Until recently the place I worked let us go when we were finished our work, whether it was an hour early or 15 minutes early. Not anymore. Now we have to “be a team” and help other departments with their work. If we’re done with only 10 minutes left we have to sign into the other department’s system and do their work before we can leave. If there’s no other work we have to sit and do nothing until the end of our shifts. We’re not even allowed to read a book during that time. I hate work.
—Hates Work
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.
aww, muffin.
you’re gettin’ paid for 7.5 hours or whatever, right? Quit complaining!
At least people don’t keep leaving your department and shifting all their work onto you (with no increase in pay, I might add and, worse still, no overtime pay).
what’s that? Your employer takes exception to paying you an hourly wage for you to… sit on your thumb reading your book? Go figure. Here OP, imagine this. Imagine it’s YOU who has hired peons to get a job done. How happy would YOU be to pay how many people do nothing at all.. and for how long? Oh, so it’s different when it’s your money we’re talking about. I see.
that sucks.
i suspect i have worked where you work before. and it was like that once in the distant past.
when whoever complained about your life seeming easier than theirs (or your department being faster than theirs) moves on or shuts up it will go back to the way it was before.
Heh, I remember when I did some temp work for Clover (waaaay back before Sysco took everything over) and they functioned the same way. It felt good when that truck rolled up at 10 am, then we unloaded it by 12 and we were done for the day. Problem was, we got paid by the truck. So, usually we’d get 2-3 trucks a day to do, but some days there would only be 1, cutting the shit out of our pay. I guess my point is that you’re lucky OP, Salary work is great when you get it, especially if you can get out early routinely. There are other salaried jobs out there that usually use salary to avoid paying overtime, so you end up working far too much for what you get paid.
Hear hear Dr Fever!… story of my life
tell me OP that you don’t complain @ construction workers for getting paid to do nothing….
hell, if they see you repeatedly have your work done before EOD, you should be lucky they don’t cut your hours.
gawd.
Dear OP.
Perhaps when you agreed to go to “work” you made a mistake and thought it involved “play.”
Whoops!
If I was once able to go home when I was done MY work and then my reward for being efficient was to have to do other people’s work…I’d be a little upset too. I might even stop working so efficiently. In fact, I might work so slowly that others would have to help me out at the end of the day. I think the OP’s boss has it all wrong. His system is only going to reduce productivity, not improve it.
i sure someone else would be happy to do you sorry ass job,must be a bitch,work strange concept.
Miles – I agree somewhat….but there’s a thin line between reward for “efficiency”, and rewarding a rush job.
Rushing the work in Dr. Fever’s old job of unloading trucks can be deadly.
Having watched a colleague get crushed and his back broken by a Frenchie forklift operator who was in a hurry to get home to his cheese and wacky Frenchie TV, I’m divided on this one…
Even with rather girly jobs like computers, banking, data entry etc…’rushing’ may not be deadly…but it may affect the quality of your very important work anyway…
Yeah, I agree Frosty. I think it really depends on the work ethic of the employees. Rushing a job can be dangerous, but a good and skilled worker can usually find ways to do their job faster just because they are good at it.
That’s the exact reason why salaried jobs are few and far between. Unless they’re management level, where there’s a guaranteed chance that you’ll be there for 8 hours, probably more.
I’d have to say, that old job was structured so that you couldn’t get it done too quickly, but it was in the best interests of the company and employee that it would be done in an efficient but safe manner.
Jeez Miles, what makes you assume the OP’s boss is male? Huh? HUH? And here I thought you were one of the good, non-controversial posters. Just be thankful I’m not a MSVU Women’s Studies graduate!
Anyway, I also hate it when I get all my work done efficiently while another person is either a plain lazy and slow worker or works hard, but inefficiently. The hard-working inefficient types are the worst I think, because the manager sees the poor soul working hard and then gets after me for “not working hard like Jimmy there.” At the type of job I’m working at the moment, hard-working but inefficient Jimmy is more likely to get more respect and a raise than a more efficient-worker. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: work SMART, not hard.
In the words of Picnicface, when your god gives you lemons, you find a new god. In this case, just replace god with job and you’ll be fine and not fried by lightning.
“”I’d have to say, that old job was structured so that you couldn’t get it done too quickly, but it was in the best interests of the company and employee that it would be done in an efficient but safe manner.”‘
Sure.
Sometimes though, companies are stupid about it. In Costco UK, the till folks are not alowed to use stools to sit either at the checkouts, or at the door – even if the place is deserted (e.g. the footie’s on)…they must stand the whole time, although they are generously given a rubber mat by management to prevent sore feet…
I worked for Mobil Oil/Rowan years ago on a drilling rig – you could get your ‘work” done early, sure, but then you were expected to grab a mop or a rag or a paint brush, or any number of “make-work” projects….so it paid to pace yourself. And newbies that worked too fast quickly earned the ire of the old hands.
I learned to pick up a wrench or a hammer and just stroll around the rig looking purposeful. God help you if one of the Texans saw you sitting down during your 12 hour shift though. Happened to me and I got to climb the 500 foot high legs with a brush and a 30 lb. bucket of grease for the next week…
So I learned the best way to lighten my burden was to scoop half it out into the ocean before starting the climb…
😉
Oh wait i totally get the OP bitch now – Read into it For me that ain’t something i do alot – but IT means ” No more free money for work not done ” . The op should have posted the bitch as this ” I hate work because now i get no free money and actually have to work for it “, Yea suck it up muffin 90% of us have to work all the hours for all the money – welcome to the real world .
Frosty… “rather girly jobs”??? I happen to work in IT and there aren’t many women to compete with. When I watch documentaries telling me about life in the 50’s narey a lady banker to be seen. Oh, and all those pencil pushing bean counters, those are traditionally male roles as well. Engineers of all kinds make out with paper and pencil in a nice warm office too. I like your posts Frosty but you’re smarter than this… assigning gender to a job role that’s not “male stripper” or something like it puts us back decades if not all the way back to the kitchen. Smarten up.
Fever, you say salaried jobs are rare but I beg to differ. If you’re a professional, and let’s talk engineering or software or tasks that have never been done before, your hours can become unreal so much so that the “salary” was invented so the employer wouldn’t have to pay you for each hour worked but could demand you meet deadlines. “Salary” = “RIPOFF” when you care about what you create. I have yet to be paid for every hour worked as an IT professional and it’s even worse now that I’m self-employed.
“muffin”? hmmm where have we heard THAT reference before?
sadly, I agree. It’s certainly not a girly job when you have fatcats ear-raping for fucking up or not meeting deadlines… and there’s a scant few women anywhere near my desk.
I should also have nearly 18 weeks banked since I’ve started.
I (usually not by choice) never tend to take my lunch break but rather eat at my desk.
assuming I work through at least half my lunch every day…
365-(52*2) = 261 working days – 10 holidays and 15 vacation = 236 days a year
* 6 years = 1416 hours total – 11 sick days since starting and – 3 for death in family =
1402 days worked * .5 hours = 701 hours I’ve worked for free / 40 hours per week is 17 and a half weeks I’ve worked without getting paid.
and salary is a good thing?
Agreed, getting paid a salary is ass.
Unless you totally can work so fast and smart – and manage to be able to do 8 hours work in 3 hours – salaries suck the big one . On the most part – i’ll stick to hourly – atleast when i get hit with 15 hour days i get them 15 hours paid . Oh wait – maybe in municipal or provincial salaried careers that might work very well – seeing as even the hourly ones get 5 hour lunch breaks and only have a 15 hour out of 40 work week . The bonus is you don’t have to work and set your phone to auto answer to the secritary who’ll inform you that your in a meeting or on vaction 5 months out of the year . Hmmmmm I think I’ll change careers and work for the government – it’s like being retired with a pay cheque . Sorry i hadda rip on them – it’s almost true !!!
Sure, it was in the companies best interest to have the employee in mind. Back then, it was a unionized job. So, if there was a injury, they’d have to hire from the union again, not to mention, pay the employee’s wages (or at the very least top off the wages) while they were off. It paid to have a safe workplace. I’d suggest there is a correlation with increases in workplace injuries and the decrease in unionized labour.