My 64-year-old coworker says she plans to ‘stop working’ at the end of June. (She doesn’t like the word ‘retire’.) She plans to sign up for her Social Security benefits when she turns 66. Her (older) sister retired a year or three ago (involuntarily, I think) and moved from Maryland to Washington (state). I have a feeling that she influenced my coworker to enjoy life instead of working every day. Good for my coworker.
Bad for us. I already have more work than I can do. I telecommute three days out of five, and I work overtime on those days. At the office, I forego my breaks. I’ve been known to take my computer with me and work on vacations, and I work on holidays and some weekends if I have time. (Ah, the joys of being salaried!) I write the programs and process the data, but I don’t have time for other things like sending out reminders and forms and other ‘office keeping’ stuff. Our boss shifted most of her work to us, and she says she’s got plenty to do. Now, the coworker’s job is not demanding. She has far fewer accounts than I do; but many or most of hers require that she enter the data into the computer manually. ( :eek: How do those members do business, if they can’t send an electronic file?) There’s no one to take up the slack. And the new president is unlikely to approve hiring a replacement.
The boss said that once upon a time the office was full of people doing what we do. (Well, except for me. They hired me to write the programs that let me do the work of three or four staff.) There were five of us (including the boss) when I started. One woman quit, and the 75-year-old part-timer eventually followed the ‘suggestion’ that it was time for her to retire. Since then, the workload has steadily increased but the department staff hasn’t. Soon it will be two of us.
Frankly, since the ACA became available, it’s surprising that more people don’t leave as things are unlikely to get better in most workplaces anytime soon. And if you don’t have things together by age 64, then you never will.
If you don’t start complaining now to your boss, he/she will never get the message that you need help. They won’t do anything until AFTER your area falls behind and they’ll complain about your job performance before they do. Better to get the ball rolling now before it becomes a problem,
Oh, she knows. I’ve been telling her for a couple of years ‘Remember how I used to beg for data? Notice I’m not doing that anymore?’ and ‘I’ve reached my capacity.’ When she says I need to take vacation, I say ‘If I take vacation, I’ll get behind and have to work weekends and holidays.’ She’d like to have another person. The old president, who retired two years ago from the company after 45 years, would hire temps. Some of them became permanent until they decided to move on. The new president wants to cut costs and is highly unlikely to approve a replacement.
Stop killing yourself. Ask your boss for advice on how to prioritize tasks if you need it. Let your department fall behind. That’s the only way to convince them they need to hire.
And don’t put it in terms of “what do you want me to do?” Instead, go to your boss with a list of your tasks and upcoming deadlines and ask her which ones the company is going to choose to miss. It needs to be clear that it’s a company problem, not just yours.
Agree with both previous posters. And if they convey to you the notion that it is your job to get everything done even if it takes you 100 hours a week, then you start to take other steps:
Looking for other employment
Consulting a labor attorney to see how much a salaried person can be expected to do in your state before the employer runs afoul of labor laws. (If you are in California and fall under the category of Computer Professional* then they have to pay you straight time for every single hour you work. Other states not so much, but there must be limits.)
*Computer Professional is defined roughly as someone who spends more than 50% of his work time doing coding or programming or software engineering tasks.
This is why I refuse to work more than 50 hours in a given week, and generally, I draw the line at 45. (And that is because I recognize that sometimes big projects and/or important deadlines loom and all hands are needed on deck.) Because, although I am salaried, I still calculate (in my head) my the value of my time in hours. So the more hours I work, the more that drives down my per-hour rate. At X number of hours, I’m down to sub-minimum wage. What I am teaching the company is that it’s okay to undervalue me and that I’m willing to undervalue myself. Nope. You want my time, my skills, my talents? You pay me for all the hours, either in cash or in comp time.
I just think it’s a poor personal economic decision to consent to give up my personal time uncompensated. As I am not willing to work 100 hours a week and allow my job to consume my entire life, I am also perfectly happy to accept that I will never be promoted very far up the corporate ladder. The corporate ladder can suck a bag of dicks. There’s nothing up there in the C-Suite except alcoholism and misery. I’d rather skate after eight hours and enjoy the only precious 1/3 of my day that I have to myself. I’m mostly certain that I will not be lying on my deathbed one day, wishing I’d worked more. Fuck that, I will be wishing I’d spent more time with family and friends. There really isn’t any tangible reward that any company can offer me in exchange for 1/3 of my life. And I just don’t think it’s cool to be making record profits on the backs of people who are crying and begging for help because they are overworked. The greedy-ass stockholders can suck a bag of dicks as well.
Ha! That’s what my coworker keeps telling me! She says that if the work gets done, Management thinks everything is OK. (My boss knows how it is, though.)
I’ve got a pretty good deal. I get to telecommute, which wouldn’t be an option for any job I might get locally. It allows me to work on a personal project that’s important to me. (Of course, a local job would as well; since I wouldn’t be driving as far when I drive.) It also pays better than local jobs.
Everytime I read a post like this it solidifies my decision to kill myself if this company ever fails. I swear Americans are turning themselves into slaves. Count me out.
And very, very much this. At my husband’s last job, this was more-or-less his attitude, and that translated into, “You’re not a team player.” Companies that expect more from their workers than they’re willing to pay for and penalize the employees who want to have a life as well as work can suck a bag of dicks, too. :mad:
I’d be brushing up my resume, in spite of all the good stuff that comes along with this job. It sounds like the bad will be outweighing it soon.
Yeah, well fuck being a team player. When you’re a worker-bee plebe, that gets you exactly nowhere. Working for pennies a million hours a week isn’t going to get the bills paid. But if I clock out at 5:00 on the dot, I now have that time available to make more money some other way (side job, paying hobby, whathaveyou). I had to learn to shed the guilt of not being a “team player” in lieu of looking out for number one. Even if I am a team player, that’s not going to help me meet my goals. And my company isn’t going to be a “team player” and help me out when my house forecloses. It’s* not* a team! It’s more like an abusive relationship.
I had to be prepared to be passed over for promotions and whatnot. I am totally cool with that. I’ve been in management and it’s really many more hours, much more headache, and not that much more pay. Certainly, I didn’t find the pay to be worth the headache. I stepped down, into a front-line sort of production position and make more money, my time is my own at 5:00 (our client doesn’t encourage OT–it’s a public employer, so tax dollars), and the bills are getting paid. I think the rat race is a con. I haven’t opted out, exactly, but I don’t care who wins and I’m not trying to. Not interested in being the number one rat.
That’s why I left my last job. They had Tiffany expectations for job performance and most of us worked for McDonald’s level compensation. It just stopped being worth it. There’s only so much shit I’m willing to eat, y’know?
FTR, I am probably the last person someone should take career advise from.
However, a thought did cross my mind in regards to this discussion. It might be a good idea to think about what version of reality the person signing your paycheck lives in. Is it that people should not have personal lives, you’re lucky to have a job here that sort of thing. If that’s the case, expectations may not align with industry standards or even a firm understanding of what is even possible. In that situation, any resistance to these expectations might just make matters worse; his mind will interpret your saying the workload is unmanageable, into “This employee wants to slack off” . Is it instead that this person just sort of lets things go until there is a problem and then tries to adjust things and is able to listen and reassess - that would be a much better situation probably.
It’s been my experience that most small companies (20 or less employees) have the former kind of boss.
