I work for a warehouse in NJ and I am on the verge of getting divorced because of this place. I am required to work every weekend even if other managers are there to cover, I a have to stay late when other managers have to leave early,they give me shit when i have to leave early to do something the list doenst end. Now with the busy season coming, they will start to switch us by week with a day and night shift. On top of all of this, I am getting no extra compensation for this. With all this “mandatory overtime” as they call it I am missing weekends at the beach and everything lifes brings. At the end of the year I get a “bonus” of an extra paycheck. I was wondering if there is anything i can do to present my concerns to my employer or will they fire me on the spot. I really cant get fired, I have a house and a two year baby and my wife stays home, so I feel like Im stuck no matter what i do.
Warehouse managers are a dime a dozen; do you know how many people want your job right now?. You have no leverage here, so either suck it up, or find a new job.
I have never really understood this about SAHM’s. Like “I willingly anchored myself to this house (in exchange for giving up having to work) and DAMN IT, YOU ARE TOO!!!”
Many years ago some good friends finally had children and wife became a SAHM. Instantly, hubby lost all priviledges to go and do anything, or she’d throw a shit fit about how she was stuck with the kids all day and any time he wasn’t at work, she expected him to be AT HOME helping take care of the kids. :rolleyes: Even our sorta-gaming but mostly social afternoon which we’d been doing for more than 10 years was under fire because of her jealousy about this one social outing per month. Nevermind how much he offered in-kind days off to her in order for her to get out and about (which she took, and then still tried to prevent his…)
Well, I haven’t spoken to them in 10 years, but obviously they’ve managed to work it out since I looked into joining an astronomy club a few years ago and saw him listed as a member, and I see he’s listed as an officer in a volunteer charity organization.
So it’s kinda “Look, this is the job, and I don’t like it, but I don’t have a choice. So you can either deal with it, or you can divorce me and not have me around AT ALL, or you can get a job and we put the kids in day care.”
Start polishing the resume, and find an hourly-wage position to apply for. If you don’t want to be a wage-slave, don’t take a “salary” position for your next job.
For your immediate concerns, no you can’t talk to your job about this, and yes, they will fire your ass pronto if you happened to be naive enough to try.
Your honest to god best bet is to work on that resume, try your hardest to find another job, and AFTER you have the other job lined up, THEN tell your job they can suck it.
Being paid a salary or being classified as management does not automatically mean “exempt”. The OP may wish to peruse the requirements for FLSA exemption.
Yep. Hit Monster, do a LinkedIn profile, get everyone you know to Link to you, get your boos to recommend you (heh, heh), and find a better job. Then say “Ta!”.
Depends on the union. My wife is salaried middle management and she belongs to a union. In fact, it is extremely likely the union lawyers will be going to bat for her in a dispute with upper management in the next few months. YMMV, obviously.
Have you considered that you might not really be “exempt”? I was also exempt and required to work mandatory overtime. One of the people on our team filed a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor, and they came and investigated. Whattaya know, our jobs shouldn’t have been classified as exempt to begin with, and the DOL found that we were owed overtime.
I had to hire a lawyer to do the back and forth with the company (a multinational banking company), but after several months it boiled down to my getting a hefty check and our jobs being reclassified.
It’s something to look into; it may be your job shouldn’t be exempt in the first place, especially since you talk about having managers. In my specific case, the main reason the DOL found that I should have been reclassified was that I was not in power to make policy changes, therefore I should have been hourly.
I think there are limits to this. A job cannot require you to be on site 24/7 for example and I remember one case where a manager was on-call 24/7 and that was disallowed. IIRC they can require you to put in the hours to do your job but not outside your job description or anything unreasonable.
I also agree with PoorYorick. He doesn’t sound like he’s exempt if he’s working shifts.
And of course the person who brought the gummint in on the employer was also rewarded handsomely as a true “team player.” Not.
If you don’t like the situation, you have two choices: (1) Find another situation and research the working conditions more carefully or (2) Shut up and deal with it. Normally there’s a third option, which is to change the situation, but your chances here are between Slim and None, and Slim just left town.
Having been both a SAHM and a mother working outside the home, I don’t get it either. People should discuss this issue before having children. When things got difficult, I always reminded myself, “Hey, you volunteered for this.”
Which is not to say that it is a bad thing for a dad to spend some time with his children. My son-in-law used to have craaaazy long hours and he looked forward every day to the time he got to spend with his baby. His biggest complaint was that he sometimes didn’t get to see her awake for days.