OT - Grumpy Old Man Thread

[MikeDeTiger]

Are you technically hourly or salaried? Not that it makes a difference for what I'm about to talk about, but IMHO accruing PTO is a lot different when you're hourly than salaried. I don't have to count any hours. 

I'm hourly, or what the state calls "non-exempt."  Some employees are "exempt," or what I think is normally referred to as salary.  I don't know where the term comes from or why we use it.  They complete their timesheets differently than we do.  

We have a limit to how much PTO can roll over year to year, but like accrual, the longer you stay here, the more rollover you get.  It's a pretty good amount, so I doubt people lose much.  Plus these people definitely take their days off.  Gub'ment workers, man.  

One nice thing about our setup is that although I only get 8 vacation and 8 sick hours per month, we don't have to use it to have a free and flexible holiday season.  We have two full weeks around Christmas and New Year's built in that we don't use time off for.  And three days for Thanksgiving.  And all the common federal holidays, of course, and then a few "Administrative Leave" days sprinkled throughout the year, which I think is gub'ment code for "We're technically part of the government, and we don't want to work."  

There's plenty not to like around here, but I can't complain about the time off situation, or the insurance.  And knowing what I know from my last job, great insurance is a unicorn these days.  

[jgvol]

My wife thinks I should get a pedicure.  Am I missing something? 

Yes, ovaries.

[MikeDeTiger]

I've never tried to mount heavy objects to my back, but yeah....I guess that'd probably hold it.  

[847badgerfan]

Yes, ovaries.

I used to feel the same way.

I finally got one and then wondered why only women get to have such pleasure.

Been getting them for 25+ years now.

[847badgerfan]

I've never tried to mount heavy objects to my back, but yeah....I guess that'd probably hold it. 

Worked for me.

[FearlessF]

My back went out before last Christmas and never got totally right this time.  It was pretty slight and I wasn't thinking anything of it until I had a rental car for a couple of weeks recently.  That seems to have aggravated it again quite a bit.  Since 2019 when I first put my back out, it's happened every now and then, and while it's bad, it usually is completely better within a few weeks.  Not this time.

X-rays show I have moderate straightening of the L-spine.  I'm probably in for a lifetime of this. 

life sucks

life sucks much worse with a bad back

I'm not ready for surgery yet - I've heard some stories and witnessed some stuff

[Cincydawg]

Exempt means no overtime.   Salaried vs hourly in effect.

[MikeDeTiger]

life sucks

life sucks much worse with a bad back

I'm not ready for surgery yet - I've heard some stories and witnessed some stuff

I'm not eligible for surgery on my back.

Had an appt. with neurology recently to figure out what was going on with my loss of fine motor control in some of my R-hand fingers, and the burning all down the backside of my arm.  Could be carpal tunnel, could be at the elbow, we were thinking.  Some fairly easy fixes to those kinds of problems.  I have to be very careful grabbing things with the right hand, because I tend to drop things these days if I'm not extremely deliberate.    

Guy does a nerve conduction test.....nope, it's in my C-spine, which also has moderate straightening.  He explains that while it sucks, I'm not close to what he'd do surgery for.  Wife explains that I don't want that surgery anyway.  

So I guess I'll just keep popping Lyrica and dropping crap.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

Exempt means no overtime.  Salaried vs hourly in effect.

A little more complicated than that... It's possible to be salaried and non-exempt and I believe it's also possible to be hourly and exempt. 

For example, here in CA (I don't know if this is CA or Fed) we have certain requirements on meal and break periods. I'm quoting from memory because I haven't managed a non-exempt employee in over a decade, but if you work more than 5 hours, you're required to have a meal break. And for any 4-hour period of time worked, you're required to have a 15-minute break. So in a typical 8-hour work day, you get two breaks and a 30-minute meal. 

This gets important when it comes to ensuring that you're complying with employment law, because you essentially have to monitor your employees to ensure they're taking their breaks. Because if you fire them and they sue, and there is a history of them not taking their mandated breaks (especially if there is a history across multiple employees) they can essentially say you as an employer didn't allow them to take those breaks. Even if it's not true, it's a he-said / she-said scenario, and without documentation it's typical that the employee will be believed over the employer.

For exempt employees like me, you're deemed to be in a position where based on your duties and position that you have a level of autonomy where you're no longer bound by the employment law requirements. For example, I have zero protection or guarantee to be afforded break times or a meal period, no matter how many hours I work a day. If my schedule--via no meetings that I've scheduled myself so I didn't have a choice in said scheduling--has me booked for 5 1/2 hours straight back to back meetings (as will happen tomorrow), I can't sue my company for not ensuring I get a 15-minute break within that time frame. 

So IMHO the "exempt" basically means you're exempt from some of the wage / hour / labor condition protections in the FLSA statutes, one of which is that working above certain hours entitles you to overtime. 

[Cincydawg]

Yes, it was more involved in Ohio also.  The main item for me related to OT.

[betarhoalphadelta]

My wife thinks I should get a pedicure.  Am I missing something? 

Eh. I got one once. It was mildly pleasant, in that they'll do things like massage your calves and actually appropriately handle toenail grooming. But it's also a little weird and awkward to be sitting in that chair while the little Southeast Asian woman wrestling with my size 13's. 

I've never deemed it worthwhile to bother scheduling or paying for such treatment since. I have enough trouble finding the time in the schedule to get my hair cut before it gets too shaggy... I don't need to worry about adding a pedicure to the necessary grooming appointment list. 

Perhaps when the wife and I are retired, I'll have a change of heart and we'll do it together. It'll be a reason to get out of the house. Or... Maybe I'll just go to the golf course when she's at the nail salon. Somehow I think it'll be the latter. 

[FearlessF]

So I guess I'll just keep popping Lyrica and dropping crap. 

so, you're a left handed drinker

[betarhoalphadelta]

Yes, it was more involved in Ohio also.  The main item for me related to OT.

That was the least of things I needed to worry about. The employee I had didn't work OT, but also it wouldn't have been an issue if he was 15 minutes over one day and we had to pay him, because it's not like we'd have penalized him (or my company would have gotten on my case) if he had 0-1 hours of overtime booked per week. It wouldn't have generated a conversation unless he was consistently booking a bunch each week--because then we'd have to look at whether we were appropriately staffed in the group to have people fulfilling their duties within a "normal" hour range.

But at one point I did need to correct him on his time sheets. He was consistently claiming on his time sheet arrival at 8:30 AM and leaving at 5:00 PM, on the dot, every day. I was advised in one of my manager training classes that this can be a red flag in case of a lawsuit. NOBODY is that consistent, but if you have an entire group of employees doing this and a former employee files suit claiming they were being advised to falsify their time sheets to avoid being paid overtime, it looks bad. 

So I had to tell him, "Hey, if you get here 'early' at 8:27, or 'late' at 8:33, ultimately it doesn't matter to me either way. You won't be reprimanded if traffic was heavy and you're not here at 8:30 on the dot. It all balances out in the end. And if it means you have 39.5 or 40.75 hours rather than 40 at the end of the week, that's fine too. But you need to reflect the actual time on your time sheet, no matter what it is." 

Many (most?) times, the lawsuits are utter BS. In fact, I know of a local small business dealing with one right now with a fired employee. I won't get into details other than that I know the claims are complete and utter BS. But there are so many legal pitfalls and things employers do that they think are being nice or reasonable that set them up for liability down the road, exploitable by unscrupulous people. 

If you're lucky enough to have exempt employees, it removes a lot of those headaches.

[MikeDeTiger]

Interesting.

Back when I worked at a bank--and before that, at a lumber mill part-time whilst in college--we had to clock exactly 40 hrs.  If you didn't get there in time, you needed to stay that many minutes late to clock out.  If you got there early, you needed to wait to clock in.  Or if you just unavoidably botched it one day, you needed to offset it another day.  They did not want any OT situations with tellers or accounts-desk people.  It's been a long time, so I'm not sure I remember this correct, but like my current job, if you get it wrong in the other direction, say, only 39.75 hrs worked in the week, too much of that and it starts messing with our insurance, for some reason.  

Though at my current job, we don't clock in and out.  We enter our time in a web portal, and we're not entering time, we enter the number of hours worked, or vacation taken, etc.  Unless you're approved for OT, it adds up to 40 hrs because it has to.