We had a co-worker who’d been on the job a couple of years and called in sick one day, and never returned or called again, didn’t respond to HR’s calls or certified letters. Months later, we get a call from the security desk, where she’s throwing a fit demanding to know why her employee ID won’t let her in the building. It’s explained that she doesn’t work here anymore. “You can’t fire me - I called in sick!”
Place I used to work at, the lead trainer was named Cheri. It was a customer support site which meant there was a lot of turnover* so there’s be a class of new-hires every other Monday. After giving them their HR packets Cheri would them lead them on a tour of the site (Over there’s one set of bathrooms, here’s the galley with a couple refrigerators, microwave, and coffee) – we called them “Cheri’s ducklings.” One time she left the classroom with thirteen, and got back with twelve; apparently someone had decided the job really wasn’t for him. Not sure why because part of the interview process was about an hour paired up with a working agent to see what typical calls looked like.
*It was proud that the annual turnover was only 80%
I work in a 911 center, dispatching police/fire&ems units. We would get new employees and they would be shocked that they would have to work on holidays. I was convinced that the bosses were just doing a poor job of informing these people. Then I get promoted. Our hiring process involves a test, 2 interviews, a background check and finally your first day at work. I make sure we mention the 24/7 job and that weekends and holidays are required of everyone; it is mentioned at the test, and both interviews. People are still dumbfounded when a holiday comes around. I added a sheet to the information packet you have to fill out for the background. It explains our 24/7 schedule, holidays, weekends etc. You have to initial by each bullet point and sign the bottom…YUP still shocked that they have to work them.
And I agree that this has been a great thread. I read though all the posts and am glad that I am not alone!
This isn’t specific candidates, but a general thing brought up by the previous post: lots of people seem to have trouble understanding that others may not necessarily be available at a time that’s outside whatever the local equivalent of “9 to 5” is.
How the fuck is there so many people who have problems with that when their own working hours are not 9 to 5, I hope I’ll never understand. Because I get the feeling that if I ever become stupid enough to understand it, I’ll be on my way to a record-breaking case of dementia.
When I was younger and significantly dumber, I thought it was bullshit that you weren’t paid for the time you spent commuting to work.
It is bullshit. The act of driving to work isn’t something you’d do if not for the job. And as a salaried person I consider the time spent commuting part of what they’re paying me for. (Which means that the shorter my commute is the higher my wage is, functionally speaking.)
People paid by the hour from clock-in to clock-out should certainly consider the commute when considering how much they’d have to be paid to take the job.
In some countries, commute times/distances above a certain level are considered part of worked hours. How good the country in general and a given company in particular are about that kind of issue varies, as does which solutions they come up with when the commute would be considered long. My last client had a lot of factories that were close to each other but far enough to go above the limit and if someone needed to go to a different factory they’d go to their usual one, clock in, take the car the company had rented for them and go to the other factory.
Yes, it is. You’d be going to a different job, but you’d still be going somewhere. And the job you picked, commute and all, was your choice (just like where you live in relation to it). The company can’t be held responsible when someone living in Milwaukee takes a job in Chicago - that person decided spending 3 hours on the train every day was okay. (Yep, I knew someone that did that for about 15 years.)
Between telecommuting and straight-up working from home … no, I wouldn’t necessarily be driving/commuting anywhere else.
But U.S. employers didn’t pay folks to commute back in the 50s (the way they paid health benefits, as a way of attracting workers, thus entrenching healthcare as something unemployed and self-employed folks can’t have) so they sure as shit ain’t starting now.
I would mighty pissed if my employer started paying people for commute time. There are some folks that live 50+ miles from the office because they want to live out in the country. While folks like me have chosen to live within a few miles of the office so we don’t have to make ourselves miserable commuting. Why should the first group get extra compensation over the second? No one is forcing them to live so far away.
I do think compensation for travel is owed to on-demand workers who get called in at the last minute only to be turned away once they show up. They should at least get compensated for the time and cost it took for them to get there.
Let’s say I live three hours from my workplace. Is it O.K. if I work for only two hours after I arrive at work? After all, I “put in” a total of eight hours…
If I were an employer who was forced to pay for commute time, I would only hire people who lived within a couple of zip codes. And I would fire anyone who decides to move to one I believe to be too far away.
I can see getting clock time for commuting if you take transportation that allows you to work while travelling, including self-driving cars when they become completely self-driving. But if I were an employer I’d be adamantly against paying people for their commute time if they weren’t actually working, with the possible exception of if I moved my business location to a place which is an over 15 minute drive from the previous location, and then it would only be for the first year and it would be more likely to take the form of allowing a few extra minutes leeway in arriving and departing rather than paying people for driving.
Paying for commuting time for someone “working while traveling” sounds like paying people to “work from home”, which often turns into paying someone to goof off and watch TV.
BTW, has the original thread been well and truly hijacked?
I don’t know - the idea certainly fits with the original intent of the thread: unrealistic expectations regarding work.
I work night audit - by choice. I’m awake, it’s quieter and I’m good at it. Hotels are open 24/365, with some exceptions. And what do I hear every Christmas Eve or Christmas Day “It’s so awful you have to work today!” Buddy, if you really feel that way, why are you checking into a hotel and making someone work?
Still, I get paid to wear antlers on Christmas Eve. This makes me happy.
Are you talking about paying for travel to a different location on a temporary basis- like I was hired to work in Location A and I’m temporarily assigned to Location B so the time it takes me to travel from Location A to Location B is on the clock? In my experience , that’s very common. But I know a lot of people who have 1.5 to 2 hour one-way commutes to their regular work location based on their own choice of where to live/work - are you saying there are countries where that would be considered “time worked” ?
The second, yes, but with a “distance and time” bar, not merely a time bar: that is, if you take 2h to commute because you live in a place with shitty traffic or you choose a shitty route but you’re less than 70km from your job, you’re SOL*; if you take 1h-1’5h to commute but you’re 90km away, you’re supposed to come to some arrangement so you don’t need to spend so much time commuting every day. Now, normally such a case is temporary: either the worker is going to a particularly distant location (pretty common in construction trades, for example), or they’re some sort of contractor. And solutions along the lines of “week commute” are more common that “you’re going to be on the road 4h every day”, simply because whether you count that as time worked or you don’t, people who spend 4h on the road every day and whose job doesn’t consist on being on the road tend to not be very productive. Most managers prefer employees who don’t arrive to the office with a case of “too much road rage and not enough caffeine”.
Once you put it in terms of “people who live too far from work will be week-commuters”, there are whole trades based on that model, from construction jobs to IT to process engineer to… For jobs which have a lot of contractors, one of the things that’s often different between “the outsiders” and “the insiders” is that the contractors are expected to travel on their own time whereas the insiders’ travel time is counted as being on-the-clock+: companies which do this tend to have problems holding onto contractors (it’s usually the kind of company which systematically treats outsiders like the enemy).
- I know several instances of companies which used to have their main offices in a downtown(ish) location, with the immense majority of employees commuting via public transit in reasonable times; when possible, employees specifically chose their homes so they’d have easy commutes. Then the company moved three forests beyond the ass-end of nowhere and the People With Chauffeurs couldn’t understand why the employees were grumpy about having to drive to work (no public transit to that place, or only one line which didn’t go anywhere near the old location) and about taking so long; bonus points to the company which, having over 800 employees in that office complex, only took 40 parking spaces in the new location (that was how many people drove to work previously). But! Since that new place wasn’t more than 70km away from anybody’s home, people didn’t have the right to any kind of compensation or time-adjustment and what eventually happened was that employees left in droves.
- Which btw is illegal. Not counting insiders time as on-the-clock, but treating insiders and contractors differently for purposes of anything other than how they get paid.
You’ve confused me little with week-commuters ( which I assume means people who commute weekly rather than every day ) and employers moving to the ass-end of nowhere - and I assume that the people with the 1.5-2 hour commute who are “supposed to come to some arrangement” are not being paid for 3-4 hours of commuting each day. Let me give you a more specific example of what I’m asking about - I know someone who commuted 77 miles ( which I think is about 123 km) each way for over 10 years. At the time he traveled, that was at least 2 hours each way, maybe 2.5. His office didn’t move at any point - he simply took a job that was 77 miles away from where he chose to live.* Are you saying there are countries where that would be considered “time worked”
- I assume he took the job 77 miles away from home because that was the only opening at the time. But over the course of those ten years, there were openings in offices closer to home - but he chose not to transfer.
IME people are either going to work or goof off, no matter where they do it. Some of my most productive employees and colleagues have worked from home. Some of the worst goofs have worked in office. In two cases, moving non-productive employees from home to office only served to disrupt their coworkers.
Self-discipline and work ethic are not location dependent.
It is true, however, that some managers do not know how to track at-home employee’s productivity. In the office these are the clock watchers, harassing their most productive people when the traffic makes them five minutes late. Generally speaking, they operate at the lowest possible level, more as supervisors than as managers. It is necessary for companies to provide training to all middle management on how to track, support and motivate remote workers to keep them engaged.