I don’t clear the cache of my thought. I often get solutions when I have stepped away, but not really thinking about it. It’s a can’t see the forest for the trees kind of thing for me sometimes.
I’ve long thought that my commute time to and from work should be considered part of my work hours. I wouldn’t be doing it if not for the job, after all. Of course as a salaried person I implement that explicitly, factoring commute time in when assessing how much I think I should be paid.
Yeah, I gather I’m pretty atypical in this regard, particularly for a programmer.
It’s your choice where to live though right, or to take a particular job? I mean I know people who commute from one end of the country to the other, they’d be laughed out of town if they suggested it should all be counted as work time.
It’s my choice, which is why I consider the commute when I assess whether the compensation for the job is good enough to justify taking the job. Just like everyone else does. People may not say that they consider themselves being paid for their commutes, but they sure as hell believe it. I just say it out loud.
Right, I understand.
This brings back bad memories… time sheets with 15 minute slots from 6 am to 9 pm.
But they did make sense; this was an ad agency, where the client got billed by how many hours we worked on their job. So theoretically, if you jotted down what you did this morning and for how long, it was painless.
But none of us “Creatives” were that diligent…
The entire week was due, with every quarter-hour accounted for (“filled in”, this was all done analog), at 5 pm on Tuesday {shrug}.
So starting around 4:30, you’d hear “Hey, guys? What’s on your timesheets for Thursday 2 to 5? I’ve got a huge blank spot there…”
But I can see why an ongoing accounting was needed, and we’d often get a “Whoa, why is this client’s stuff taking so long? We’re about to go over budget!” and we could adjust, or get the client to give us more money.
In a toxic workplace, the emotional downside was, that, after you spent a late-nighter and then came in at 6 to get a big presentation done, the boss would grill you when it came time to bill the job. Because as she cluelessly put it, “I never see you staying late or coming in early!”
(Umm, maybe because you roll in at 10, and rush out at 5…?)
I’ve been a US federal gov’t employee most of my 37 year career. EVERYONE has to sign in and out - on paper the first 30 yrs, and more recently on computer. So there is no ambiguity as to what it means to be clocked in or out.
I assume it is different at the very highest levels - Senior Executive Service and such. But even when I headed an office of 60-ish judges, lawyers, and staff, I had to sign in/out for my 8.5 hours.
Mine was always like "What did I do two weeks ago? Hmm… I spent about half my time on project X, about 10% on miscellaneous admin nonsense, and the rest split evenly between everything else. "
So I’d then just basically fill in the week with varying amounts for each day, but so that the overall proportion matched to what I remembered- in the case above, it might be 20 hours of X, 4 hours of admin, and then hour/half-hour chunks for everything else, sprinkled throughout the week.
Accurate enough I guess for project budgets, but not actually accurate, in that on Tuesday two weeks ago, it might say I worked on X for 3 hours, when in fact, it was 5 or 1 in reality.
We used to be more specific, but new boss has said to just keep track of the days you worked, your sick days, holidays and vacation. He doesn’t care about every piddling thing we do. Just work, that’s the requirement.
It’s really nice and saves everyone quite a bit of time.
I’m wondering if we’re really helping the OP. Are all these stories of how we worked and recorded our time what he needs?
Or is he really asking something else, like “Everyone else leaves at 5, and they say ‘Come on, clock out!’, then look at me me funny because I’m not jaded yet, so I’m staying late in hopes that’ll get me a promotion.”
@sta3535, what are you asking? Have you been reading this thread?
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Huh, now I’m really confused. I was rereading the OP, and the first line is:
So, is the company telling people to punch out on a time clock, then keep working until the end of their “scheduled time”? Under what circumstances would you “clock out” then keep working? (And is it legal?)
No, it’s not legal, but legality is irrelevant for those who can buy more justice than me. So I routinely clocked out at the restaurant and continued working – to avoid some law restricting kids’ hours. I needed the money more than I needed ethics. The boss paid the difference in cash.
There’s a large degree of variance in corporate culture. Some companies say that you can start cleaning up your work area (if applicable), putting away tools, etc. 5-10 minutes before the end of your shift, so that you can walk over to wherever the timeclock is and punch out at 4:00pm (or whatever) on the dot. Other companies say, “We pay you for a full 8 hours of work every day, and by George, we’re going to get 8 hours.” Those companies let you stay past your scheduled time in order to clean up and clock out. And in some companies, some workers stay and chat for a few minutes after clocking out, whereas in others, nobody lingers.
Thanks for explaining that. I’ve never worked in a job with a time clock, and was wondering exactly what the question was. (I have had to fill out a time sheet, but that was mostly to support billing our clients, or to understand the costs of internal projects, and both were unrelated to what time I left)
But I’m not sure the OP works with a time clock, either. From his other posts (from college and his first job after) make it sound like he’s at a white collar business.
That’s why I’m wondering if all our advice has missed what he’s really worrying about.
@sta3535, come baaaaack…
(eta: I see you’ve been active, and have even started a couple of other threads this week. Pop back in here and help us!)
I work at a salaried job, and in some sense, I never clock out. I’ve certainly thought of solutions to work problems in the shower, or lying in bed at night, for instance.
Yup.
My Wife and I where talking about this the other night. She still travels to her office, and looks forward to weekends.
I work from home now because of COVID. Weekends don’t matter that much. Except, I guess, I’m not expected to constantly monitor any communication from co-workers. But they know they can call me If something blows up. Very, Very rarely happens. I’m cool with that.
And I actually like putting some hours in on the weekend now that I’m working from home. Can make my weekdays a little easier if I have an errand to run or something.
And there are times when I can only do server work at night or weekends.
TPTB does not want anyone working any overtime. And I’m fine with that. If I work 45 hours one week, I’ll work 35 the next. I just adjust my hours. It’s probably technically illegal. But this is not demanded of me and it’s what I prefer.
All of us do this. But you have to have a damn good crew that is trusted to make it work.
@digs I currently work at an Amazon Warehouse and we use time clocks to punch in/out. I never had a job (yet) that made me write down/keep track of my weekly hours.
However, to answer my original question, I usually leave my station 5-7 minutes before my scheduled time to leave, since my current department is located near the back of the warehouse, which means that it takes my co-workers and I 5-7 minutes to walk to the front of the building, depending on how slow we walk.
Even though our warehouse managers don’t seem to mind if we leave our stations a little early before our scheduled clock out time, I can see why certain managers (outside of my current job) may or may not have a problem with people leaving a little early vs working until their scheduled time.
Years and years ago we had to punch a time clock and punch in and out of each job we were working on. Some jobs only took 5 minutes. Thank God it broke and we were then allowed to write in the the time by hand.
But before it broke, you had better not line up at the time clock before the shift was over was over. We worked until 4:30 p.m. and if you were standing at the time clock at 4:29, God help you!
Nowadays we fill out our daily time sheets in Excel. But there is no time clock and it’s an honor system. I’m the first one in (I get here around 6:45 a.m. though we don’t start work til 8:00)
In my recent retail jobs we used an app to clock in and out, and the data from the app was used to calculate our hours worked, i.e. our pay. Hence, it was in nobody’s interest to clock out before the scheduled time. If you were scheduled to work until 18.00, you stayed at your station at least until 18.00 (maybe a little longer if it was busy and you felt bad for your co-workers), and then you’d take your time gathering your things, using the toilet, and getting dressed. You would click the clock out button while walking out the door.
The same rule applied in the morning: you’d arrive 10min before your scheduled start, clock in, then make and drink your coffee before starting actual work.
No manager ever mentioned the extra minutes; as long as you were at your station at the scheduled time, they didn’t care. If it was up to me, we would’ve abused this system even more, but nobody seemed to want to be at work longer than a few extra minutes, even with pay.
I work for myself and I sometimes dream of those days when I could “clock out” and let someone else worry about other things and totally check out until the next day or even MONDAY! when I had to “clock in.”
Work at home people especially have trouble “clocking out” and you have to learn your own routine to keep from going insane. I miss the simple “Push, click-click” 