One of my bosses is a real clock-watcher. Instead of setting concrete intermediate goals, she demands a strict 40-hour work week. Even if you’re all thunk out and it’s 30 minutes before quitting time on Friday, you HAVE to complete your 40 hours. When it comes to creative endeavors, such as engineering work, this demand strikes me as foolhardy.
To make matters worse, work done during lunch time does NOT count! Even if you’re being extremely productive while having lunch, you are NOT allowed to count this toward your 40-hour quota.
Flame on, boss! I can do without these asinine demands.
If you’re working during the lunch-hour, aren’t you actually giving time to your boss? Sounds like you’re voluntarily working more than your 40 hour week.
As a habitual lunchtime worker myself – don’t do that. It’s not worth it.
Oh, and yeah – boss should give you a measly half-an-hour. Considered getting a new, more-flexible position?
I know there are laws in PA that say the management must give a half-hour off the clock to full-time workers. If you work through this, too bad. If you’re scheduled for an 8-hour day, you cannot voluntarily give up that off-clock 30 minutes. It’s the law. Even if you waive your right to a 30 minute break, the state labor department will come down on your management if they find out about it.
I know, I know. I’m willing to do it for now, to tickle my boss, but it’s not worthwhile in the long run.
Oh yeah. I’m considering going back to my previous job, which was much more flexible.
Sensible engineering managers recognize that a 40-hour work week is arbitrary. It’s far more important to be productive. Sometimes, you can be more productive by quitting early, or by taking an extended break. Conversely, productivity will sometimes demand more work hours instead.
I often work during my breaks at night, but that’s only because I don’t have a real big choice. I usually grab a cheeseburger, punch out, and count drawers, or get my extra cleaning stuff done, or whatever needs to be taken care of. I don’t get a lot of time off the floor. I don’t have any strong night people to leave them alone, and at night, there’s not any other managers to cover my break. God only knows the last time I took a REAL 30 minute break…
Not necessarily. It is the employees responsibilty to adhere to the time designated as the scheduled break or lunch hour. If they say - your lunch is from 2-3 and you don’t go - that isn’t their fault, they provided you the time as required by law. They aren’t obligated to allow you to leave early later.
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*Originally posted by Commander Fortune *
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And they aren’t required to pay you for the break time in which you worked. If you work through your break, you volunteered 30 minutes of your time uncompensated.
It seems to me that this only applies to situations where a fixed, specific scheduled lunch hour is designated, though. If no such period is commanded by the company or the govt, then there should be no reason not to count work time applied during lunch hour.
Any engineering postion I’ve ever seen has been salaried, and the expectation was much more than 40 hours per week. 40 hours per week is what you do at McDonalds, not in a position where you have some real responsibility. As a result, hours are never counted. Unless you’re not actually working all that many hours, in which case managers have no choice but to start counting. Perhaps you’re being harrassed because you’re barely there.
Forgive me if I’ve made some false assumptions here, but what do you think?
Oh, I’ve been typically putting in MORE than 40 hours a week. In fact, I once wound up working until 3 a.m. – not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Unfortunately, the boss isn’t around at such times, so she doesn’t know for sure that such work is getting done.
Besides, even if I were barely at the 40-hour level, that still doesn’t strike me as a good reason to exempt work during lunch. If work is getting done, why shouldn’t it count? Is there any reason why work during lunch does not qualify as work?
I should add that the boss claims to discourage overtime. In other words, you can’t fall anywhere short of 40 hours, and you’re (supposedly) discouraged from putting in more. That’s no way to run an engineering company!
(Of course, since she refuses to count work performed during lunch hour, I would dismiss her claim that she discourages overtime.)
Here’s another thing. Sometimes, when you’re facing a mental roadblock, the best you can do is take a creative break – go for a walk, surf the web, read a non-technical book or whatnot. We’re not allowed to do that. No, we MUST be doing “real” work instead. Bah!
Is your supervisor an engineer, JThunder? I’ve noticed that most of the friction concerning corporate culture in engineering/creative departments comes from a clueless bureaucrat being put in charge of creatives. Your corporate culture is “I do the best work when I’m allowed to work the way I want,” while his/hers is “For my convenience, you will work these hours. For my year-end bonus, you will not work overtime.”
On the other hand, some of the best corporate culture comes when you team up a reasonable representative of Bureaucratica and a reasonable representative of Creativica and put them in joint charge of the department. The supervisor/engineer will keep the profit-margin focus of the bureaucrat in check, while the bureaucrat will keep the engineer from spending 53 otherwise efficiently used hours trying to get the GUI’s background the exact right shade of green.
Unfortunately, unless the folks at the top are also engineers/creatives, the attractive person to fill the spot will be a penny/hour watcher. The better to milk as much work (as defined about 40 years ago) out of those head-in-the-clouds programmers.
She’s not an engineer. She was a geology major, but hasn’t done that type of work in decades.
Her husband, who kinda co-leads the company, IS an engineer – but a much older, more traditional type. The type that grew up in a much older engineering culture.
You’re absolutely correct in stating that it’s best to have a mix of Creativica and Bureaucratica. Stifling adherence to a 40-hour week is pointless, but a measure of bureaucratic restraints is important as well.
Okay, so maybe McDonalds isn’t as high up there in the ranks as an engineering profession, but have you personally ever tried it? There’s a lot of crap to deal with there. I’m a full time swing manager, I pull 6 days a week, 50 hours usually. I deal with people all day long, and I’m responsible for a multi-million dollar business. (It’s what they tell us, and it just sounds good :))I deal with labor laws, food safety, thousands of dollars in cash. At times, it’s more like we’re babysitting our employees. We work hard. Sure when you hit the drive thru, the cashier probably looks like she has no responsibility whatsoever (okay, she probably doesn’t). But some of us out there are working our asses off. If you want to see ‘real responsibility’, try spending a day at the golden arches.
applause on that, Pammi. But I think he was thinking more of the crew. And, having been crew at one time (3 years), and having a mother who is still crew (13 years), I can safely say that one is lucky if 98% of the crew has the responsibility to show up on time, in uniform.
I sincerely apologize to McDonalds employees; it was not my intent to insult them. I haven’t worked at McDonalds, but I’ve done my share of minimum-wage serving-the-public jobs and I agree that they are hard work for little dough.
Hehe, thank you, and I accept your apology. It just really frustrates me when people say I don’t have a real job…it may not be first class, but it’s better than nothing!!!
Pammipoo, I just had to say that yours IS a real job and there is absolutely nothing second-class about it. Millions of people patronize McDonalds - it is clearly a valued business - and if everyone who worked there upped and quit tomorrow, I am not kidding when I say that the rippling economic effects throughout the world would be staggering. Don’t ever sell yourself short.
I never worked at McDonalds but I’ve worked in plenty of jobs where people asked me when I was going to get a “real one” and yes, it is infuriating.