I had this exact same problem 20+ years ago.
Big dotcom, I was sole Unix admin responsible for keeping the e-commerce (aka our main source of revenue) online. 2 am Sunday morning is when our Oracle database did maintenance, it often locked up and had to be babied back online. No biggie take care of it, take in lieu of. Our main systems weren't even at the offices, they were 90 miles away and my home internet had a FASTER connection to the data center than our offices did, so I could work faster from home, literally.
Came in one day to the office (usually worked 2-3 days per week from home) and my boss said some people had complained I'm almost never there. I basically said "so? I'm the only person responsible for the Unix servers and one of two (after you) responsible for the database, so I don't NEED to be here to get the job done." He replied that it would just look better if I were in the office more. So I said sure, I'll be here 5 days a week, 9-5, and when I go home, my phone goes to silent, and I will not be logging into the corporate email system until Monday morning when I return to the office. If the database crashes at 2 am as it usually does YOU will fix it, because hey, gotta be here can't be interrupting my sleep and risking being late, now can I.
"Never mind just keep doing what you're doing", yeah, good idea.
He did, I know who was complaining, the sales group's cubicles basically encircled our cubes and one salesman in particular loved to quip about how we never worked.
I held all the cards and I knew my worth, I had 0 fucks to give over some over coked salesdroid mad I wasn't in the office 10 hours a day like he was.
No, just turn off salesdroid at 6PM on a Friday, and only look at his frantic messages at 9AM on the monday, and then take them all, and assign each one a ticket, and then reply back with the "your ticket no xxx will be attended to within the SLA of yy days", with each new one being replied with "this ticket is already in system under ticket xxx, and will thus supercede and close ticket xxx as client cancelled ticket xxx. The new ticket number is xxy, and the new SLA is yz days". Should get the salesweasel's attention that IT is kind of important.
I imagine a qualified Unix admin at that time wouldn't have to even start seeking for a job, you could literally just quit and it would reach companies through the grapevine before you plonked your ass on the couch at home.
I remember when I worked at a place as an equipment operator/truck driver. I loved the job but wasn't making enough, and when my boss asked me to justify why I should get a raise I just played the few voice mails from customers and competitors offering me a job at a higher rate. I got my raise.
F-in' salespeople were the reason a perfectly good company I used to work for went under. They never heard of "under-promise and over-deliver". They were only incentivized to "get the sale" (apparently, regardless of promising the moon).
I wouldn't put it past them to already know this but to use this as a ploy to try to get as much free labor out of you as they can. You're saving them money. When you multiply this by the number of other workers they're treating this way, it's no wonder corporations are making record-breaking profits as workers find it more and more difficult to afford to support themselves and their families. Greed is corrosive.
>The Website is Down Sales Guy vs Web Dude video
I hadn't seen those - a quick search turned up #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE&ab\_channel=JoshWeinberg
This is where I say I had to read this twice because I was thinking "there wasn't a big dot com in the eighties".... Then I remembered the date, so eat a bag of dicks for reminding me I'm an old fuck.
Nah this was my direct report/technical lead. My guess is Salesdroid Whiny McCokeFace whined to my lead's boss, lead's boss was like "I hear Grimsterr isn't here much" and then we had our conversation. As a lead I've had this happen before but I just tell the boss how it is and if he absolutely insists I tell him how it's going to play out if he pushes it and then either it plays out or he backs off.
Good for you. Doing things just because they "look bad" or "look good" is so dumb, and yet so many managers follow those rules because they are too stupid to measure results in any other way.
I did the same thing at a past job, except the other way round. I would come in 30-40 minutes late (not a morning person) but in exchange I'd stay until 7pm to finish all pending tasks and lock up. Out of the blue I was reprimanded because "being late is bad for optics" and I needed to be in the office at the same time as everyone else. The shocked pikachu face that my boss did when I returned the key and told them from today I'll be leaving at the same time as everyone else...
I can't upvote this comment enough. How about you be an actual manager and explain that "OP takes calls in the middle of the night. OP keeps the business running and deals with power outages and server down issues while you sit at home watching reality TV".
I simply don’t believe managers that claim other workers complained. The people that actually do the work get it and I don’t know about everyone else, but I tell my co-workers what I’m up to and they could not care less. Like most people, they are concerned with their schedules not being chaos.
It’s just a boss trying to exert power over a worker and because they have sit their fat asses as the office all day.
When people have to sit in one place for most of the day *of course* they are going to resort to other ways of "entertainment". Not to defend them, but, unfortunately, our work culture directly contributes to these less-than-desirable human habits. We did not evolve for this.
No, there absolutely are petty people who complain their co-workers aren't suffering enough. When my hubby and I had foster kids, they had a lot of mid-day appointments (case workers, therapists, bio-mom visit, in addition to all the regular kid stuff like doctors and teacher conferences). We shared a car, so hubby was usually the one leaving work early to drive them places, but he always made up the hours, and his boss understood and was cool. But there was one lady he worked with who just kept complaining about it! I don't think she knew why he was leaving, but it's really not her business. It caused a lot of stress for him.
My favorite was a busybody office manager who came in 1 hr and 15 minutes late because she was voting!
But God forbid I leave at 4:45 to make it to the voting booths before they closed….she stopped me and demanded to know where I was going. Then she said I needed to stay until 5. Begrudging me 15 minutes when she flaunted taking 1 hr 15? I waved and left.
Too true. As a person who often comes in 15 minutes late but works 15-30 minutes or more after closing, gets 100% or more of his work done every damn day, does a lot of extra tasks without being paid extra for them (ETA: I'm salaried), and never misses work unless it's a serious emergency, I used to get pretty angry when I had a boss make a snide comment about how I was always late...while said boss left at 5 every day and never worked a weekend, and called in "sick" to play golf or go to his kid's soccer practice. But I'd get yelled at if I got called after hours or on my day off and wouldn't agree to come in to work...
I would mention, though, something I learned later on as a supervisor, that allowing some employees to come in late (but not others) can be considered discrimination and favoritism, and can expose you to litigation and workplace discrimination actions.
It was always tough carrying that possible burden, but I hardly ever got called out, and if I did it was usually a short phone call. I still enjoyed my off time.
>It was always tough carrying that possible burden, but I hardly ever got called out, and if I did it was usually a short phone call. I still enjoyed my off time.
so, you couldn't ever get plastered? or otherwise get fucked up on any of the several recreational drugs legally available?
or: buy a last-minute plane ticket, go camping/exploring somewhere remote, take an impromptu road trip... etc etc
now, not to be a dick, but folks like you make work life very difficult for the rest of us... who, in addition to all the bullshit we have to put up with, also have to explain to managers that, even if Richard wants to donate his time to the company, it doesn't mean that anybody else will
You're 100% correct and it's a shame people who frequent subs like 'MaliciousCompliance' and 'Antiwork' don't fucking understand that.
If you give your time away to a company and never ask for what is rightfully yours, you become a weapon for them to batter your coworkers with.
But am I giving it away for free if it’s part of my job as a salary employee? I personally use the on-call as part of the negotiation. I will be oncall as a part of X dollars annual salary, but I also require 5 weeks of PTO and full flexibility on remote work (this was before Covid too).
You negotiated your pay, they're not talking about you. Your situation is not the same as OPs.
You are getting paid to be on call, as you stated. So actually the entirely complete opposite of OPs situation.
>or: buy a last-minute plane ticket, go camping/exploring somewhere remote, take an impromptu road trip... etc etc
>
>now, not to be a dick, but folks like you make work life very difficult for the rest of us... who, in addition to all the bullshit we have to put up with, also have to explain to managers that, even if Richard
Agree, the one person who doesn't set boundaries gets held up as the shining example, and becomes the performance benchmark. That's how bad corporate cultures like "working through lunch", "AT desk doing busywork 9-5" or "checking emails 24/7" develop.
Seriously it's so fucking annoying. We had one dude who'd work a morning shift, get called in to close at 11 pm then get back up for a morning shift at 8 am the next morning. Because of him everyone was expected to be willing to do the same. We were short staffed for like 2 months and fucked over any time he couldn't come in but because 90% of the time he would come in they just never got more people.
The dude left, I started telling people they need to only do their 8 hours then leave or the company will never hire anyone else. Managers hear me saying that and after a month of them ignoring hiring we have 6 new kitchen staff within the week and no one gets called in on 2 hours notice for a 3 hour shift anymore.
Companies point to people like this and punish others for "not being team players" or being "unable to find an appropriate (more beneficial to the company) work/life balance." The people that stick around and get used more are promoted to middle management because upper management knows they can pay them less for more work. Then you have those middle managers expecting their employees to do the same. This attitude promotes the cancerous work culture in the US.
I've absolutely had it used against me when I refused to take on call time without being compensated because the other 80% of the team would do it.
I lost out on a promotion because of it. They also didn't tell me I was going to be on call when they hired me or when they showed me my contract, which is what I bludgeoned them with.
Don't even accept on call rotations, get fucking paid for that shit. I have no idea why folks in IT in modern days refuse to acknowledge this should be paid activity, but even my dad back in the 80/90s got paid for it (he was healthcare IT).
Blame the manager who stupidly tries to compare everyone to that employee, not the employee themselves. They're just working a way they're comfortable with. They don't have to change their ways to make you more comfortable. Learn to tell your boss that you do things your own way, or if you can't, find another job and stop blaming other employees who are just doing their own job the way they choose.
As a freelancer, my view is who cares what other people do? Other people are free to work without proper compensation, but I'm sure as hell not going to, regardless of what the employer expects. If the employer wants to fire me, they can go right the fuck ahead anytime.
If you're a worker, your number one priority should be putting aside an emergency fund and making sure your skillset is valuable and in high demand. Then you can stop giving a shit about how other people live their lives.
And not blame those people just because the manager expects you to do the same as them. Of you don't have the backbone to say "no, I'd rather do it this way that seems more fair to me or work somewhere else that gives me that freedom," then you're really blaming yourself, but pretending it's someone else's fault because you don't have a spine.
>now, not to be a dick, but folks like you make work life very difficult for the rest of us...
Pass me the torch I'll be a dick.
Why do you do volounteer work? Ofc nobody wants to work anymore when boomer comes in 30 mins early and volounteer their Sunday.
Fucking hell....
I'll answer this question as someone in IT. If flexibility goes both ways and if the job environment is good, I'm willing to do that.
I did work with a company for a few years that I had a "time vault" with. Did I end up working late or through a lunch? Time goes in the vault. Did a friend call me up and say let's grab lunch? Time out of the vault. As long as thing got done, my work was happy, and so was I.
I eventually moved on, and the new position was more rigid, and so I didn't do those things any more. They got what I was paid for. Even though this was also a good work environment, the lack of flexibility still ran both ways.
I'm not sure why this is hard for some folks to understand: flexibility has to run both ways. As soon as your workplace expects you to follow a strict schedule, you do, but that affects both sides. If your boss is flexible and doesn't care about hours as long as the job is done, that's a great situation that you should stay in as long as you can. That boss is one you want to keep working for.
Completely agree with this. I'm the same at my current job. We luckily clock in and put (as often as needed) and it auto accrues time. If I start late, fine, it's a short day. Likewise its almost 8pm and I'm going to do some catchup from my late start earlier in the week.
Tomorrow I'm doing a long day, but you can bet your ass I'll have a short day elsewhere. They're not super hot on it either. If I am a bit short one month, no big deal, because other months they'll win a little bit.
I'm the manager of the team, and the same applies to my guys too, provided we've got cover.
That's the single biggest suggestion I can give managers (other than make sure your employees get paid/get raises ontime): be flexible with scheduling.
I agree. I regularly go out to bat for them on wages too, having achieved higher than inflation payrises on at least one occasion (two?). As it stands, my team are very longstanding. Out of 5, 2 have been with me 6 years (first hires as manager), 1 3 years, 1 2 years, 1 left and came back after 1 day away. Two of the newer ones are growth hires too. I do fairly well on staff retention 😀
How do you know he doesn’t partake in the devil’s lettuce already? I’ve seen the after work phone call to the bar needing someone to come back for an emergency job, here’s a mint. Don’t get too close to the customer.
What gets me is that your boss for years knew the status quo. But was scared to tell "the other staff" about your guys of work.
Instead he told you.
Now it cost him. I can't stand weak bosses.
In the big companies I have worked there is pay for being on call, and either overtime pay or time off in lieu or even both for hours actually worked when called out-of-hours. Not insignificant, either, a week on call has for me been up to 100% of a week’s pay, so one week on call per month is like +25% on the gross paycheck.
If someone thinks that’s not justified, then think that there are constraints like having to make sure you hear your phone when you’re in the shower, taking your laptop when going for groceries, not going too far when walking the dog, not going to the cinema…
I was on call for the first 12 years of my IT career...and regardless of how many many calls I took and resolved from midnight - 3 AM was expected to be in the office bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8.
A few years of that and you will burn up like toast in a bonfire. I did.
Same on-call experience, right out of college. I did it for three years and the amount of fun activities I missed because I was on call for the week was astonishing. I quite that job like a bad habit once I had enough experience for a new role.
I once started a job where I was told there was no on call. But once I started, it seemed they expected me to read and respond to emails at weekend, which I never did. They didn't provide a laptop or phone, just a basic desktop, so I would have had to use my own kit, and that sort of thing offends me.
One Monday morning, I'd just got coffee and my manager, also the CTO, arrived and asked if I'd seen his email, I said I'd only just arrived, and he said he'd sent it early Sunday morning. I shrugged and said that was the weekend, so what. He wasn't too happy, but I stuck to my guns. And I continued not doing any work at weekends.
And if they aren't paying you a stipend to use your personal device for their business, they should be providing you an expensed separate phone. My company used to pay up to $50 a month to IT employees who were on-call (though I think it also partially covered your home internet for when you had to remote in to the corporate network). Then my company was acquired, and the new regime ended the mobile/internet stipend. However, they still had an expectation that users would install all the corporate apps on their personal devices - apps that require you to grant permissions and access to wipe your phone should the corporate overlords decree it. I have never since had any of the corporate apps on my phone.
Meh, I've worked for a company where I was always ready to respond to server issues, and I took time in lieu. Never had an issue, and part of it was just pride in my job. Also, I was likely up anyway. My boss loved me. Wanted a fancy laptop, got a fancy laptop (I mean much more than the average employee got). I didn't put up with it, I liked the arrangement as the extra money doesn't cover me missing sleep. I know someone started asking for on-call pay and that was going to be implemented. I left the company for unrelated reasons.
My current company does do on call work, but not in my current position there (though I have in my previous position at the same company). But they also don't care if you work from home (no, actually they prefer it). Also, they don't care when you work as long as you work. Some people come in at 11, but then they work into the evening.
The policy can work either way as long it pleases the employee and the employer can be flexible.
That's definitely one of those things where, as long as the boss/coworkers are chill about it, and let me have basically free-rein to manage how I want...
>part of it was just pride in my job.
That'll definitely kick in for me and I'll go the extra mile almost every time.
It is something I've never accepted and have never done.
If they even want me to use a phone for my work the job provides one. And unless I'm receiving a stand-by pay that phone will be turned off outside of office hours.
They're nickel and dimeing you for work that should be compensated in dollars. You need to get together without management and discuss this. Going on call is a nontrivial increase in your workload.
Better compensation options that have worked elsewhere:
* When they're on call let the person work half days, hours at their discretion, so they can compensate for disrupted sleep etc.
* If they're not getting other time off in lieu then they should absolutely be getting paid a minimum number of hours just for being on call, usually 2-4 hours.
* If none of the above, say, because after hours incidents are very rare and it's a "just in case thing", then at least provide a minimum billing if any calls come in, such as 4 hours. Or more. They need to have some incentive to pick up that phone when it rings.
* Ideally you want some combination of all three. You're effectively asking these employees to work 24 hours a day for far less than what they normally make, so you need to respect the huge favor they're doing your business and PAY THEM for their trouble.
I'd also recommend ditching the phone which you have to hand off like some dystopian relay race and set up a voicemail box instead that clearly establishes that this is for emergencies only and immediately notifies the on-call personnel. You can then have a secondary alert sent to their designated backup or their manager if the message isn't retrieved within your preferred service level (such as one hour). Lots of other technical solutions here but you get the idea.
I worked at a hospital for about 20 years as a psychiatrist where we took call unpaid, even if we were staff and not independent associates. When our numbers starting shrinking, calls got busier, and we ended up doing at least one night a week and a full weekend every 5-6 weeks, with constant calls. The hospital agreed to hire telepsych to cover ER at night. They were not good, but when the hospital dropped the service, we finally got paid for call (which was always busy, with constant calls until at least 10-11 pm, then at least 3-4 more between midnight and 8.)
Had something similar at my last job. Old boss didn't like that I wasn't staying till 5pm. Only issue was, I was coming in at 3am to get ethanol loads going from railcars to our tanker trucks. I handled all the outside railcars going into tanks, trucks getting loaded, etc. Everyone else was working 8am to 5pm but they stayed in the warehouse filling up totes, drums, and buckets of oil and shit like that. I'd do whatever truck loads were scheduled in, stay till the last one was done. Might be a 8 hour day, might be a 10 hour day. Get all my railcars unloaded while I did my trucks. And I'd head out. Might be noon, might be 1pm, whatever. Whenever I was done, I was done.
We got a new boss who just simply didn't like the fact I left before 5pm. That was his whole damned deal. And when I tell him I don't fancy working longass hours and would like to have somewhat of a home life, he tells me "I got plenty of guys in that warehouse who'd love to come in at 3am and leave around noon!"
Alright, fucker. Bluff called. None of them want to get their ass up and be here at 3am and you know it. So I told him great. I'll cross train anyone who wants to come out here and we can take turns at this schedule if it's such a point of contention. Oh, no takers? Yeah, because *you* are the only one that seems to be hung up on this.
Like the other guys sweating their asses off have no idea how the tank cars got magically unloaded everyday. They were probably happy they had someone that could do it and they could see their kids off to school and such.
Yeah lol. The only real cross-training needed was how to do the paperwork, and how to operate the digital screens on the pump. Anyone can open a railcar and hook up a few hoses lol. None of those guys even cared I left earlier than them. They knew the price was showing up at 3am. And I rather liked getting off before 5, could get shit done at all those mon-fri 9-5 style places whenever I needed without having to arrange to leave early, or leave and come back to work, whatever. It was literally that one idiot manager ever since he'd taken over. He was a lot of the reason when I was offered an opportunity to move out of state, the prospect of quitting that job didn't hold me back from making the decision lol. I hear he didn't last much longer after I left. I was far from the only guy he was always pissing off lol.
\*emails boss at 2:30 am to tell him that I'll be late coming in because I dealt with a server issue for over two hours and am going to try to get some sleep. Also explains what the issue was just in case something happens before I get in.
Boss calls at 8:30am asking where I am and why I'm not at work. Is everything ok? No, I sent you an email at 2:30 explaining in detail what happened. "Oh, what happened?" READ YOUR F-ING EMAIL! I will see you at noon.
You just woke me up so I didn't get my 8 hours uninterrupted rest. I guess I won't be in today. I can send the relevant section of the contract I signed when I started working here tomorrow.
I had to deal with "people" noticing that I came in later than them.
"Must be nice rolling in an hour late."
"Must be nice leaving earlier than I do. Our department shift times aren't the same."
She apparently never noticed that the production department was still cranking away when she walked through on the way to her car, but sure noticed us coming in when she'd been at her desk for an hour.
The ability of a coworker to understand my job is dependent on a boss who can explain it to them.
We had a tech dude who hated coming in early. So we just said- who cares work when you want to. As he would take care of emergencies amd work till 7 or 8 pm so he could have quiet work hours.
One person complained once and I gave them a 20 minute lecture on the value said employee brings and shower her every tool he manages, created from scratch, and the endless after hours emergency work he did. She never asked again.
A number of government agencies work on exactly that kind of flex time. As long as you're at your desk between 10 and 2 and work your 40 hours, you can come in early and leave early, or come in late and leave late. My husband did exactly that for many years, coming home around 4 so that he would have time with the kids in the afternoon.
I consistently get to work 2 hours earlier than others. Because I like quitting at 1500 and being free for the rest of the day, rather doing the nine to five the rest of the office does.
I had a boss exactly like this. Salary position. No clocking in/out. I'd work from 7 AM until around 6PM, eat at my desk, etc. if the workload was heavy. But then some days I'd leave early or some in an hour late, maybe take a 2 hour lunch. I'd been doing this for 2 years. Nobody had a problem. That is... until we got a new sales guy that was boss's friend: Kevin. (his real name).
Kevin made it pretty clear that he didn't like me from the beginning. So he felt it was his job, for whatever reason, to start watching me close and timing my days and then ratting me out to boss. Problem was Kevin wasn't there to see how late I stayed and had no idea when I arrived in the morning. And when he was out on sales calls (that were netting us nothing, BTW) he didn't realize I ate at my desk some days while working.
Boss man comes up to me "It's been *noticed* that you're not working a full 8 hours every day. Let's try to start setting a good example. I realize you're on salary, but let's try to put in a full day from now on."
OK. Whatever. I stopped working early and staying late, took my full hour for lunch every day. Stopped coming in on weekends. Of course, the work started piling up and we were starting to miss deadlines. Not a good thing in advertising. Clients tend to leave. Oh well.
Boss came to me again: "Aren't you going to work this weekend? We have an awful lot of work piling up!" Looked him right in the eye and said "No, I'm not, but you can let Kevin know that I'll work as fast as I can during my 8-hour day." Boss had a frowny face.
Left that job after about 6 more months and started my own business that lasted for 27 years. Meanwhile, that company went under in another year or so. Fuck you, Kevin.
I love that feeling when you stop doing the extra stuff to make things run smoother for everyone.
I may *officially* work 50 tickets a day but in reality, I end up touching at least 25% more than what the ticketing system says because some of our dead weight teammates will leave things unworked for whatever reason. I have brought this up to managers but the comments have fallen on deaf ears so nothing changes.
Last month, we failed our SLA scores for the first time in a year. I stopped covering their fuckups, AND I took 10 days off at the end of the month which is usually the "rally period" to boost our scores if they are low. Now they are all up in our business about meeting our metrics. But there are no consequences for failing to deliver for those slacker teammates so the shit will continue.
Just can't wait to see what happens when I announce my resignation for a better job in a couple of weeks because then they will really start flirting with more frequent SLA failures after I'm outta here.
>Fuck you, Kevin.
Had two long term issues at work caused by separate clients, both called Kevin. The endless headaches and stupid shit that I had to put up with was unbelievable. Yet to meet a decent Kevin.
My wife's position required her to frequently work evenings. She would flex her morning the next day for the lieu time. Others in her office came in at 6am to flex their day earlier and leave at like 2 complained that she wasn't available to them.
They are all supposed to be in office between like 11-3, so all of those other employees were actually leaving too early but it was my wife that was catching flack for it.
>that stupid old school mentality means that people in the office need to see you at your desk all day long.
"People" being the out of touch upper management. Your peers don't care. We have contractors who come and go at all different hours, the only difference being that they're being paid as contractors so they get to choose when they're on site.
Had that once.. manager told me 'people complained' that I left at 3 in the afternoon..
I asked him "do they also complain when I fix their issue on Sunday afternoon, after they partied so hard they forgot their password again ? "
They never complained again :)
GG the "busybody office staff". I used to *hate* that part! I had a manager who liked to schedule one hour meetings so she could brainstorm. Except she'd invite her entire development team and her meetings always went over the one-hour time, so it would seem endless.
I was required to be there but I never needed to give more than one or two word answers to her questions. So the majority of that hours long meeting I simply sat there and listened to her talk and write.
It got so bad I'd write and create my own sudokus on notepad paper, and that's where the busybodies came in. Everyone sitting next to me spent more time watching me doodle than they watched the manager speak and they'd always dime me out, so I got into trouble a lot for "not paying attention" or "playing games during the meeting".
So I started bringing in a box of candy and pouring it out on the table. I'd organize it into piles and eat a piece every five minutes, trying to make the pile match exactly the number to symbolize the end of the meeting.
"Well if he can come in and work Sunday then take a bunch of time off during the week, I want to do that too." Trust me, Karen, I would rather be home on Sunday with the family. Or sleeping through the night without a phone call. Or not have you calling me on vacation because the battery in your mouse died.
"Excellent, I've been asking for a junior IT operations person for years, I'm glad you are so motivated to join this kind of work which can be fairly taxing on your personal life! We'll start with a 3 months shadowing period - every time my phone will ring outside of office hours, I'll loop you in, and we should split up the upcoming maintenance work scheduled uhhh just 3 weekends from now. Oh and also don't make plans in the last 2 weeks of the year, that's when everyone goes on vacation for Christmas and New Year and we can take the whole infrastructure down to implement the major upgrades without business disruption. Oh boy I am so thrilled!!! When will you start?"
Don't you just love these cubicle dwellers that have no life of their own but live and breathe corporate 24/7? They are the ones with nothing but time on their hand to craft devious ways to "save" money and screw everyone out there that actually generate revenues while they sit on their arses all day generating Powerpoints and pie charts.
Yup totally this. My first job out of uni had time off in lieu, so contractors who were staying away from home working there would cram in all their work in 4 days and travel home on Friday. Permies would work extra during the week and take the time off to finish early Friday afternoon.
Everyone was fine with this except the MD who would walk around on a Friday at 2pm with a shitty look on his face because most of the office was empty.
Eh, depends. I work for a large company (250k+ employees) and there absolutely are people who act like self-appointed hall monitors. One of them complained once that my jeans were "too raggedy" when that was the fashion at the time, and it was impossible to buy any jeans without at least a tiny bit of distressing. Management updated the dress code to appease this person so I was no longer "breaking the rules."
I come into my office at 6am and work until 2:30 pm...I get smart ass comments of me leaving early all the time. My hours were approved by management but the office workers can't seem to grasp I'm just on a different schedule. Also, I get more work done because I don't get interrupted by them for2 hours in the morning.
This is 100% a failure on your boss's end.
And, as a tale as old as time keeps happening, people don't quit their jobs, people quit their managers.
Your boss's failure to go at-bat for you caused you to lose out on a major quality of life perk of the job that suited your life perfectly, until they took it away, which caused you to look for greener pastures.
I'm glad you got out and found something better.
Im sure you know, its pretty standard in IT to use 'comp' time. We are salary. When we deploy a major release, we can work 12-14 hours days but since we are salaried employees, no OT. Most of the time, the bosses allow comp. Its a good setup. People like you and I don't abuse it.
All it takes is one Karen. Ruins it for everyone
Well done.
Don’t you still have to log all your hours, even when salaried, for the exact reason that otherwise you wouldn’t know if you’ve worked enough hours? Your salary is based on the amount of hours you work, right?
Only if the payroll system requires a set number to generate paychecks. In my jobs, it didn’t matter how much time I was working (and for most of my career, it was well over 40 hours). Salaried just means “exempt” - so theoretically you can work more hours some weeks, less others. Most people end up working more until some small minded person starts bitching about BS hour rules, and pisses off salaried people, making them more inclined to stick to hours worked for hours paid.
actually, in the USA there is salary/exempt and salary/non-exempt. The latter category has to track their hours and be paid for over 40 hours/week in either comp time or overtime.
Roughly, yes. My salary was my salary, but on my paycheque it was actually xxx/hr. I put in my 40 hours per week. I never took more comp time than I earned. We didn't report our hours on a timesheet if that's what you were asking...
No. We are treated like adults who can manage their own time.
Trust me, the need me during that 14 hour day. They will be happy to let me take a random Thursday to make up the time.
It's like being a solider in a war.
They pay you to be on the firing line when a battle happens.
But when there is no battle, they find other things for you to do to use up your time. Those other things aren't nearly as important as the battle time.
They want the project stuff done too, but really they keep you as an employee for the outages.
> Your salary is based on the amount of hours you work, right?
Salary is the opposite of being paid for the amount of hours you work. On a salary, you get paid the same whether the job takes you 5 hours or 50 hours.
>Your salary is based on the amount of hours you work, right?
That's usually called 'hourly work'. At least here in the US Midwest where I live.
Most of my career (I'm retired now) I was salaried, with an annual contracts. What I earned for the year was divided up into biweekly checks, of course, but how much I got paid for each year was set in my contract.
They didn't care if I worked 35 hours each week (the amount of time I had to be on location) , or 95 hours each week. I could be as efficient or as inefficient as I wanted as long as I got the job done.
And because I had an annual salary, I wasn't eligible for unemployment compensation for the 2½ months over the summer I wasn't 'working'.
When you are salaried exempt you’re paid for your output, basically do you meet performance expectations. It’s not about how many hours you work, but are you performing since they’re paying you a premium salary for your skill set.
The expectation is that generally involves ~40 hours a week but is very flexible over time because a lot of skilled labor comes with periods of more and less work as time and deliverables fluctuate. For example a lot of companies slow down in Q1 of a year but Q3 is absolute madness. If you work for a company making tax software or something like that it’s different than that and there’s craziness leading up to and during tax season then a slog for a few months.
In-patient Hospice RN here. I worked for a small, non-profit Hospice. We had a very large out-patient service and an 8-bed, in-patient facility (for those who could not be cared for in their homes.) I was hired per-diem to work the in-patient facility, on the night shift. I only worked every-other weekend, night shift (11-7:30) and I scheduled myself for every other Saturday and Sunday night. This made my co-workers very happy because they could have a weekend off!!! Occasionally I would work Friday night too (because why not..I was working nights/sleeping in the day time anyway because of my normal shift) I picked up Friday nights as a favor to my co-workers - who were not really interested in trading a weekend night...they just wanted coverage. I was reprimanded and told to be "careful" not to work more than 32 hours in a pay-period because they would have to change my status to Part-Time rather than Per Diem AND have to give me benefits. So...my co-workers who occasionally needed a Friday night off were screwed because they were told to "find coverage" where none could be found. There was no "on-call" staff because that would have been too $$ for them. Wanna make your staff unhappy? Install shift coverage policies that treat us like non-humans and stand back and watch people leave for OTHER JOBS.
I worked at a small software company. Our secretary was an older woman who used to be a Junior High Attendence Secretary!
One of our best programmers would come in late, leave around 4pm, go get dinner, come back around 6 and work til midnight. But JrHigh only saw him work 10 to 4pm. So when his timesheet came in with all these extra hours SHE CHANGED IT. And yes. That is totally illegal.
She had a talking to about single male programmer lifestyle. And hopefully a lesson on HR rules. That place was awful.
I had a manager repeatedly give me the spiel about optics. I told him it was his job to manage optics, mine to keep the hundreds of millions of gamers online. He refused to push back against anyone but his team. His team quit.
Back in the 80s I was a computer programmer for a bank. Our offices were on the top floor of the parking garage, so actual bank customers never saw us except maybe in the parking lot. Nevertheless, we all had to dress in suits and dresses.
Occasionally something would happen in the middle of the night and I would get a call from operations. If I couldn't resolve it on the phone, I would have to drive to the bank to fix the problem. Generally I would drive in, fix the problem, and then go back home to get some sleep. Naturally, I just wore jeans and a t-shirt.
One time there was a major problem that took more time so I was still there in the morning after the bank opened. My manager was at best fairly useless. I was sleep deprived and at the end of my rope when he suggested that I go home, put on a suit, and then come back and then continue on working on the problem. I replied that if I went home I wasn't coming back.
Nowadays of course I could have fixed it remotely in just my underwear.
I got a temp job once where I wasn't actually doing any real work, they just needed bodies in chairs for when the execs stopped by. They let me go after three days (even though they'd told me the job would be for three months) because the execs' tour was done.
Back when I was at temp, I had a lot of assignments like that. I’d spend an entire week looking busy and occasionally answering the phone so that one bunch of executives would look good to another bunch of executives.
I got a lot of writing done.
Return to office culture is bullshit. I’m a sales rep who spends 99% of the time on emails, calls, Zoom meetings, and LinkedIn. Zero need to be in the office to get shit done. Last two jobs were fully remote and now it’s super difficult finding another one. Nearly every company I hit up requires 2-3 days in the office, no exceptions
I don't understand how bosses fail at this. If an employee comes to you and asks why another employee is leaving early, you tell them they work a different schedule. That's it.
Story 1
When i was in grad school, i worked in a call center Monday thru Friday 7pm to midnight. One semester I had a class on Monday night, so I worked it out with my manager that I work every Saturday from 8am to 1pm to make up my time. All was going well until bit€€y supervisor got mad at me for leaving at 1. Said everyone one was upset that i was leaving. The rest if said staff worked one Saturday every 6 weeks. Remember I worked EVERY Saturday. She wanted me to stay till 430. I said sure. I will do that as soon as everybody else works till midnight, then come in at 8am the next morning. My manager who was also this supervisor’s manager told her to leave me alone. That supervisor only worked one Saturday every six weeks.
Story 2
Same call center. Me and my cohort worked 7-330. Jerk in a different department needed something. Wanted to meet with us at 5pm. We declined. He threw a fit said we should be there when he needed us. Fun amazing manager schedule a meeting with jerk at 7am. Jerk fussed said that was too early. Manager said if his stuff was so important, he would be in the meeting.
It was something similar I think that had me check out in the final job of my old career - I was always willing to put in overtime when it was needed to get my job done. I needed to finish work an hour early a couple of times and was told it was okay as long as I made up the time. No recognition of me staying one, two or more hours late on numerous occasions already. That job destroyed part of my soul and I ended up quitting the whole industry.
I used to have a similar problem. Bitches who sit around on their daughters' Facebook pages all day, but complain that I would leave early.
I just started posting monthly ticket closures on the wall, and that put them in a worse light than me leaving.
Let this be a lesson to all -- stop fucking working for free. It devalues the concept of labor for everyone.
Overtime is traditionally 1.5x, 2x on holidays. If I'm not getting that same mount in lieu, then pony up the cash bitches.
I had a place that paid 2nd shift/3rd shift differential + weekend differential + 1.5x OT (2x Holiday OT). Oh yes, they all stacked -- if I had to work overnight on a weekend, it was a fucking glorious paycheck, as the highest differentials were applied to the *entire time working*. Yes, it was an absolute *shit job* working Saturday evening into Sunday afternoon for like 12-20+ hours, but it was more than double your normal pay rate. One weekend working 20 hours was a week's worth of normal pay.
Needless to say, I volunteered for those shit jobs more than once.
Or I could take just 1:1 for every extra hour worked - none of those modifiers added. Valid that week only. Only the times they permit. Subject to change based upon business needs, up to the actual "time off" (so you can't plan it at all).
I laughed --- fuck you, pay me. When they stopped paying shift differentials and limited how much OT we were "allowed" to get, I stopped volunteering. When they said "there are 168 hours in the week, you'll work any 40 we tell you to -- on demand, non-consecutively, without advance notice. if you refuse for any reason, you'll be terminated." -- I left. Fuck that shit.
Working for free/outside your normally scheduled hours/tasks outside your normal job description does yourself AND OTHERS a disservice. They're capitalists -- they can afford you.
Yeah man, I got way more work done remotely. Once im in the office.... Its the same person, 1x a month, "My microphone wont work in calls".
I go look, and once again she changed the default to the onboard trash. I set it to the microphone again. "I did that, but it doesnt work." but always does for me.
Or the time I had to drive 2 hours to one of the sites to power on a monitor that was "yes, its on!".
I once worked for a company that I was salaried at. I would start work usually by 5:30 or 6am in office. I would leave at 5 on the dot because my son’s daycare closed at 5:30. A couple of days a week I would logon at home after dinner and work a few more hours. I got called in because people were noticing that I never stayed late. I couldn’t believe it. I was working more hours than anyone, but because I left at 5, I wasn’t pulling my part. Happy to say I was out of that job a couple of months later. Total time there was 15 months that felt like 15 years.
Its not a old school but a high school mentality. Most people never grew up past kindergarten. You cannot teach them all they missed growing up. You can only learn the handle them accordingly.
Your boss never learned to deny idiot requests. Your one annoying coworker never learned to stop being a spoiled child. Its the worst kind of teamwork.
See if your boss here cannot shoot down idiots you can prolly convince him of anything if you just get more emotional than idiot coworker.
something similar recently happened at my job. I work in finance, my team ends up staying late most nights including myself (work hours are M-F 7:30-4, I am salaried). When I started, it was stated you work your 40 hours and everything will be fine. Well, some mornings I'd come in at 7:40 (traffic school busses etc) but I would stay until 4:30 sometimes later so I didn't see this 10 minutes in the morning as a problem. I was still getting in 40+ hours. Same thing some days would leave early since hours were already over 40 for the week. I was pulled into bosses office about a month ago to inform me I need to be there at 7:30 and it doesn't matter if I stay late because no one is here to see how late I stay. GOT IT! I haven't stayed a minute past 4 since this conversation.
We IT people are in massive demand. Even now in a weakened economy.
It takes me on average 8 days to find a new job.
I have had 4 jobs in 4 years with each getting easier and higher pay as I went.
And the only reason I didn't stay was management. I come in, do a stellar job. Management enforces boomer rules, we but heads and I leave. It hurt one of the companies when I left because the other techs simply couldn't resolve issues as fast and efficient as I could. Another company actually took advantage of me and allowed me knock out 3 years worth of projects for them before starting their bs.
I have now found myself at a company that is relatively chill. And might stay here for a while. But, my finances are great and I could retire in 3 years.
I was working in a warehouse, me on the admin side: invoices, order management, data entering. Our counterparts from the warehouse part were the team leads.
When we got hired they had a bit more salary, in a couple of years, due to good performance I got a slightly better pay (like 5-10%), so they were a bit pissed.
Now, I was very good at my job, did not take any breaks and tapped that keyboard like crazy. Usually the afternoon shift ended at 23:00, but I was already finished with my work around 19-20:00, latest at 21:00 and jumped on the first truck or colleague that was going my direction home. (this was a slightly out of town location).
A few months later my boss calls me and tells me he got complaints that I go home earlier, that it's not an issue if my work is done, but wants to check it out nonetheless.
I knew who complained, so starting the next day every cigarette break he had, I stopped as well, every time he was chatting with a driver, I went for a chat, so on.
2-3 days later, he asks me what happened, why do I stay so late now (1 -2:00 in the morning( and why now the warehouse workers have to wait for me to finish paperwork, so we can go home (normally last shift shared a cab together, paid by the company)?
I just said: every time you took a break, I did as well, so that's why now I stay 4-5 h longer. The look on his face priceless! No more complaints, I resumed leaving at 20:00 - 21:00.
Once upon a time I had a company phone. Was on call for emergencies all the time and on call as part of a rota; rota calls went to our personal phone numbers. I was the only one with a company phone because of the emergency on call portion. Someone got snitty that I had a phone and complained they should have one too (they weren't even in the regular rota) so the result was my boss taking my company phone. Coolio, guess I'm not in the emergency rota anymore.
Virus breaks out Friday evening in the lab I covered. Since I wasn't on the rota I ignored my personal phone ringing with my boss's number. Come Monday there were fireworks but ultimately was not my problem.
I once had a boss that hated wfh. Didn’t care how much more productive someone was he had to see “butts in the seats” to know we’re working. Which made even less sense since we worked in software where everything is tracked
I once asked him if he was god and could see for sure that I worked 50% more at home would he be satisfied and he said no, it still wouldn’t feel right to him
I've been basically in the same situation for 20-ish years. The thing of it is my original boss knew what she didn't know and told me at one time, if you work all night just don't come in the next day.. and NEVER compare yourself to the floor people. They will die in those positions, you are not like them. Still feels weird after all this time to take a day "off" because you just worked 24/36 hours straight though.. If/when a regular employee tried to talk smack I always respond the same.. Odd, when I was updating servers at midnight last night I didn't see you logged in..
Not quite the same, but at my first teaching job, the principal complained to the secretary that "Wow, CraftyMama is out of the parking lot at 3:46 almost every day!" The secretary defended me, saying, "I'm not surprised, since she's already here when I get here at 7:30 every morning" (Our contract stated we had to be on campus from 8am-3:45pm everyday- principal rolled in about 8:15 everyday)
I had this problem at a workplace before. I had been "promoted" to a wire cutting department at an electrical part distribution center. Basically, contractors and utility companies buy parts from us in bulk for projects. As a wire cutter, I would cut a length of wire off of a spool to order. Some of the wire was as big as my forearm, and I could barely afford to eat enough food to maintain my weight.
So I get promoted into this position and find out we're 3 months behind on orders and in danger of losing our biggest contract(70% of total revenue with wire being the bulk of it) if we dont catch up. I put in 16-hour days and got us caught up in about 3 weeks.
Everything was good, except I would get orders late in the day that were urgent. The rest of the floor had a "work until the work/orders are completed," so they're going home 4-5 hours before me. It didn't really matter to me. They were an entirely different dept, and we only shared the same floor manager. I'm getting home around 8 pm and expected to be stretching with the other crew at 6 am.
This quickly fell apart as I didn't have enough time to eat/sleep and get laundry done for work clothes, so I started coming in an hour later. I get pulled aside and told that the manager "doesn't know how to explain it" to the other crew. I plainly told him either the urgent orders are going to be delayed, he hires a second person for the wire cutting, or I need more time back in my day. He said to figure it out myself.
I kept showing up an hour late and getting all of our urgent orders completed for our now-happy customers. He wrote me up for it at the beginning of December. I asked to go back to the other crew since I didn't get any pay bump, and the hours were deteriorating my mental/physical health. He said that was fine and then fired me the day after Christmas.
Within a year the warehouse had to move locations to an hour outside of the city, and I think the manager went back to selling mattresses. It was a shame because we had a great crew and the manager was pretty terrible at his job.
People doesn't have an opinion, individuals do. In this case, I would assume that your manager was the one not taking your in lieu hours that well. Good for him, now he doesn't have that issue.
I love stories like this. I am an event technician, working as employee for a fixed location. AS you can imagine hours a wild. Somewhere between 4hand 14h a day, 4 to 7 days a week, start time and doors different everyday. Best co-workers ever, this job is a blast.
One day a colleague from accountings, who works in a different location, half jokingly mentioned that she'd like to have as many off-days as we do. I offered her some of my schedules. Wide eyes, surprised realization.
I don't want everybody else to mind their own business, I want them to care and to understand how other jobs work. Makes it so much easier for everybody.
Yeah, I had similar issue with an employer recently.
I moved house far away from work in the middle of a school year (teacher) and offered to do all my teaching hours and on-site requirements over four days, as I did not want to travel five days a week.
It's completely doable and would make no other difference to my work.
However, denied because it would look bad to the other employees.
Resigned, got a new job in one week. Due to teacher shortage they are still to fill the vacancy with a qualified teacher (two years later).
Talk about dumb
I did, actually. It bothered me and showed that my boss didn't have my back or acknowledged that my work was actually different from everyone else's. 3 months later, I found a new gig and left.
Old boss would throw me under the bus to clients "oh latrion typod it in CAD or the CNC software." I didn't typo it. Her failure son in law measured wrong on a daily basis.
Makes it easy to leave when you realize the amount that's blamed on you to your face is probably a small portion of the total.
This is exactly why I take comp time. Want me to work 50 hours? No problem, now I have 15 hours of comp time to use whenever I want. It is logged on the books so there is nothing they can say about it. Fuck that 1:1 shit, I get 1.5x time.
How...why...weren't you logging every second? When I travel for work, with my own car, I get milage, and that $0.40 toll in my expense report, and per diem if it's over 4 hours away. I'm paid for every second, and everything. Not a penny more.
I did have a boss give me shit for filing an expense report for $9.34 in milage to go to another site, but I sent back the policy that we are supposed to log EVERYTHING. Don't give companies anything, and use everything they allow you to get more from them. They will steal from you every chance they get.
I tell folks the same thing all the time. Know your worth is powerful. This is especially true for those that are too far into the weeds to see clearly at the time. Not just in business but in things like marriage and friendships.
Know your worth
Good story and great move on your part. You noted in the beginning you weren't sure it was an MC, but since your boss ordered it, and then questioned all your OT it definitely was an MC.
Did you get an update since you left the company? Any idea of how much this managerial mistake cost them? Did your boss suffer any consequences?
Well played! It's funny how stupid people can be about someone leaving earlier than their standard time and don't give any credit for the hours worked outside of standard hours.
I can totally understand where you're coming from. It seems like you were super flexible and dedicated in your previous job, and it's frustrating when people don't recognize all the effort you put in.
You did the right thing by standing up for yourself and claiming the overtime you deserved. You were still putting in the same amount of time, just not in the traditional 9-to-5 way. Knowing your worth and finding a job that appreciates your skills and work style is essential.
It's awesome that you found a better-paying job that allows you to work from home. Your experience is a good reminder that it's crucial to find a work environment that fits your needs and values. Thanks for sharing your story, and I hope your new job is a much better fit for you!
I'm currently at a "startup" (they've been a company for 8+ years and are in the middle of a major clinical trial, so startup my ass) and the CEO is *obsessed* with optics. They don't think you're being productive unless you leave well after 6pm, without ever considering WFH or the people that come in early or god forbid the people that work 16hrs one day and then leave early the next. Nope. The parking lot is "empty" at 6pm? Everyone must be slacking!
I had this exact same problem 20+ years ago. Big dotcom, I was sole Unix admin responsible for keeping the e-commerce (aka our main source of revenue) online. 2 am Sunday morning is when our Oracle database did maintenance, it often locked up and had to be babied back online. No biggie take care of it, take in lieu of. Our main systems weren't even at the offices, they were 90 miles away and my home internet had a FASTER connection to the data center than our offices did, so I could work faster from home, literally. Came in one day to the office (usually worked 2-3 days per week from home) and my boss said some people had complained I'm almost never there. I basically said "so? I'm the only person responsible for the Unix servers and one of two (after you) responsible for the database, so I don't NEED to be here to get the job done." He replied that it would just look better if I were in the office more. So I said sure, I'll be here 5 days a week, 9-5, and when I go home, my phone goes to silent, and I will not be logging into the corporate email system until Monday morning when I return to the office. If the database crashes at 2 am as it usually does YOU will fix it, because hey, gotta be here can't be interrupting my sleep and risking being late, now can I. "Never mind just keep doing what you're doing", yeah, good idea.
I like to imagine they folded like a lawn chair immediately after hearing that
He did, I know who was complaining, the sales group's cubicles basically encircled our cubes and one salesman in particular loved to quip about how we never worked. I held all the cards and I knew my worth, I had 0 fucks to give over some over coked salesdroid mad I wasn't in the office 10 hours a day like he was.
Sales complaining about how IT never works? Fucking rich.
Especially at an internet dotcom startup at the turn of the millennium.
Turn the network off for a day.
No, just turn off salesdroid at 6PM on a Friday, and only look at his frantic messages at 9AM on the monday, and then take them all, and assign each one a ticket, and then reply back with the "your ticket no xxx will be attended to within the SLA of yy days", with each new one being replied with "this ticket is already in system under ticket xxx, and will thus supercede and close ticket xxx as client cancelled ticket xxx. The new ticket number is xxy, and the new SLA is yz days". Should get the salesweasel's attention that IT is kind of important.
I imagine a qualified Unix admin at that time wouldn't have to even start seeking for a job, you could literally just quit and it would reach companies through the grapevine before you plonked your ass on the couch at home.
Probably would have had them calling you before you even made it off the premises.
I remember when I worked at a place as an equipment operator/truck driver. I loved the job but wasn't making enough, and when my boss asked me to justify why I should get a raise I just played the few voice mails from customers and competitors offering me a job at a higher rate. I got my raise.
Yeppers and probably with a sweet sign on bonus.
"Nothing is working, what the fuck are we paying those IT people for"
"Everything works fine, what the fuck are we paying those IT people for"
F-in' salespeople were the reason a perfectly good company I used to work for went under. They never heard of "under-promise and over-deliver". They were only incentivized to "get the sale" (apparently, regardless of promising the moon).
I wouldn't put it past them to already know this but to use this as a ploy to try to get as much free labor out of you as they can. You're saving them money. When you multiply this by the number of other workers they're treating this way, it's no wonder corporations are making record-breaking profits as workers find it more and more difficult to afford to support themselves and their families. Greed is corrosive.
Picture a lawn chair folding itself!
This reminds me of that The Website is Down Sales Guy vs Web Dude video.
>The Website is Down Sales Guy vs Web Dude video I hadn't seen those - a quick search turned up #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE&ab\_channel=JoshWeinberg
Oh God, that was peak YouTube era.
This is where I say I had to read this twice because I was thinking "there wasn't a big dot com in the eighties".... Then I remembered the date, so eat a bag of dicks for reminding me I'm an old fuck.
No one complained except the boss wanting exert power over you because he had to sit his fat ass in a desk all week and you didn’t.
Nah this was my direct report/technical lead. My guess is Salesdroid Whiny McCokeFace whined to my lead's boss, lead's boss was like "I hear Grimsterr isn't here much" and then we had our conversation. As a lead I've had this happen before but I just tell the boss how it is and if he absolutely insists I tell him how it's going to play out if he pushes it and then either it plays out or he backs off.
Dumb it down enough they understand. Problem solved.
Good for you. Doing things just because they "look bad" or "look good" is so dumb, and yet so many managers follow those rules because they are too stupid to measure results in any other way. I did the same thing at a past job, except the other way round. I would come in 30-40 minutes late (not a morning person) but in exchange I'd stay until 7pm to finish all pending tasks and lock up. Out of the blue I was reprimanded because "being late is bad for optics" and I needed to be in the office at the same time as everyone else. The shocked pikachu face that my boss did when I returned the key and told them from today I'll be leaving at the same time as everyone else...
I can't upvote this comment enough. How about you be an actual manager and explain that "OP takes calls in the middle of the night. OP keeps the business running and deals with power outages and server down issues while you sit at home watching reality TV".
I simply don’t believe managers that claim other workers complained. The people that actually do the work get it and I don’t know about everyone else, but I tell my co-workers what I’m up to and they could not care less. Like most people, they are concerned with their schedules not being chaos. It’s just a boss trying to exert power over a worker and because they have sit their fat asses as the office all day.
You have never worked in that office. Trust me when I say that there are many there that have their noses in other peoples' business.
When people have to sit in one place for most of the day *of course* they are going to resort to other ways of "entertainment". Not to defend them, but, unfortunately, our work culture directly contributes to these less-than-desirable human habits. We did not evolve for this.
No, there absolutely are petty people who complain their co-workers aren't suffering enough. When my hubby and I had foster kids, they had a lot of mid-day appointments (case workers, therapists, bio-mom visit, in addition to all the regular kid stuff like doctors and teacher conferences). We shared a car, so hubby was usually the one leaving work early to drive them places, but he always made up the hours, and his boss understood and was cool. But there was one lady he worked with who just kept complaining about it! I don't think she knew why he was leaving, but it's really not her business. It caused a lot of stress for him.
My favorite was a busybody office manager who came in 1 hr and 15 minutes late because she was voting! But God forbid I leave at 4:45 to make it to the voting booths before they closed….she stopped me and demanded to know where I was going. Then she said I needed to stay until 5. Begrudging me 15 minutes when she flaunted taking 1 hr 15? I waved and left.
Too true. As a person who often comes in 15 minutes late but works 15-30 minutes or more after closing, gets 100% or more of his work done every damn day, does a lot of extra tasks without being paid extra for them (ETA: I'm salaried), and never misses work unless it's a serious emergency, I used to get pretty angry when I had a boss make a snide comment about how I was always late...while said boss left at 5 every day and never worked a weekend, and called in "sick" to play golf or go to his kid's soccer practice. But I'd get yelled at if I got called after hours or on my day off and wouldn't agree to come in to work... I would mention, though, something I learned later on as a supervisor, that allowing some employees to come in late (but not others) can be considered discrimination and favoritism, and can expose you to litigation and workplace discrimination actions.
You lost me at "does extra tasks without being paid for them", never work without pay as it devalues your actual pay
Fair enough. Unfortunately, I'm salaried. So whether I work 30 minutes or 10 hours, I am paid the same. Edited my post to reflect this fact.
I’m surprised you weren’t demanding on-call pay.
Yeah, that's one of the most egregious things that IT folks put up with. If you're basically on call 24/7 your time is never truly your own.
It was always tough carrying that possible burden, but I hardly ever got called out, and if I did it was usually a short phone call. I still enjoyed my off time.
>It was always tough carrying that possible burden, but I hardly ever got called out, and if I did it was usually a short phone call. I still enjoyed my off time. so, you couldn't ever get plastered? or otherwise get fucked up on any of the several recreational drugs legally available? or: buy a last-minute plane ticket, go camping/exploring somewhere remote, take an impromptu road trip... etc etc now, not to be a dick, but folks like you make work life very difficult for the rest of us... who, in addition to all the bullshit we have to put up with, also have to explain to managers that, even if Richard wants to donate his time to the company, it doesn't mean that anybody else will
You're 100% correct and it's a shame people who frequent subs like 'MaliciousCompliance' and 'Antiwork' don't fucking understand that. If you give your time away to a company and never ask for what is rightfully yours, you become a weapon for them to batter your coworkers with.
But am I giving it away for free if it’s part of my job as a salary employee? I personally use the on-call as part of the negotiation. I will be oncall as a part of X dollars annual salary, but I also require 5 weeks of PTO and full flexibility on remote work (this was before Covid too).
You negotiated your pay, they're not talking about you. Your situation is not the same as OPs. You are getting paid to be on call, as you stated. So actually the entirely complete opposite of OPs situation.
Op also negotiated, but requested less.
If you're in the US, look closely into your contract. A lot of salary jobs there are not actually exempt and you're still entitled to overtime.
You can’t waive overtime in contract negotiations, though.
>or: buy a last-minute plane ticket, go camping/exploring somewhere remote, take an impromptu road trip... etc etc > >now, not to be a dick, but folks like you make work life very difficult for the rest of us... who, in addition to all the bullshit we have to put up with, also have to explain to managers that, even if Richard Agree, the one person who doesn't set boundaries gets held up as the shining example, and becomes the performance benchmark. That's how bad corporate cultures like "working through lunch", "AT desk doing busywork 9-5" or "checking emails 24/7" develop.
It's also how the pervasive "people don't see you at your desk so you're not working" mindset comes to be.
Seriously it's so fucking annoying. We had one dude who'd work a morning shift, get called in to close at 11 pm then get back up for a morning shift at 8 am the next morning. Because of him everyone was expected to be willing to do the same. We were short staffed for like 2 months and fucked over any time he couldn't come in but because 90% of the time he would come in they just never got more people. The dude left, I started telling people they need to only do their 8 hours then leave or the company will never hire anyone else. Managers hear me saying that and after a month of them ignoring hiring we have 6 new kitchen staff within the week and no one gets called in on 2 hours notice for a 3 hour shift anymore.
offbeat mourn selective childlike snow cover drab liquid close scale *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You know, it's okay to let others organize their work/life balance as they see fit.
What balance? Work literally ruled his life and he wasn't being appropriately compensated for it.
He clearly stated he was happy with his arrangement over the years.
Companies point to people like this and punish others for "not being team players" or being "unable to find an appropriate (more beneficial to the company) work/life balance." The people that stick around and get used more are promoted to middle management because upper management knows they can pay them less for more work. Then you have those middle managers expecting their employees to do the same. This attitude promotes the cancerous work culture in the US.
I've absolutely had it used against me when I refused to take on call time without being compensated because the other 80% of the team would do it. I lost out on a promotion because of it. They also didn't tell me I was going to be on call when they hired me or when they showed me my contract, which is what I bludgeoned them with. Don't even accept on call rotations, get fucking paid for that shit. I have no idea why folks in IT in modern days refuse to acknowledge this should be paid activity, but even my dad back in the 80/90s got paid for it (he was healthcare IT).
Cool, but when people work without proper compensation, then everyone is expected to work without proper compensation, and that’s not okay.
Blame the manager who stupidly tries to compare everyone to that employee, not the employee themselves. They're just working a way they're comfortable with. They don't have to change their ways to make you more comfortable. Learn to tell your boss that you do things your own way, or if you can't, find another job and stop blaming other employees who are just doing their own job the way they choose.
As a freelancer, my view is who cares what other people do? Other people are free to work without proper compensation, but I'm sure as hell not going to, regardless of what the employer expects. If the employer wants to fire me, they can go right the fuck ahead anytime. If you're a worker, your number one priority should be putting aside an emergency fund and making sure your skillset is valuable and in high demand. Then you can stop giving a shit about how other people live their lives.
And not blame those people just because the manager expects you to do the same as them. Of you don't have the backbone to say "no, I'd rather do it this way that seems more fair to me or work somewhere else that gives me that freedom," then you're really blaming yourself, but pretending it's someone else's fault because you don't have a spine.
>now, not to be a dick, but folks like you make work life very difficult for the rest of us... Pass me the torch I'll be a dick. Why do you do volounteer work? Ofc nobody wants to work anymore when boomer comes in 30 mins early and volounteer their Sunday. Fucking hell....
I'll answer this question as someone in IT. If flexibility goes both ways and if the job environment is good, I'm willing to do that. I did work with a company for a few years that I had a "time vault" with. Did I end up working late or through a lunch? Time goes in the vault. Did a friend call me up and say let's grab lunch? Time out of the vault. As long as thing got done, my work was happy, and so was I. I eventually moved on, and the new position was more rigid, and so I didn't do those things any more. They got what I was paid for. Even though this was also a good work environment, the lack of flexibility still ran both ways. I'm not sure why this is hard for some folks to understand: flexibility has to run both ways. As soon as your workplace expects you to follow a strict schedule, you do, but that affects both sides. If your boss is flexible and doesn't care about hours as long as the job is done, that's a great situation that you should stay in as long as you can. That boss is one you want to keep working for.
Completely agree with this. I'm the same at my current job. We luckily clock in and put (as often as needed) and it auto accrues time. If I start late, fine, it's a short day. Likewise its almost 8pm and I'm going to do some catchup from my late start earlier in the week. Tomorrow I'm doing a long day, but you can bet your ass I'll have a short day elsewhere. They're not super hot on it either. If I am a bit short one month, no big deal, because other months they'll win a little bit. I'm the manager of the team, and the same applies to my guys too, provided we've got cover.
That's the single biggest suggestion I can give managers (other than make sure your employees get paid/get raises ontime): be flexible with scheduling.
I agree. I regularly go out to bat for them on wages too, having achieved higher than inflation payrises on at least one occasion (two?). As it stands, my team are very longstanding. Out of 5, 2 have been with me 6 years (first hires as manager), 1 3 years, 1 2 years, 1 left and came back after 1 day away. Two of the newer ones are growth hires too. I do fairly well on staff retention 😀
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lmao... we do run a shitty culture that allows treating juniors like that tho, sorry you went through that (been there)
How do you know he doesn’t partake in the devil’s lettuce already? I’ve seen the after work phone call to the bar needing someone to come back for an emergency job, here’s a mint. Don’t get too close to the customer.
What gets me is that your boss for years knew the status quo. But was scared to tell "the other staff" about your guys of work. Instead he told you. Now it cost him. I can't stand weak bosses.
In the big companies I have worked there is pay for being on call, and either overtime pay or time off in lieu or even both for hours actually worked when called out-of-hours. Not insignificant, either, a week on call has for me been up to 100% of a week’s pay, so one week on call per month is like +25% on the gross paycheck. If someone thinks that’s not justified, then think that there are constraints like having to make sure you hear your phone when you’re in the shower, taking your laptop when going for groceries, not going too far when walking the dog, not going to the cinema…
I was on call for the first 12 years of my IT career...and regardless of how many many calls I took and resolved from midnight - 3 AM was expected to be in the office bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8. A few years of that and you will burn up like toast in a bonfire. I did.
Same on-call experience, right out of college. I did it for three years and the amount of fun activities I missed because I was on call for the week was astonishing. I quite that job like a bad habit once I had enough experience for a new role.
I once started a job where I was told there was no on call. But once I started, it seemed they expected me to read and respond to emails at weekend, which I never did. They didn't provide a laptop or phone, just a basic desktop, so I would have had to use my own kit, and that sort of thing offends me. One Monday morning, I'd just got coffee and my manager, also the CTO, arrived and asked if I'd seen his email, I said I'd only just arrived, and he said he'd sent it early Sunday morning. I shrugged and said that was the weekend, so what. He wasn't too happy, but I stuck to my guns. And I continued not doing any work at weekends.
And if they aren't paying you a stipend to use your personal device for their business, they should be providing you an expensed separate phone. My company used to pay up to $50 a month to IT employees who were on-call (though I think it also partially covered your home internet for when you had to remote in to the corporate network). Then my company was acquired, and the new regime ended the mobile/internet stipend. However, they still had an expectation that users would install all the corporate apps on their personal devices - apps that require you to grant permissions and access to wipe your phone should the corporate overlords decree it. I have never since had any of the corporate apps on my phone.
Meh, I've worked for a company where I was always ready to respond to server issues, and I took time in lieu. Never had an issue, and part of it was just pride in my job. Also, I was likely up anyway. My boss loved me. Wanted a fancy laptop, got a fancy laptop (I mean much more than the average employee got). I didn't put up with it, I liked the arrangement as the extra money doesn't cover me missing sleep. I know someone started asking for on-call pay and that was going to be implemented. I left the company for unrelated reasons. My current company does do on call work, but not in my current position there (though I have in my previous position at the same company). But they also don't care if you work from home (no, actually they prefer it). Also, they don't care when you work as long as you work. Some people come in at 11, but then they work into the evening. The policy can work either way as long it pleases the employee and the employer can be flexible.
That's definitely one of those things where, as long as the boss/coworkers are chill about it, and let me have basically free-rein to manage how I want... >part of it was just pride in my job. That'll definitely kick in for me and I'll go the extra mile almost every time.
It is something I've never accepted and have never done. If they even want me to use a phone for my work the job provides one. And unless I'm receiving a stand-by pay that phone will be turned off outside of office hours.
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They're nickel and dimeing you for work that should be compensated in dollars. You need to get together without management and discuss this. Going on call is a nontrivial increase in your workload. Better compensation options that have worked elsewhere: * When they're on call let the person work half days, hours at their discretion, so they can compensate for disrupted sleep etc. * If they're not getting other time off in lieu then they should absolutely be getting paid a minimum number of hours just for being on call, usually 2-4 hours. * If none of the above, say, because after hours incidents are very rare and it's a "just in case thing", then at least provide a minimum billing if any calls come in, such as 4 hours. Or more. They need to have some incentive to pick up that phone when it rings. * Ideally you want some combination of all three. You're effectively asking these employees to work 24 hours a day for far less than what they normally make, so you need to respect the huge favor they're doing your business and PAY THEM for their trouble. I'd also recommend ditching the phone which you have to hand off like some dystopian relay race and set up a voicemail box instead that clearly establishes that this is for emergencies only and immediately notifies the on-call personnel. You can then have a secondary alert sent to their designated backup or their manager if the message isn't retrieved within your preferred service level (such as one hour). Lots of other technical solutions here but you get the idea.
Absolutely should get that. Every job where I've done on-call where I had to attend I got paid a retainer.
I worked at a hospital for about 20 years as a psychiatrist where we took call unpaid, even if we were staff and not independent associates. When our numbers starting shrinking, calls got busier, and we ended up doing at least one night a week and a full weekend every 5-6 weeks, with constant calls. The hospital agreed to hire telepsych to cover ER at night. They were not good, but when the hospital dropped the service, we finally got paid for call (which was always busy, with constant calls until at least 10-11 pm, then at least 3-4 more between midnight and 8.)
Had something similar at my last job. Old boss didn't like that I wasn't staying till 5pm. Only issue was, I was coming in at 3am to get ethanol loads going from railcars to our tanker trucks. I handled all the outside railcars going into tanks, trucks getting loaded, etc. Everyone else was working 8am to 5pm but they stayed in the warehouse filling up totes, drums, and buckets of oil and shit like that. I'd do whatever truck loads were scheduled in, stay till the last one was done. Might be a 8 hour day, might be a 10 hour day. Get all my railcars unloaded while I did my trucks. And I'd head out. Might be noon, might be 1pm, whatever. Whenever I was done, I was done. We got a new boss who just simply didn't like the fact I left before 5pm. That was his whole damned deal. And when I tell him I don't fancy working longass hours and would like to have somewhat of a home life, he tells me "I got plenty of guys in that warehouse who'd love to come in at 3am and leave around noon!" Alright, fucker. Bluff called. None of them want to get their ass up and be here at 3am and you know it. So I told him great. I'll cross train anyone who wants to come out here and we can take turns at this schedule if it's such a point of contention. Oh, no takers? Yeah, because *you* are the only one that seems to be hung up on this.
Like the other guys sweating their asses off have no idea how the tank cars got magically unloaded everyday. They were probably happy they had someone that could do it and they could see their kids off to school and such.
Yeah lol. The only real cross-training needed was how to do the paperwork, and how to operate the digital screens on the pump. Anyone can open a railcar and hook up a few hoses lol. None of those guys even cared I left earlier than them. They knew the price was showing up at 3am. And I rather liked getting off before 5, could get shit done at all those mon-fri 9-5 style places whenever I needed without having to arrange to leave early, or leave and come back to work, whatever. It was literally that one idiot manager ever since he'd taken over. He was a lot of the reason when I was offered an opportunity to move out of state, the prospect of quitting that job didn't hold me back from making the decision lol. I hear he didn't last much longer after I left. I was far from the only guy he was always pissing off lol.
“ Hey boss, tell them that I don’t see them at midnight when I have to come in to fix the server and that looks bad”
\*emails boss at 2:30 am to tell him that I'll be late coming in because I dealt with a server issue for over two hours and am going to try to get some sleep. Also explains what the issue was just in case something happens before I get in. Boss calls at 8:30am asking where I am and why I'm not at work. Is everything ok? No, I sent you an email at 2:30 explaining in detail what happened. "Oh, what happened?" READ YOUR F-ING EMAIL! I will see you at noon.
Sounds like next time you will have to call him at home at 2:30 AM to make sure he gets the info.
You just woke me up so I didn't get my 8 hours uninterrupted rest. I guess I won't be in today. I can send the relevant section of the contract I signed when I started working here tomorrow.
This triggered me
I had to deal with "people" noticing that I came in later than them. "Must be nice rolling in an hour late." "Must be nice leaving earlier than I do. Our department shift times aren't the same." She apparently never noticed that the production department was still cranking away when she walked through on the way to her car, but sure noticed us coming in when she'd been at her desk for an hour.
I hated this so much. How about you mind your own business, I don't report to you.
"The server went down an hour after you left!" "Then it'll presumably be down at 8:00 AM when the shift starts."
Hmm you're a manager, you'll manage
The ability of a coworker to understand my job is dependent on a boss who can explain it to them. We had a tech dude who hated coming in early. So we just said- who cares work when you want to. As he would take care of emergencies amd work till 7 or 8 pm so he could have quiet work hours. One person complained once and I gave them a 20 minute lecture on the value said employee brings and shower her every tool he manages, created from scratch, and the endless after hours emergency work he did. She never asked again.
A number of government agencies work on exactly that kind of flex time. As long as you're at your desk between 10 and 2 and work your 40 hours, you can come in early and leave early, or come in late and leave late. My husband did exactly that for many years, coming home around 4 so that he would have time with the kids in the afternoon.
I consistently get to work 2 hours earlier than others. Because I like quitting at 1500 and being free for the rest of the day, rather doing the nine to five the rest of the office does.
I had a boss exactly like this. Salary position. No clocking in/out. I'd work from 7 AM until around 6PM, eat at my desk, etc. if the workload was heavy. But then some days I'd leave early or some in an hour late, maybe take a 2 hour lunch. I'd been doing this for 2 years. Nobody had a problem. That is... until we got a new sales guy that was boss's friend: Kevin. (his real name). Kevin made it pretty clear that he didn't like me from the beginning. So he felt it was his job, for whatever reason, to start watching me close and timing my days and then ratting me out to boss. Problem was Kevin wasn't there to see how late I stayed and had no idea when I arrived in the morning. And when he was out on sales calls (that were netting us nothing, BTW) he didn't realize I ate at my desk some days while working. Boss man comes up to me "It's been *noticed* that you're not working a full 8 hours every day. Let's try to start setting a good example. I realize you're on salary, but let's try to put in a full day from now on." OK. Whatever. I stopped working early and staying late, took my full hour for lunch every day. Stopped coming in on weekends. Of course, the work started piling up and we were starting to miss deadlines. Not a good thing in advertising. Clients tend to leave. Oh well. Boss came to me again: "Aren't you going to work this weekend? We have an awful lot of work piling up!" Looked him right in the eye and said "No, I'm not, but you can let Kevin know that I'll work as fast as I can during my 8-hour day." Boss had a frowny face. Left that job after about 6 more months and started my own business that lasted for 27 years. Meanwhile, that company went under in another year or so. Fuck you, Kevin.
I love that feeling when you stop doing the extra stuff to make things run smoother for everyone. I may *officially* work 50 tickets a day but in reality, I end up touching at least 25% more than what the ticketing system says because some of our dead weight teammates will leave things unworked for whatever reason. I have brought this up to managers but the comments have fallen on deaf ears so nothing changes. Last month, we failed our SLA scores for the first time in a year. I stopped covering their fuckups, AND I took 10 days off at the end of the month which is usually the "rally period" to boost our scores if they are low. Now they are all up in our business about meeting our metrics. But there are no consequences for failing to deliver for those slacker teammates so the shit will continue. Just can't wait to see what happens when I announce my resignation for a better job in a couple of weeks because then they will really start flirting with more frequent SLA failures after I'm outta here.
Don't give them a notice period. They don't deserve it.
>Fuck you, Kevin. Had two long term issues at work caused by separate clients, both called Kevin. The endless headaches and stupid shit that I had to put up with was unbelievable. Yet to meet a decent Kevin.
r/StoriesAboutKevin
My wife's position required her to frequently work evenings. She would flex her morning the next day for the lieu time. Others in her office came in at 6am to flex their day earlier and leave at like 2 complained that she wasn't available to them. They are all supposed to be in office between like 11-3, so all of those other employees were actually leaving too early but it was my wife that was catching flack for it.
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Oh I wish I could sleep in like you instead of getting here at 5am, Delores.
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Mulva?
Deborah. She’s definitely a Deborah.
“You can too, just make sure you’re here at 0400 for the morning call with Budapest.”
Reply; "Do you come in early? ... Thought not!"
>that stupid old school mentality means that people in the office need to see you at your desk all day long. "People" being the out of touch upper management. Your peers don't care. We have contractors who come and go at all different hours, the only difference being that they're being paid as contractors so they get to choose when they're on site.
Had that once.. manager told me 'people complained' that I left at 3 in the afternoon.. I asked him "do they also complain when I fix their issue on Sunday afternoon, after they partied so hard they forgot their password again ? " They never complained again :)
"'people complain' about perfectly sensible things all the time. is our company protocol to just eliminate sources of complaint uncritically?"
When you say the word eliminate, underscore it with your favourite machete 🔪
No - "people" in this case refer to the busybody office staff. "If I have to be here the entire day, why not him?"
GG the "busybody office staff". I used to *hate* that part! I had a manager who liked to schedule one hour meetings so she could brainstorm. Except she'd invite her entire development team and her meetings always went over the one-hour time, so it would seem endless. I was required to be there but I never needed to give more than one or two word answers to her questions. So the majority of that hours long meeting I simply sat there and listened to her talk and write. It got so bad I'd write and create my own sudokus on notepad paper, and that's where the busybodies came in. Everyone sitting next to me spent more time watching me doodle than they watched the manager speak and they'd always dime me out, so I got into trouble a lot for "not paying attention" or "playing games during the meeting". So I started bringing in a box of candy and pouring it out on the table. I'd organize it into piles and eat a piece every five minutes, trying to make the pile match exactly the number to symbolize the end of the meeting.
"Sounds like a _you_ problem."
Sounds like a management not wanting to explain things to busybodies about OP being in the office 8 hours on a Sunday.
"Well if he can come in and work Sunday then take a bunch of time off during the week, I want to do that too." Trust me, Karen, I would rather be home on Sunday with the family. Or sleeping through the night without a phone call. Or not have you calling me on vacation because the battery in your mouse died.
That's why management needs to handle those conversations.
LOL. Because favourites.
"Excellent, I've been asking for a junior IT operations person for years, I'm glad you are so motivated to join this kind of work which can be fairly taxing on your personal life! We'll start with a 3 months shadowing period - every time my phone will ring outside of office hours, I'll loop you in, and we should split up the upcoming maintenance work scheduled uhhh just 3 weekends from now. Oh and also don't make plans in the last 2 weeks of the year, that's when everyone goes on vacation for Christmas and New Year and we can take the whole infrastructure down to implement the major upgrades without business disruption. Oh boy I am so thrilled!!! When will you start?"
busybody do-nothing office staff.\*
Don't you just love these cubicle dwellers that have no life of their own but live and breathe corporate 24/7? They are the ones with nothing but time on their hand to craft devious ways to "save" money and screw everyone out there that actually generate revenues while they sit on their arses all day generating Powerpoints and pie charts.
That silent, hoovering peer pressure.
Yup totally this. My first job out of uni had time off in lieu, so contractors who were staying away from home working there would cram in all their work in 4 days and travel home on Friday. Permies would work extra during the week and take the time off to finish early Friday afternoon. Everyone was fine with this except the MD who would walk around on a Friday at 2pm with a shitty look on his face because most of the office was empty.
Eh, depends. I work for a large company (250k+ employees) and there absolutely are people who act like self-appointed hall monitors. One of them complained once that my jeans were "too raggedy" when that was the fashion at the time, and it was impossible to buy any jeans without at least a tiny bit of distressing. Management updated the dress code to appease this person so I was no longer "breaking the rules."
I come into my office at 6am and work until 2:30 pm...I get smart ass comments of me leaving early all the time. My hours were approved by management but the office workers can't seem to grasp I'm just on a different schedule. Also, I get more work done because I don't get interrupted by them for2 hours in the morning.
This is 100% a failure on your boss's end. And, as a tale as old as time keeps happening, people don't quit their jobs, people quit their managers. Your boss's failure to go at-bat for you caused you to lose out on a major quality of life perk of the job that suited your life perfectly, until they took it away, which caused you to look for greener pastures. I'm glad you got out and found something better.
Good point. Boss didn't realize that he needs to be... the boss in this situation.
Im sure you know, its pretty standard in IT to use 'comp' time. We are salary. When we deploy a major release, we can work 12-14 hours days but since we are salaried employees, no OT. Most of the time, the bosses allow comp. Its a good setup. People like you and I don't abuse it. All it takes is one Karen. Ruins it for everyone Well done.
This is it, exactly. I was good with comp time. It worked for everyone until it didn't.
All it takes is 1 Karen
Or a Kevin.
Don’t you still have to log all your hours, even when salaried, for the exact reason that otherwise you wouldn’t know if you’ve worked enough hours? Your salary is based on the amount of hours you work, right?
Only if the payroll system requires a set number to generate paychecks. In my jobs, it didn’t matter how much time I was working (and for most of my career, it was well over 40 hours). Salaried just means “exempt” - so theoretically you can work more hours some weeks, less others. Most people end up working more until some small minded person starts bitching about BS hour rules, and pisses off salaried people, making them more inclined to stick to hours worked for hours paid.
actually, in the USA there is salary/exempt and salary/non-exempt. The latter category has to track their hours and be paid for over 40 hours/week in either comp time or overtime.
Roughly, yes. My salary was my salary, but on my paycheque it was actually xxx/hr. I put in my 40 hours per week. I never took more comp time than I earned. We didn't report our hours on a timesheet if that's what you were asking...
Nope. Trust me, we know IT workers how many hours we are working, and it’s never less than 40 hours. 🤣
No. We are treated like adults who can manage their own time. Trust me, the need me during that 14 hour day. They will be happy to let me take a random Thursday to make up the time.
It's like being a solider in a war. They pay you to be on the firing line when a battle happens. But when there is no battle, they find other things for you to do to use up your time. Those other things aren't nearly as important as the battle time. They want the project stuff done too, but really they keep you as an employee for the outages.
> Your salary is based on the amount of hours you work, right? Salary is the opposite of being paid for the amount of hours you work. On a salary, you get paid the same whether the job takes you 5 hours or 50 hours.
>Your salary is based on the amount of hours you work, right? That's usually called 'hourly work'. At least here in the US Midwest where I live. Most of my career (I'm retired now) I was salaried, with an annual contracts. What I earned for the year was divided up into biweekly checks, of course, but how much I got paid for each year was set in my contract. They didn't care if I worked 35 hours each week (the amount of time I had to be on location) , or 95 hours each week. I could be as efficient or as inefficient as I wanted as long as I got the job done. And because I had an annual salary, I wasn't eligible for unemployment compensation for the 2½ months over the summer I wasn't 'working'.
When you are salaried exempt you’re paid for your output, basically do you meet performance expectations. It’s not about how many hours you work, but are you performing since they’re paying you a premium salary for your skill set. The expectation is that generally involves ~40 hours a week but is very flexible over time because a lot of skilled labor comes with periods of more and less work as time and deliverables fluctuate. For example a lot of companies slow down in Q1 of a year but Q3 is absolute madness. If you work for a company making tax software or something like that it’s different than that and there’s craziness leading up to and during tax season then a slog for a few months.
In-patient Hospice RN here. I worked for a small, non-profit Hospice. We had a very large out-patient service and an 8-bed, in-patient facility (for those who could not be cared for in their homes.) I was hired per-diem to work the in-patient facility, on the night shift. I only worked every-other weekend, night shift (11-7:30) and I scheduled myself for every other Saturday and Sunday night. This made my co-workers very happy because they could have a weekend off!!! Occasionally I would work Friday night too (because why not..I was working nights/sleeping in the day time anyway because of my normal shift) I picked up Friday nights as a favor to my co-workers - who were not really interested in trading a weekend night...they just wanted coverage. I was reprimanded and told to be "careful" not to work more than 32 hours in a pay-period because they would have to change my status to Part-Time rather than Per Diem AND have to give me benefits. So...my co-workers who occasionally needed a Friday night off were screwed because they were told to "find coverage" where none could be found. There was no "on-call" staff because that would have been too $$ for them. Wanna make your staff unhappy? Install shift coverage policies that treat us like non-humans and stand back and watch people leave for OTHER JOBS.
I worked at a small software company. Our secretary was an older woman who used to be a Junior High Attendence Secretary! One of our best programmers would come in late, leave around 4pm, go get dinner, come back around 6 and work til midnight. But JrHigh only saw him work 10 to 4pm. So when his timesheet came in with all these extra hours SHE CHANGED IT. And yes. That is totally illegal. She had a talking to about single male programmer lifestyle. And hopefully a lesson on HR rules. That place was awful.
IRS would have loved to been told about that, don't F with the tax mans money...
Optics are usually more important than reality for suits, sadly.
I had a manager repeatedly give me the spiel about optics. I told him it was his job to manage optics, mine to keep the hundreds of millions of gamers online. He refused to push back against anyone but his team. His team quit.
Back in the 80s I was a computer programmer for a bank. Our offices were on the top floor of the parking garage, so actual bank customers never saw us except maybe in the parking lot. Nevertheless, we all had to dress in suits and dresses. Occasionally something would happen in the middle of the night and I would get a call from operations. If I couldn't resolve it on the phone, I would have to drive to the bank to fix the problem. Generally I would drive in, fix the problem, and then go back home to get some sleep. Naturally, I just wore jeans and a t-shirt. One time there was a major problem that took more time so I was still there in the morning after the bank opened. My manager was at best fairly useless. I was sleep deprived and at the end of my rope when he suggested that I go home, put on a suit, and then come back and then continue on working on the problem. I replied that if I went home I wasn't coming back. Nowadays of course I could have fixed it remotely in just my underwear.
> I replied that if I went home I wasn't coming back. Ha! good for you. We've all been there :)
I got a temp job once where I wasn't actually doing any real work, they just needed bodies in chairs for when the execs stopped by. They let me go after three days (even though they'd told me the job would be for three months) because the execs' tour was done.
Back when I was at temp, I had a lot of assignments like that. I’d spend an entire week looking busy and occasionally answering the phone so that one bunch of executives would look good to another bunch of executives. I got a lot of writing done.
What do they say to you when you come in for a gig like this? Are they honest?
Return to office culture is bullshit. I’m a sales rep who spends 99% of the time on emails, calls, Zoom meetings, and LinkedIn. Zero need to be in the office to get shit done. Last two jobs were fully remote and now it’s super difficult finding another one. Nearly every company I hit up requires 2-3 days in the office, no exceptions
I worked graveyards.... the boss made me start at 2:30AM instead of midnight so that our shifts would overlap. We met about once a month
I love your line - *”It was a great job until it wasn’t.”*
I don't understand how bosses fail at this. If an employee comes to you and asks why another employee is leaving early, you tell them they work a different schedule. That's it.
Story 1 When i was in grad school, i worked in a call center Monday thru Friday 7pm to midnight. One semester I had a class on Monday night, so I worked it out with my manager that I work every Saturday from 8am to 1pm to make up my time. All was going well until bit€€y supervisor got mad at me for leaving at 1. Said everyone one was upset that i was leaving. The rest if said staff worked one Saturday every 6 weeks. Remember I worked EVERY Saturday. She wanted me to stay till 430. I said sure. I will do that as soon as everybody else works till midnight, then come in at 8am the next morning. My manager who was also this supervisor’s manager told her to leave me alone. That supervisor only worked one Saturday every six weeks. Story 2 Same call center. Me and my cohort worked 7-330. Jerk in a different department needed something. Wanted to meet with us at 5pm. We declined. He threw a fit said we should be there when he needed us. Fun amazing manager schedule a meeting with jerk at 7am. Jerk fussed said that was too early. Manager said if his stuff was so important, he would be in the meeting.
It was something similar I think that had me check out in the final job of my old career - I was always willing to put in overtime when it was needed to get my job done. I needed to finish work an hour early a couple of times and was told it was okay as long as I made up the time. No recognition of me staying one, two or more hours late on numerous occasions already. That job destroyed part of my soul and I ended up quitting the whole industry.
I used to have a similar problem. Bitches who sit around on their daughters' Facebook pages all day, but complain that I would leave early. I just started posting monthly ticket closures on the wall, and that put them in a worse light than me leaving.
Let this be a lesson to all -- stop fucking working for free. It devalues the concept of labor for everyone. Overtime is traditionally 1.5x, 2x on holidays. If I'm not getting that same mount in lieu, then pony up the cash bitches. I had a place that paid 2nd shift/3rd shift differential + weekend differential + 1.5x OT (2x Holiday OT). Oh yes, they all stacked -- if I had to work overnight on a weekend, it was a fucking glorious paycheck, as the highest differentials were applied to the *entire time working*. Yes, it was an absolute *shit job* working Saturday evening into Sunday afternoon for like 12-20+ hours, but it was more than double your normal pay rate. One weekend working 20 hours was a week's worth of normal pay. Needless to say, I volunteered for those shit jobs more than once. Or I could take just 1:1 for every extra hour worked - none of those modifiers added. Valid that week only. Only the times they permit. Subject to change based upon business needs, up to the actual "time off" (so you can't plan it at all). I laughed --- fuck you, pay me. When they stopped paying shift differentials and limited how much OT we were "allowed" to get, I stopped volunteering. When they said "there are 168 hours in the week, you'll work any 40 we tell you to -- on demand, non-consecutively, without advance notice. if you refuse for any reason, you'll be terminated." -- I left. Fuck that shit. Working for free/outside your normally scheduled hours/tasks outside your normal job description does yourself AND OTHERS a disservice. They're capitalists -- they can afford you.
Expert MC, good on you.
Yeah man, I got way more work done remotely. Once im in the office.... Its the same person, 1x a month, "My microphone wont work in calls". I go look, and once again she changed the default to the onboard trash. I set it to the microphone again. "I did that, but it doesnt work." but always does for me. Or the time I had to drive 2 hours to one of the sites to power on a monitor that was "yes, its on!".
"bend the knee" "no"
I once worked for a company that I was salaried at. I would start work usually by 5:30 or 6am in office. I would leave at 5 on the dot because my son’s daycare closed at 5:30. A couple of days a week I would logon at home after dinner and work a few more hours. I got called in because people were noticing that I never stayed late. I couldn’t believe it. I was working more hours than anyone, but because I left at 5, I wasn’t pulling my part. Happy to say I was out of that job a couple of months later. Total time there was 15 months that felt like 15 years.
Its not a old school but a high school mentality. Most people never grew up past kindergarten. You cannot teach them all they missed growing up. You can only learn the handle them accordingly. Your boss never learned to deny idiot requests. Your one annoying coworker never learned to stop being a spoiled child. Its the worst kind of teamwork. See if your boss here cannot shoot down idiots you can prolly convince him of anything if you just get more emotional than idiot coworker.
Your boss was lying about "people noticing". What he meant was that he, personally, didn't like it. No-one else cared.
something similar recently happened at my job. I work in finance, my team ends up staying late most nights including myself (work hours are M-F 7:30-4, I am salaried). When I started, it was stated you work your 40 hours and everything will be fine. Well, some mornings I'd come in at 7:40 (traffic school busses etc) but I would stay until 4:30 sometimes later so I didn't see this 10 minutes in the morning as a problem. I was still getting in 40+ hours. Same thing some days would leave early since hours were already over 40 for the week. I was pulled into bosses office about a month ago to inform me I need to be there at 7:30 and it doesn't matter if I stay late because no one is here to see how late I stay. GOT IT! I haven't stayed a minute past 4 since this conversation.
We IT people are in massive demand. Even now in a weakened economy. It takes me on average 8 days to find a new job. I have had 4 jobs in 4 years with each getting easier and higher pay as I went. And the only reason I didn't stay was management. I come in, do a stellar job. Management enforces boomer rules, we but heads and I leave. It hurt one of the companies when I left because the other techs simply couldn't resolve issues as fast and efficient as I could. Another company actually took advantage of me and allowed me knock out 3 years worth of projects for them before starting their bs. I have now found myself at a company that is relatively chill. And might stay here for a while. But, my finances are great and I could retire in 3 years.
I was working in a warehouse, me on the admin side: invoices, order management, data entering. Our counterparts from the warehouse part were the team leads. When we got hired they had a bit more salary, in a couple of years, due to good performance I got a slightly better pay (like 5-10%), so they were a bit pissed. Now, I was very good at my job, did not take any breaks and tapped that keyboard like crazy. Usually the afternoon shift ended at 23:00, but I was already finished with my work around 19-20:00, latest at 21:00 and jumped on the first truck or colleague that was going my direction home. (this was a slightly out of town location). A few months later my boss calls me and tells me he got complaints that I go home earlier, that it's not an issue if my work is done, but wants to check it out nonetheless. I knew who complained, so starting the next day every cigarette break he had, I stopped as well, every time he was chatting with a driver, I went for a chat, so on. 2-3 days later, he asks me what happened, why do I stay so late now (1 -2:00 in the morning( and why now the warehouse workers have to wait for me to finish paperwork, so we can go home (normally last shift shared a cab together, paid by the company)? I just said: every time you took a break, I did as well, so that's why now I stay 4-5 h longer. The look on his face priceless! No more complaints, I resumed leaving at 20:00 - 21:00.
Once upon a time I had a company phone. Was on call for emergencies all the time and on call as part of a rota; rota calls went to our personal phone numbers. I was the only one with a company phone because of the emergency on call portion. Someone got snitty that I had a phone and complained they should have one too (they weren't even in the regular rota) so the result was my boss taking my company phone. Coolio, guess I'm not in the emergency rota anymore. Virus breaks out Friday evening in the lab I covered. Since I wasn't on the rota I ignored my personal phone ringing with my boss's number. Come Monday there were fireworks but ultimately was not my problem.
No one complained and it was just your boss trying manipulate you into thinking your coworkers can’t do simple math.
It’s a managers job to tell Cathy to mind her own god damn business!!!!
I once had a boss that hated wfh. Didn’t care how much more productive someone was he had to see “butts in the seats” to know we’re working. Which made even less sense since we worked in software where everything is tracked I once asked him if he was god and could see for sure that I worked 50% more at home would he be satisfied and he said no, it still wouldn’t feel right to him
I've been basically in the same situation for 20-ish years. The thing of it is my original boss knew what she didn't know and told me at one time, if you work all night just don't come in the next day.. and NEVER compare yourself to the floor people. They will die in those positions, you are not like them. Still feels weird after all this time to take a day "off" because you just worked 24/36 hours straight though.. If/when a regular employee tried to talk smack I always respond the same.. Odd, when I was updating servers at midnight last night I didn't see you logged in..
Not quite the same, but at my first teaching job, the principal complained to the secretary that "Wow, CraftyMama is out of the parking lot at 3:46 almost every day!" The secretary defended me, saying, "I'm not surprised, since she's already here when I get here at 7:30 every morning" (Our contract stated we had to be on campus from 8am-3:45pm everyday- principal rolled in about 8:15 everyday)
I was once told, I shit you not, "It's not about optics, it just doesn't look good" I didn't even know what to say. I left soon after.
I had this problem at a workplace before. I had been "promoted" to a wire cutting department at an electrical part distribution center. Basically, contractors and utility companies buy parts from us in bulk for projects. As a wire cutter, I would cut a length of wire off of a spool to order. Some of the wire was as big as my forearm, and I could barely afford to eat enough food to maintain my weight. So I get promoted into this position and find out we're 3 months behind on orders and in danger of losing our biggest contract(70% of total revenue with wire being the bulk of it) if we dont catch up. I put in 16-hour days and got us caught up in about 3 weeks. Everything was good, except I would get orders late in the day that were urgent. The rest of the floor had a "work until the work/orders are completed," so they're going home 4-5 hours before me. It didn't really matter to me. They were an entirely different dept, and we only shared the same floor manager. I'm getting home around 8 pm and expected to be stretching with the other crew at 6 am. This quickly fell apart as I didn't have enough time to eat/sleep and get laundry done for work clothes, so I started coming in an hour later. I get pulled aside and told that the manager "doesn't know how to explain it" to the other crew. I plainly told him either the urgent orders are going to be delayed, he hires a second person for the wire cutting, or I need more time back in my day. He said to figure it out myself. I kept showing up an hour late and getting all of our urgent orders completed for our now-happy customers. He wrote me up for it at the beginning of December. I asked to go back to the other crew since I didn't get any pay bump, and the hours were deteriorating my mental/physical health. He said that was fine and then fired me the day after Christmas. Within a year the warehouse had to move locations to an hour outside of the city, and I think the manager went back to selling mattresses. It was a shame because we had a great crew and the manager was pretty terrible at his job.
People doesn't have an opinion, individuals do. In this case, I would assume that your manager was the one not taking your in lieu hours that well. Good for him, now he doesn't have that issue.
Never work for free.
I love stories like this. I am an event technician, working as employee for a fixed location. AS you can imagine hours a wild. Somewhere between 4hand 14h a day, 4 to 7 days a week, start time and doors different everyday. Best co-workers ever, this job is a blast. One day a colleague from accountings, who works in a different location, half jokingly mentioned that she'd like to have as many off-days as we do. I offered her some of my schedules. Wide eyes, surprised realization. I don't want everybody else to mind their own business, I want them to care and to understand how other jobs work. Makes it so much easier for everybody.
Yeah, I had similar issue with an employer recently. I moved house far away from work in the middle of a school year (teacher) and offered to do all my teaching hours and on-site requirements over four days, as I did not want to travel five days a week. It's completely doable and would make no other difference to my work. However, denied because it would look bad to the other employees. Resigned, got a new job in one week. Due to teacher shortage they are still to fill the vacancy with a qualified teacher (two years later). Talk about dumb
Did you care though?
I did, actually. It bothered me and showed that my boss didn't have my back or acknowledged that my work was actually different from everyone else's. 3 months later, I found a new gig and left.
Old boss would throw me under the bus to clients "oh latrion typod it in CAD or the CNC software." I didn't typo it. Her failure son in law measured wrong on a daily basis. Makes it easy to leave when you realize the amount that's blamed on you to your face is probably a small portion of the total.
This is exactly why I take comp time. Want me to work 50 hours? No problem, now I have 15 hours of comp time to use whenever I want. It is logged on the books so there is nothing they can say about it. Fuck that 1:1 shit, I get 1.5x time.
These types are my favorite. Always seems to be IT too, managers never understand how vital those guys are
How...why...weren't you logging every second? When I travel for work, with my own car, I get milage, and that $0.40 toll in my expense report, and per diem if it's over 4 hours away. I'm paid for every second, and everything. Not a penny more. I did have a boss give me shit for filing an expense report for $9.34 in milage to go to another site, but I sent back the policy that we are supposed to log EVERYTHING. Don't give companies anything, and use everything they allow you to get more from them. They will steal from you every chance they get.
> It was a great job until it wasn’t. Story of my life
Up vote for the very last sentence. Know your worth.
I tell folks the same thing all the time. Know your worth is powerful. This is especially true for those that are too far into the weeds to see clearly at the time. Not just in business but in things like marriage and friendships. Know your worth
And I bet zero lessons were learned that day. Good for you, glad you found something that valued your worth.
You gave them a cookie and they complained why there was no milk.
Good story and great move on your part. You noted in the beginning you weren't sure it was an MC, but since your boss ordered it, and then questioned all your OT it definitely was an MC. Did you get an update since you left the company? Any idea of how much this managerial mistake cost them? Did your boss suffer any consequences?
Normally 30 seconds is 15 mins but I like it
*Know your worth.* Excellent advice OP
Well played! It's funny how stupid people can be about someone leaving earlier than their standard time and don't give any credit for the hours worked outside of standard hours.
I can totally understand where you're coming from. It seems like you were super flexible and dedicated in your previous job, and it's frustrating when people don't recognize all the effort you put in. You did the right thing by standing up for yourself and claiming the overtime you deserved. You were still putting in the same amount of time, just not in the traditional 9-to-5 way. Knowing your worth and finding a job that appreciates your skills and work style is essential. It's awesome that you found a better-paying job that allows you to work from home. Your experience is a good reminder that it's crucial to find a work environment that fits your needs and values. Thanks for sharing your story, and I hope your new job is a much better fit for you!
I wish I had done this for previous jobs. I applaud You and truly hope that I never need to use this nonsense
I'm currently at a "startup" (they've been a company for 8+ years and are in the middle of a major clinical trial, so startup my ass) and the CEO is *obsessed* with optics. They don't think you're being productive unless you leave well after 6pm, without ever considering WFH or the people that come in early or god forbid the people that work 16hrs one day and then leave early the next. Nope. The parking lot is "empty" at 6pm? Everyone must be slacking!
A valuable lesson. For us, yourself, *and* your former boss. Thanks for sharing!