OT - Grumpy Old Man Thread

[Cincydawg]

The folks who "worked for me" were "nonexempt", so I had to understand the "rules" that mattered, to me.  I had to preauthorize OT, which was a pain.  I avoided that.

I was on one project for several years where we were doing a lot of a specific kind of analyses that took about 3 hours per run.  We had three machines so I'd come in on weekends and get them running to speed things up.  The guy who took my spot didn't understand the techique or care to, so he put the machines in storage.  They ran about $100 K each.  I'm sure they got tossed.  They measured several key parameters of the material we were developing, he didn't care.

[bayareabadger]

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.

I had an old hourly job where they made you clock hours on a non-shift job that by nature involved a bunch of unpaid OT.

For a while I just filled out hours until I ran out, which meant I had barely been hours on Friday and Saturday when I usually worked long days.

At some point I was told to stop that.

[bayareabadger]

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 think the "unlimited PTO" thing is generally a thing for larger publicly-traded companies. Accrued and unused PTO sits on the books as a financial liability. Which gums things up when it comes to reporting financial results. So they've moved to this kind of system. As long as you and your manager are happy, it's unlimited.

But in practice, it probably results in people taking less, not more.

Was gonna say, practically it obviously tamps down people using time off. Especially if you don’t have a really quality culture.

My company had that, but it turned out there was a number where HR pinged your manager, so they decided to change the name.

It honestly a bit of BS marketing in most cases, but such is life.

[MikeDeTiger]

Both my supervisors are exempt, and I don't know that it makes them take less time off.

They're as uninterested in working as every other government employee I've been around.  

[847badgerfan]

Both my supervisors are exempt, and I don't know that it makes them take less time off.

They're as uninterested in working as every other government employee I've been around. 

I started out with a government job - couldn't get my ass out of there fast enough. I don't know how you do it.

[MikeDeTiger]

I started out with a government job - couldn't get my ass out of there fast enough. I don't know how you do it.

I like to think of myself as Ron Swanson.

Very critical of the government, so I work there to try to make it as ineffective as possible and ensure that my opinion of the government is correct.  

That, and if you hand me a salad, I'll ask you why you're feeding me food that my food eats.  

[jgvol]

"unlimited PTO"

Seems evil to me.  This is just a way to make employees feel guilty for taking their earned time off.

Much like I have always been made to feel guilty for calling in sick, so I dragged in to the office anyway to avoid the uncomfortable conversation, and guilt trip, only to be ridiculed for coming into the office risking getting others sick.

Whaddaya want from me?

[OrangeAfroMan]

I like to think of myself as Ron Swanson.

Very critical of the government, so I work there to try to make it as ineffective as possible and ensure that my opinion of the government is correct. 

That, and if you hand me a salad, I'll ask you why you're feeding me food that my food eats. 

I'm worried you heard me say, "a lot of bacon and eggs..."

[bayareabadger]

"unlimited PTO"

Seems evil to me.  This is just a way to make employees feel guilty for taking their earned time off.

Much like I have always been made to fell guilty for calling in sick, so I dragged in to the office anyway to avoid the uncomfortable conversation, and guilt trip, only to be ridiculed for coming into the office risking getting others sick.

Whaddaya want from me?

Even more notable, there’s no “earned time off.” It’s at the discretion of your manager and based on your temerity to ask.

I’ve seen different cases with it. One friend is as a place where the culture is to kind of have a sense who is taking the most time off, with some side eye to the person who does. On some teams, they just don’t track at all and say “as long as your work is getting done.”

Provably many, many more of the former than latter.

[bayareabadger]

Both my supervisors are exempt, and I don't know that it makes them take less time off.

They're as uninterested in working as every other government employee I've been around. 

I mean, if you have vacation days, you have vacation days.

It seems like some of it is cultural. Some places leverage and over leverage exempt people, especially ones with good work ethic. Others just flaunt labor laws because that’s how it’s been done and they gamble no one can precisely call them on it (we give you work, not hours, and if you can’t get the work done in those hours, not on you).

And then you have the factors of people working more to create a better product, build their skills, etc., and how that value benefits company vs. worker.

[FearlessF]

I've never been able to use all the paid time off days/hours I had coming since joining the workforce back in 1984

always seemed like there was something more important to do than take time off

many times I was told and/or forced by my boss or HR to use some time.

probably one of the reasons retirement scares me

[MikeDeTiger]

And then you have the factors of people working more to create a better product, build their skills, etc., and how that value benefits company vs. worker.

I reckon we would claim to the contrary, but I don't think anybody around here is working to build a better product.  In fact, I'm quite positive that our main goal is to do the things we have to do to ensure that the state gives us our annual raises.  Second behind that is working to satisfy federal and state requirements.  Those things may or may not lead to a better product, but 1) we don't have the primary input in that regard, and 2) it's a by-product, not the intended goal. 

As for time off being time off, I agree.  I'm not actually sure how it works for our exempt employees, I just know that my boss and his boss take days off here and there.  They're both in that 2-days accrued per month range, so, they have them to burn. 

Something I've noticed in my admittedly limited anecdotal experience (my work here and my mom having worked for the state of Louisiana), it seems to be somewhat common for employees to bank up a lot of time and then retire with it.  i.e., somebody technically retires in June, but they effectively quit in March because they had 3 months vacation built up.  A lady in my department just did that.  My mom did that.  I hear about others doing it.  Should I remain here, I don't think I'll do that.  I can't imagine that working an extra several months would affect me in any material way.  I'd rather use my time off intermittently through my career.  I think I'd be happier taking a lot of days off here and there rather than getting to permanently knock off a few months early. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Even more notable, there’s no “earned time off.” It’s at the discretion of your manager and based on your temerity to ask.

I’ve seen different cases with it. One friend is as a place where the culture is to kind of have a sense who is taking the most time off, with some side eye to the person who does. On some teams, they just don’t track at all and say “as long as your work is getting done.”

Provably many, many more of the former than latter.

Oddly enough, we didn't track it when the program swapped from accrued to "unlimited". Now we actually do track it. 

One of the stated reasons is actually to identify the people who aren't taking enough and to encourage them to take more. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Something I've noticed in my admittedly limited anecdotal experience (my work here and my mom having worked for the state of Louisiana), it seems to be somewhat common for employees to bank up a lot of time and then retire with it.  i.e., somebody technically retires in June, but they effectively quit in March because they had 3 months vacation built up.  A lady in my department just did that.  My mom did that.  I hear about others doing it.  Should I remain here, I don't think I'll do that.  I can't imagine that working an extra several months would affect me in any material way.  I'd rather use my time off intermittently through my career.  I think I'd be happier taking a lot of days off here and there rather than getting to permanently knock off a few months early. 

I shouldn't delve too deep into it, because it'll get Badge fired up about public sector unions, but in some cases that actually can have benefits for your pension...

I've heard about that being a way to "spike" your final year's pay because the vacation time is paid out to you as a lump sum, and then if your pension is based on something like the average of your pay over the previous 3 years, you've just given yourself a durable pension increase. 

Don't know if this is something that applies in Louisiana or Texas...