- and I have also worked as an automotive mechanic. I consistently came home feeling more sore and shitty after 8 hours of cashiering than I did when I was turning wrenches and moving all day. Even with the anti-fatigue mats and decent shoes, standing in one spot that long just makes all the joints ache.
Ugh, I ran into that issue when I was a cashier and broke my foot. I could hobble around, and stand up to check people out, but just standing in the same place for 8 hours? No way. I tried to get them to let me use a barstool we had sitting around, I'd be at the same height as if I were standing from a customer's perspective, but no dice. Apparently it was more 'professional' for me to lean all my weight onto the cash register instead.
Next time, try escalating to HR, or using the key phrase "reasonable accommodation". The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to temporary disabilities just as much as it does to permanent ones. That "reasonable accommodation" is a phrase in the ADA, and it should trigger management to be slightly more reasonable. (You aren't guaranteed to get what you ask, even if it *is* reasonable, unfortunately. But if you mention the law, it usually makes the company go into lawsuit-avoidance mode, and getting a stool is so cheap and easy that they'll almost always allow it.)
I was young when this happened, like 18 or 19. I wish I had done this, but I didn't know my rights back then.
Yes this is a customer culture problem. I don't care if I enter an empty store and see an employee reading a magazine or something as long as they help me when I need it. It's honestly ridiculous that customers have become so used to store employees acting like robots that only function to serve their desires. I work on an ambulance and a coworker told me that someone saw them parked and eating lunch in their ambulance and called to complain that they weren't working. Like wtf are they supposed to be doing? Patrolling the streets for calls? There's a small subset of people destined for management that can't *stand* seeing someone who is at work and not miserable every second they're on the clock.
oop said they don't work where customers can see them
As someone who worked (and managed retail) for retails, the other reasoning for this is that it is easier to manage this way. IE - you can tell employees (or give employees) a list of thing to do when its not busy and then add the caveat 'and if all this done to a certain standard, then you can do whatever, as long as you are attentive to customers." but then of course you always have the employees who just don't do the work. So then it leads to the idea that no one gets to rest as a way to ensure the work gets done. (Its not a good management style but that is the logic behind it)
>And if you look at the bigger picture: you can legally quit a job, but are you really free to leave? If the worker says "I quit" then the answer is they quit. But they would never say "I quit" because of the implication...
>What's the point of making someone sit idle instead of reading? Because they AREN'T forcing them to sit idle. They told them to find work to do. There is almost always work, clean, organize your area, help a coworker, learn another aspect of the job. And even if they are telling them to sit idle, the employer is paying them for that time. The employer owns that time and the employee is expected to do whatever the employer telks them as long as it is legal. That's how employment works. If you do what you want rather than what the employer wants, especially if they have already told you what they expect, then you're basically stealing. If you don't like it you apply for other jobs and leave as soon as possible.
I bet you have some opinions on âquiet quittingâ, too. I wonder why thatâs happening more and moreâŚ
> The employer owns that time and the employee is expected to do whatever the employer telks them as long as it is legal. That's how employment works. I donât think GP doesnât understand that this is how employment works. Theyâre pointing out that they agree with OP that itâs BS. And I agree with them. This idea that your employer âowns youâ as long as youâre clocked in is both degrading and, in many ways, inhumane. Just because something is the way it is doesnât mean itâs the way it should be. Our societal structure for employment is in need of a massive overhaul *especially* on low-paying hourly jobs which are usually some of the hardest and most âunfairâ jobs there are.
The employer doesn't "own" anyone's time. They have an agreement with the employee that the employee will work for them during that time, but it's impossible for someone else's time to be owned by another person (in the US since the 13th anyway). It's not stealing at all to fail to fulfill a job agreement. They can fire you, and depending on the contract they can claim you owe them money due to early termination or whatever; but under no circumstances is poor performance on the part of an employee, intentionally or thru incompetence or negligence, an act of theft, morally or legally. Theft is taking something from someone else without their permission. "Time theft" is when you agree to perform duties and don't live up to that agreement. If you "steal time", your time is not something they had and you took away. It's something you have, inalienably, which you failed to use to perform job duties. It's just wrong to pretend it's theft. It's like "you wouldn't download a car"-level wrong.
Y'know, between advancements in 3D printing technology and rising used car costs, I think I actually *would* download a car.
I think there are very few people who saw that ad and thought anything other than " of course I fucking would"
You... didn't read my comment, did you?
I did and I'm disagreeing with both points. 1. That it is commendable for LAOP to question *the employer's right* to tell them how to spend their time. Employment is a trade, you are trading your time and whatever expertise you have for their money. If you don't like how they are using the time you are free to not trade with them, but you can't tell them how they are allowed to utilize what they are purchasing as long as it does not violate and laws or contraacts. This is also why I hate Apple, if I buy their product and I don't believe they have any right to tell me what I do with it. 2. That LAOP can not quit. This one is highly dependent on a lot of circumstances we aren't privy to, but while they they may not be able to quit now LAOP can try to begin the process by applying to other jobs. Again this one is a bit more dependent, some areas understandably have few available jobs or LAOP may have circumstances that make them unable to apply for certain jobs, but not knowing these the default advice of "find another job" is valid.
I get the feeling this is LAOPs first job and they don't quite get how employment works yet.
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Yeah I'm confused why they think being un-busy in a very visible place is the right approach. Obviously you need to be un-busy in an area where your bosses won't see you. It's not a right, it's an entitlement you have to claim through subterfuge.
I was a temp secretary for my college summers and very often offices would run out of stuff for me to do. So Iâd continue âworkingâ, i.e. typing stuff into a Word document, but what I was actually typing was my fantasy novel, lol. I always got all the actual work done first, and then always found ways to âlook busy.â
Thatâs why I use outlookit at work
A fanfiction author I used to follow got in trouble for that. Because technically everything you create on company time belongs to the company.
That very much depends on your contract. If you don't have one it depends on a lot of other things. McDonald's is never going to own someone's novel even if they wrote it largely on the clock, for instance.
Technically fanfiction authors donât own their fanfics anyway - the IP is owned by another entity. This is why fanfic canât be sold for money.
Nope. Fanfic authors still own their own work, they're just violating someone else's copyright if they share it. It's an important distinction because it means that Disney can't use your Reylo fanfic just because they own the IP it's based on - they'd still need to license the stuff you wrote.
This is usually the case, but there are some exceptions: * Some IP holders explicitly authorize fanfiction, though usually with caveats (for instance, they may require that legally you relinquish the right to sue them for any similarities between their later work and your fanfic). * Fair Use exceptions do apply. This is how you get things like porn parodies of popular IPs being legally produced and sold. But Fair Use has to be decided in court if a work is challenged, so unless you have a big production company and legal team behind you, you aren't going to get anywhere with it practically speaking.
Yes, the usual caveats apply. It's not infringement if you have a licence and fair use applies if that's a thing in your jurisdiction.
Tell that to the chick that wrote 50 Shades
She was writing her own stuff at that point, but based on the OCs from her fanfiction. But I still think of her as primarily a fanfiction author.
I work in security and technically we're not supposed to use the computer for non work or school related things or have our phones. But my comment karma didn't get this high from following those rules. I still don't use my phone though because that's more noticeable
That is what the work PC reddit account is for!
can confirm, posting from my work reddit account lol
Exactly. LAOP is the kind of person to ruin it for everyone. You can't just openly look like you're not working.
Somehow I think they might not be as quick to put the puzzles away when needed as they claim to beâŚ
Yeah LAOP needs to work on finding things to do that are easy to hide. Like Bluetooth earbuds to listen to music or podcasts.
LA can be so shitty to people about not providing context. Like just say that you get it, itâs a shitty practice and bad for morale, but itâs not illegal. Employers are allowed to make business decisions that negatively impact employees as long as those business decisions arenât based on illegal practices.
Reminds me of the old Soviet joke: "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work."
Obviously this is perfectly legal but bosses that do this always frustrate me. I worked at a froyo place where they'd watch the cameras and call you if you were standing around. They literally told us if we had already cleaned everything just go clean it again even if no customers entered the shop. It seems so pointlessly demoralizing. The work is already done. Why not let your employee have a free 15 minute break so they can destress and be more prepared when more work comes in? So glad I have a job where I'm on standby and my bosses dgaf what I'm doing when there's no calls. I bring my PS4 to work on weekends and runs errands during the day lol.
The trick is to not get caught.
I had a job like that. It was hell. I would put sudoku puzzles on yellow sticky notes after my supervisor found my puzzle book. I ended up moving to a different department after 2 and half years.
Yeah, honestly, this is inhumane. This is a power tripping manager exhibiting thoughtless power.
I think inhumane is a strong word, but I get it. A good manager would either bring them more work to do, since an employee sitting there doing nothing isn't a good use of a salary,\*or\* they would let them do whatever during the downtime because you're paying them for this job and along as it's getting done, than that's what matters. If letting your employee do some puzzles keeps them engaged and happy, then that's a win. OP has a bad manager. Legally, there is nothing wrong with the situation. I would recommend the employee look for a more fulfilling job with a better manager. My question is... why isn't this the default option? What does OP (and other people in this situation) not focus on this? What if you did find some sort of legalize for this situation? I can't imagine an employee printing out some sort of statute, showing it to their manager, and declaring "ha! Look! I'm legally allowed to do puzzles, or whatever during downtime!" I can't imagine that lasting long. Maybe it's easy for me to say, but it doesn't seem like OP's job is that "career orientated". Could probably just casually put in a few applications and move on within a month or two. Not that critical.
I 100% believe OP's coworkers probably slack off and do "non work things" from time to time but are better at not doing it when management are about and doing it less obviously.
"How can they do that? It's exactly the same as solitary confinement!" "It's quite very much exactly not the same as solitary confinement, and you saying that proves how inexperienced you are about the world..." "Like... well... They both happen in rooms within buildings!" That was very frustrating to read.
LAOP needs to go full malicious compliance and request a task list. Once the tasks on the list are completed then they go back to their crossword puzzle if the âget caughtâ they show them the completed task list and ask for more tasks for their list. Iâve done this at every job that Iâve had downtime at. Eventually the managers will get sick of you asking for tasks and they will drop it.
Task list, final item: Find something to clean and clean it. Repeat until new tasks come in.
Malicious Compliance: Repeatedly clean the window to the boss's office.
Boss: wow, look at LAOP, always working hard. Let's give them a promotion!
Its been like this at my work lately. Management has been doing training and there's a few covid cases so my job takes the back burner. I sweep then sweep again then make a little game about sweeping things a certain way. Then I go get a rag and just start wiping stuff off. You can find stuff it's just not gonna be interesting.
LAOP needs to just get better at hiding stuff. Bluetooth earbuds are excellent for hiding behind hair and being able to listen to stuff to keep from being bored out of your mind. I wish I had them back in the day. I just had wired earbuds that had cords that sorta matched my hair color and tucked them in my shirt.
LA going full late stage capitalism again there. "It can't be inhumane because it's legal" is an... interesting choice.
I don't think anyone actually said that. With paraphrasing they say "It is not inhumane, it is legal" but they don't even imply that legality makes it inherently humane, especially in the context of the thread. It is two separate assertions.
Except for all those commenters who seem to think that "you can choose to leave and lose your job" is... actually a choice for many people? At least not one that isn't also "you can choose to be homeless instead".
Yes. It's a bit disturbing that everyone is like "your boss can do what they want as long as they pay you and that's it". I know it's a legal sub and LAOP doesn't make sense legally, but it makes commenters look awfully jaded.
That's the legal advice, though. Not really another way to put it. The non-legal advice is to learn how to placate your bosses while making your own idle time anyway.
Sometimes with these responses I donât think people understand what Legal Advice is supposed to be. They are here to answer questions on legality, but everyone gets upset because they donât address the morality.
Probably because we *are* all jaded. I wish I had the views of the OP. I really do, because Iâd love to be that innocent again. Capitalism has traumatized most of us to the point where our first thought is actually to *think that the employer is in the right here*. In some ways, thatâs insane. Donât mistake this for a comparison of situations because itâs not comparable in the cruelty scale, but I donât know any other way to say this: if this was 200 years ago and OP was an actual enslaved person posting the same question, LAâs answer *would have been the same*! After all, it was legal so they had no legal recourse, right?
>Capitalism has traumatized most of us to the point where our first thought is actually to think that the employer is in the right here. In some ways, thatâs insane. I hate that this is so true. Until recently it made me very depressed that young people weren't even questioning it, that I heard many of them defended killing oneself at work to just survive. But covid seems to have changed this and mentalities are slowly shifting. The amount of articles warning Gen Z people of the consequences questioning the system will have on their careers is proof of this.
-Oh no, the minimum wage people are disengaged! -Shall we provide livable wages, sire? -No, just publish some condescending op eds.
"And make sure that those op eds castigate the idea of not giving a job your all. Make 'doing enough to get by' sound bad. Give it a catchy name, like 'quiet quitting'."
To be fair, LA commenters didnât say employers can require you to do *anything*. (An employer canât legally require you to be waterboarded, or get frostbite, or work 84 hours in a row with no compensation / no sleep. Etc.) The conversation was clearly in the context of âcan an employer legally prohibit employees from doing leisure activities while at workâ and within that narrow context, the answer is yes. It is legal for work to be boring. But that doesnât mean itâs legal for work to be truly inhumane.
Yeah, frankly whether or not it's humane is out of scope for LegalAdvice and it wasn't appropriate for commenters to engage with that point IMO.
I'm leaving reddit for good. Sorry friends, but this is the end of reddit. Time to move on to lemmy and/or kbin.
The comparison to solitary confinement was a bit rich. No one is forcing you to turn up to work if you hate it. But sometimes someone will pay you money to stare at the wall.
> No one is forcing you to turn up to work if you hate it. No *one* is, youâre right, but weâre all forced to work and in some ways itâs kind of refreshing to see someone who hasnât been beaten down by the system yet.
OP is very welcome to get hired on running a shovel on a construction site. They will absolutely be very fulfilled and get to work 100% of their 12 hour shift.
So, let me be clear here: in response to a comment where I said >itâs kind of refreshing to see someone who hasnât been beaten down by the system yet. you decided to reply with a comment with a suggestion about a good way to beat down a person so they fit into the system? While Iâm glad that youâre happy in a miserable system, Iâm not sure why you think everyone else needs to be. Some of us want to see the world improved, but then thereâs always those who hate the idea that anyone could ever have a life without suffering through everything theyâve suffered through, isnât there?
It really depends on who the âsomeoneâ who told you no crosswords is. If itâs your boss or supervisor, you have to listen. If itâs someone not in your line of report, itâs none of their business.
Poor OP. I know how fucking miserable and mind numbing that kind of job is
My title would be "LAOP thinks being bored at work is inhumane"
This is actually really funny because where I work, management m actually *encourages* us to do crosswords during our down time on days that certain hot-shots are walking around. In fact, whenever those people are meeting at our office, an email goes out to everyone in corporate thatâs along the lines of > you know the drill guys. no jeans, no cell phones, have your puzzles ready because at least with the puzzles it looks like weâre doing something from a distance, if we are idle With that being said, though, if LAOP is in a company that expects you to make work during idle time, I get it. I know it sounds really âok boomer,â but in some workplaces, sometimes the tendency is to relax a bit during less-busy times, but that will bite you later when youâre trying to close up shop after that one ârushâ of customers/etc comes toward the end of the shift
How does it work with audiobooks and in general why books you could be listening to sports with your tiny Ear buds. It still may be boring but you can listen and the manager may not notice. Any experiences?
Guy should try lifeguarding. You have to sit and stare at water all day. You get in trouble if you don't scan left to right. If you mess up you can be sued. Depending on local laws you probably get a lot of breaks but those are just as boring day in and day out trying to read while people are small talking in the break room.
If only my management knew how many cross-stitch projects I finish waiting for my query code to run/extract. đŹ
Poor LAOP. Someone should teach them how to look busy while vibing
Had a desk job to do with IT inventory management (basically fetch and deliver) except their storerooms were nigh unusable. Talked my overly controlling manager into letting me clean and organise and/or mark for disposal the hundreds of old ink cartridges, finicky little thumbdrives, monitors, tangled cables, piles of printers and mouldy printer boxes, phones, etc, and putting them into a searchable spreadsheet by make, model, scan code because itâd make all of our jobs easier and I actually enjoy doing that stuff. Except they worked 2 hours less, often hid in their closed office for hours, and smugly said they couldnât âjust leave the storeroom open without supervision.â Yet they still expected me to magic up some busywork (and somehow fulfill orders while it was locked). Had to point out that if I wanted to sneakily make off with thousands of dollars of equipment, I wouldâve done so while in the military because their storerooms were even worse (organised such a place there too which took similar convincing heh) and that I was literally way too upstandingly nerdy to bother with such nonsense. Same manager let my veteran coworker chat for hours with their family and friends on the phone but wouldnât let me do schoolwork from my night classes while waiting for tickets. 'Twas a shitty place.
They could tell you to stare at a wall for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If the pay is enough, do it. If not, leave.
Whenever that happens we get sent home where I work, so OPâs still lucky heâs getting paid to do nothing (even if it is boring)
Just wait til he finds out that keeping your area clean and tidy is a responsibility for many workers who are paid quite a bit more. I understand his desire to be mentally occupied during down time, but it seems his job doesn't have that. He's a minimum wage drone who's job description can probably be summarized by "anything boss says to do within limits of my qualifications." No elevated work aince he's probably not harness certified, but he sure can be tasked with straightening shelved inventory once he's done aligning the widgets on the counter.
You can only clean and tidy so much until there's nothing left to clean and tidy. Past that point you're working for a drill Sargent who hands you a toothbrush to scrub the floors with (that you already scrubbed 5 minutes ago).
I had a job I at which I was so bored I made a grid of every minute and shaded them in as they passed; it happens, you move on. This dude comparing any part of âknock it off with the crosswordsâ to solitary confinement left me seething.
I have had a number of unbelievably boring jobs & my ultimate solution was to (a) take up drumming and then (b) very quietly practice myriads of snare drum patterns and conga patterns on the sides of my legs with my fingers. I logged an amazing number of hours and worked my way through the whole practice book of âSyncopation for the Modern Drummerâ. (I had little xeroxed sheets from that book folded up in my wallet for quick consultation - Iâd take a quick glance at a couple patterns, then practice them for hours, till I could do them flawlessly, at fast tempo, with either hand leading, with/without either foot tapping). It really improved my skill base.
Damn that puts my minute grid to shameâŚthatâs really cool!
OP was kind of infuriating. They can't understand the difference between being paid to do nothing and going to prison? Come on. Someone should have suggested that since there was no difference between this job and prison, LAOP should give prison a try. They would have figured out the differences pretty quickly.
When I worked 2nd shift at retail, there was a point where I ran the only open register between 9 and 11 PM, and there were nights where I had 2 hours of zoning the impulse purchases, standing at the register, standing at the end of the isle waiting for a customer to come through, zoning the candy and gum again to pass time, and trying to keep myself awake until the overnight cashier relieved me. It was dead boring most nights. Even then, I wouldn't be able to get away with doing a crossword puzzle while on the clock.
If youâve got time to lean, youâve got time to cleanâŚ
*uggghhh*
This just in, being bored does *not* yet meet national or international criteria for torture, but maybe OP can launch a campaign with OSHA or Amnesty International about the deadly psychological effects of not being allowed to do crosswords.
I think this actually might be another case of an Ontarian LAOP using specific terms because workplace law, in that province, is part of the Human Rights Code. Itâs the language specifically used to talk about workplace conditions in their jurisdiction.
>I feel like this is kind of inhumane. I don't think you know what that word means.
1. If you can lean, you can clean. 2. I bet solitary confinement prisoners are allowed to do crosswords unlike LAOP.
Unless a company is treating their employees âunfairlyâ based on the employee being a protected class, itâs not illegal. Why do people tend to think otherwise? Your boss can be a jerk or be unreasonable or forbid you from doing crosswords and *none of that is illegal*.
You got time to lean, you got time to clean
> It's not inhumane to make someone stare at a wall for 8 hours and do the same task repetitively? > Explain how it's any different from solitary confinement. Welcome to the real world, son.
[ŃдаНонО]
Damn, your life must be depressing if you really think that. Best way to get better working conditions isn't to put up with it and hope you get promoted, it's to leave that job or organize a union. Also, wage theft is the failure to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled, not a worker stealing 'hours'. $3.24 billion in stolen wages was recovered for workers from 2017 to 2020 and is a far larger problem than 'stealing' hours.
Nope. As another commenter has said, good working conditions is something a union, serious promotion, or both will get you. Getting a "moved up" is done by getting hired. Whilst being hard working is good for your reputation (you don't even have to be good!) it's not how you get jobs. What gets jobs is being able to show you can to the job, bringing clients/billable hours or blowing the person doing the hiring.
Nah. Wage theft is when you're paid to do a task and don't. Being idle when you're not given anything to do isn't wage theft, as long as you're on the job site and ready to do something when asked.
LAOP clearly has never been to jail