co-worker taking the lead on work hours issue

[Zoe Girl]

I know I have posted before about the work hours issue in my organization. Honestly we have often put in extra hours as needed and it is okay, but on Friday our supervisor told us that we needed to get more done and even though she wanted to respect the 40 hours we were exempt so we worked until the job was done. Rather insensitive way to address this IMHO. I was bothered but made a renewed commitment to getting all the data and deadlines done even if other areas did not get as much attention.

Today I found out that my coworker emailed the HR person to ask about our job description, and then informed the rest of us on the team. I wonder how this will go, really we all like our boss enough to not want this to come across at tattling or an attack but none of us can really put in extra at this point in the school year. We all need to work on how to streamline or set expectations that keep us on track for our hours.

[SteveinMN]

our supervisor told us that we needed to get more done and even though she wanted to respect the 40 hours we were exempt so we worked until the job was done.
I heard the same song from my supervisor before I left work. Frankly, I consider such requirements to be utter bull<redacted>. Overtime is not a substitute for staffing properly, and as long as people want to be nice and not make waves and fear for their jobs, they will accept more and more work and more and more time spent at work while neglecting their health, their families and friends, and their own leisure interests/education/whatever.

Certainly I understand about special projects. One weekend last year I spent approximately 60 hours over three days designing, running, and analyzing tests to help resolve problems on the company Web site -- and I wasn't alone. It happens; it is part of being a professional. I also understand "busy seasons' -- tax accountants who don't get time off from January through April, retail workers who do a lot of hours between Thanksgiving and mid-January. But this pedal-to-the-metal-everything-all-the-time overtime just can't continue to just be absorbed without consequences. And, unfortunately, management is never going to take the lead on this. Workers at the lower levels need to make it clear that, with less, you get less. The point is to make it the right less, and not just keep heaping boxes onto the wagon till it can no longer move.

One of my favorite quotes is from Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, England:



What — aside from meaningless noise — would be gained by asking the New York Philharmonic to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony faster and faster each year?

[iris lily]

...Today I found out that my coworker emailed the HR person to ask about our job description, and then informed the rest of us on the team. ...

Informed the rest of you of what, exactly? That you are not exempt after all? I believe that the HR department of a healthy organization will immediately take steps to stop violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, you don't mess with dat ch*t. :D

If you mean you all are waiting for a "job description" to save you from 40+ work, I wouldn't hang my hat on that.

In the end you've got to focus on the things you boss tells you to focus on. Bring in that work and on deadline. The rest may have to slide in some form.

[Miss Cellane]

If you are exempt, that means that you are exempt from overtime. Which usually, but not always, means that you are salaried.

Which means that you are not paid to put in a specific number of hours, but that you are paid to do a specific job. If you can do that job in 20 hours a week, great. If it takes you 60 hours a week, that is what your employer expects you to do.

Not that I agree with this mentality, mind you. But this is the growing expectation with salaried jobs in the US.

You need to find out which positions are exempt and which are non-exempt. And understand the regulations that determine the difference, as some employers try to make non-exempt positions into exempt positions just to avoid overtime.

Your boss may have handled this in an insensitive manner, but this is what is happening at workplaces all over the US.

I would not approach my boss and say that I don't have the time to put in on the job because I have responsibilities at home--that argument, while true, carries little weight. Instead, I would look at ways to cut out things that you are currently doing that have little benefit. Then at ways to streamline the routine tasks that you can't avoid, but that take time. Then propose cutting out the extras that are nice, but aren't required and that take time. Propose hiring someone to do the grunt work. Suggest a redistribution of tasks if someone is good and quick at a specific job, but can't do that job because of other requirements.

Instead of telling your boss you can't work extra hours because of responsibilities outside of work (some bosses will then decide that you are not the right person for the job because clearly you are distracted by your personal life), focus on using phrases like, "greatest impact for least amount of money/time," "streamlining," "freeing staff up to do [important aspect of your work]," "reducing paperwork," "trimming the fat from the daily routine," and "making the X process more efficient."

Demand that your boss set clear priorities and make sure everyone knows them, so that you don't get caught out with the important (to your boss at any rate) stuff undone.

[SteveinMN]

you are not paid to put in a specific number of hours, but that you are paid to do a specific job. If you can do that job in 20 hours a week, great. If it takes you 60 hours a week, that is what your employer expects you to do.
I fully believe that, if I found a way to do my 40 hours of work in 30 hours, my boss would not be happy about me taking the rest of the week off. I think the interpretation is that you're there for 40 hours and howevermuch else they can get you to contribute. And FWIW (says the guy who's retired) working a lot of overtime really messes up one's YMOYL calculations. If I'm making $60K a year at 40 hours a week, that's about $30 an hour. At $60K a year for 60 hours a week, that's around $20 an hour. At that point, you have to consider future upside in the job or your career ... or whether you'd be better off in another job. And in a work environment in which total compensation has been stagnant or even regressing, as we've had for the last five years or so, one falls even further behind.


Demand that your boss set clear priorities and make sure everyone knows them, so that you don't get caught out with the important (to your boss at any rate) stuff undone.
You make a good distinction here regarding what is important to one's boss. Because my boss' boss was a numbers person, her goals tended to orient toward things which could be measured discretely. Binary things -- done/not done -- were high on the list. So piddly little administrivial things which could be marked as done (or could not be marked as done) garnered a disproportionate amount of management attention. It was a priority to my boss and her boss, regardless of whether it had anything to do with productive work or doing that job any better.

[Zoe Girl]

Thanks all, if nothing else we are dealing with insensitivity. I guess I always get surprised that in a business where we take care of children I still do not feel I can say that I need time to take care of my children by stopping at the 40-45 hour a week range.

I have put in about 50+ hours a week the first 6 weeks or so of school. I expected starting the year to take more work. Now we have changes that are increasing the complication factor of all our paperwork and I fell behind. I will catch it up and get the hang of it. One thing was ordering our snack which was just directly with the kitchen and then a monthly calendar record. Mine was already messed up because of the extra programming I order snack for and no one knew how to record that. Now we have a system of a new recording (watch each child to see if they eat part A, part B or both) and a spreadsheet as well as the regular kitchen communication. My drop-in class plays havoc with this as well. So I am spending today trying to get back to some semblance of smooth operations again.

I think I will just either have to put in lots of extra hours to put in the programming I feel excited about or let some of that drop. I know one value I bring to my boss is that I take care of things independantly. I don't run to her for excessive questions and I take charge of solving issues. The process of deciding that I am not worth keeping in my job is strict enough that simply trying to keep my hours from expanding infinitely will not be enough to lose my job. As far as setting myself up to look good for promotions I think the fancy programming will do more of that, but I still have to take care of all the data.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I think you need to meet certain pay requirements to be salaried (ie I don't think they can't salary you for minimum wage, even if they claim "but it's a management minimum wage!"). I doubt they are breaking the law though, but you can always check :).

[sweetana3]

This is always good info to know:

http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html

Who knew that employees of movie theaters are exempt from FLSA as are those covered by other acts, such as motor carriers and railroad workers. There are also several points that must be met before exempt can be applied.