She Who Must Be Obeyed corralled me into a meeting yesterday. There had been a staff meeting and my name had been bandied about quite a bit. The Grim (aka, the director of HR) was there. At one point during the meeting, she leaned over to SWMBO and said, "Did you know that Becs only works minimum hours?"
SWMBO swore to me that she didn't keep track of hours and yes, we all have to do a virtual clock-in/clock-out during the day.
I make sure I work my 40 a week as set forth in my offer letter (where is that damn thing, anyway?). Dr. A. has been pounding on me steadily that I need to work at least 45 hours / week.
SWMBO said, "The Big Boss said that if he has to work a hundred hours a week, everyone else should have to, too."
Hold the phone.
First, this is not my company. I don't make millions of dollars a year. I also don't take off afternoons to go to Mets games. My name is nowhere near the letterhead. I am not responsible for bringing money in. My hours are not billable, as are the attorneys's.
The biggest and baddest asses of this world have never thrown a hundred hour net over me. I can see myself working 45 - 50 hours a week if there's that much work to do but the big news that I haven't told anyone is that there isn't. It goes in batches. Sometimes I'll be swamped and I think I'm about to be swamped for some time.
Seriously, how many hours do they expect? If 40 is minimum, what is considered acceptable? I know they never think anyone is perishing of overwork. So I just want to know - what do I do when I don't have anything to do or have come to a natural break in my work? There are only so many times I can clean out my cubicle or hack through my emails as if clearing a jungle path. If I have to work another hour or even two to come to a natural break in my work or feel like I'm on the right track, I'll do this.
Mostly, I'm glad I have an appointment with Dr. A next week. She'll say, "Ha! I told you!" and then we'll work out how my delicate and frail body won't collapse beneath the strain.
5 comments:
There was a period when I was working tightly with a west coast team. They had a team meeting every day at the end of their day, which means that I was in the office until at least 9 pm every day.
The people who left at 5 pm didn't know that, though. All they saw was that I wandered in at 11 am, and they were very annoyed by that. Many spoke ill of me for it.
Perception is everything.
Perhaps you arrive too early, unnoticed, and leave too early, very much noticed.
Anything over 30 hours is considered full-time.
That said, I always put in at least 40. More for the paycheck than for any sort of "good doo-bee award" - I'm hourly, not salary, and I need the money.
And, like you, I'm overhead, not billable, so I don't feel any kind of pressure to work more than 40 unless the situation warrants.
And if the "Big Boss" is working 100-hour weeks at a corporate job, he's an idiot. Life's too short.
Just my two cents.
Silk - I actually do "punch in" on my pc at work. We all do, we have to. At the beginning and end of the day and for lunch, so they really are totaling up the hours. The Grim and I usually get there within an hour of each other, but I do sort of trickle out after my eight hours, which is around 3:30.
RG - Yeah, this is effectively reducing my salary, because I am salaried and not hourly.
Oh, put in an extra hour and use it to avoid rush hour traffic.....
If you're like most of us you're screwing off some anyway.
It won't kill you and after a while you can taper it off.
Like I said, it's the perception, not the total hours. People see you leaving "early" by their definition every day. Someone wants to talk to you at 4:30, and you've been long gone. Those people are not tracking down your virtual timecard. They just notice you are not there when they are.
Doesn't that office have a standard start time? If the definition is nothing more than 40/wk, there are people who would work two 20-hour days and take off the rest of the week (me, for example). There are usually standard hours so that the core crew is available to each other during core hours.
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