Computerized Time Clocks Susceptible to 'Manager Attack' 885
crem_d_genes writes "It appears to be business as usual for some chain stores to delete minutes from employees' time cards to save on the bottom line. The practice, while illegal and officially 'prohibited' by company policies is widely admitted as flourishing. Middle management is especially pressured to engage in the practice known as shaving time - 'a simple matter of computer keystrokes' - or another practice, that of shuffling hours between weeks, which is also prohibited by federal law. A number of lawsuits are being initiated because of admitted and alleged violations."
Once upon a time..... (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work in retail, a middle sized national UK chain, and I can safely say that these happenings are not just US centric. They happen in this country too, and probably whereever there are large chains.
I was there a year before they brought in the electronic swipe card time keeping system, and I never think they saved much money with it anyway, as right up until I left, they were still employing a woman 2 days a week to chase up missed swipes, double checking stuff etc.
The company only paid you in increments of 15 minutes, and one of their favourite passtimes was to shave off enough minutes from your swipe in and swipe out so that it looked like those periods only consisted of 14 minutes and voila, half an hour saved on that day for that employee. Of course, us employees caught on and brought the issue up with the store manager who of course denied it all.
I did some research into the time management system, and discovered that one of its features was a debug trail, covering all activities within the system. So, one day when I had access to the system, I changed the windows shortcut to turn on this debug trail, and noone was any the wiser about it.
6 months later, we had a store visit by a group of people on the board of directors. I waited until they had done the rounds, and the store manager was glowing with pride etc, when I interrupted them to ask them a question. The question I asked was "So, is it national company policy to rip off your workers?", and when asked to explain, I did so.
Of course, they denied all knowledge, and the store manager was ready to throw me out there and then, until I said "Well, I can prove it.", and prove it I did. The VIPs, who later it turned out, knew nothing of this, took a copy of this file, and had it verified by the people who sold the time management system (luckily, they had checksums on all activities within the file, so they could conclusivly say that it was not faked, and every action produced the correct checksum in the correct order).
The store manager got sacked, as did a number of others in the chain who were doing a similiar thing, and all workers in these stores got paid an extra 2 weeks of pay. I took the money and left the company, to join my current employers who Im very happy at, outside of retail :)
this used to happen to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
tough shit... if the company's not going to pay me to do my job properly, the customer's going to suffer. not me...
Working though lunch is not allowed. (Score:5, Interesting)
This would mean that having a timecard that says 8am to 4pm with no breaks is just as illegal as inserting the 30 minute break that didn't actually get taken. It's just as much the employee's responsiblity to know they have to take a lunch break as it is the manager's responsiblity to tap the worker on the sholder and shut them down and force them to take the break.
We've got offsetting fouls on the play...
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:5, Interesting)
District Managers and Corporate Execs Responsible? (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to wonder if there's any way to go after the district managers and/or corporate for knowingly demanding certain performance levels that could not be reasonably achieved with the number of "billable hours" allowed.
Re:work the clock (Score:3, Interesting)
This really only benefited the PT'ers, as the FT's were limited to 40 hours unless management approved overtime for the employee.
Re:True (Score:3, Interesting)
I would be very surprised if the US didn't have something similar. Think about all the people that work on oil rigs. 2 weeks, 2 weeks off. Thats how they usually do it, they have all employees sign an averaging agreement. Some overtime is still usually paid, but not near as much.
Publix (Score:5, Interesting)
Scumbag employers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This would be a better article... (Score:5, Interesting)
They did that at the Office Depot I worked at. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:work the clock (Score:2, Interesting)
I imagine it's just some dumb legacy thing where the old paper timesheet was only good to 15 minutes, so we have to make the computer just as stupid.
Re:True- basically radioshack policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is, of course, total bullshit- even if Texas law allows that, Texas employment law doesn't cover a kid working in St. Louis. RadioShack specializes in screwing employees. Don't get me started on the commission-stealing managers I had as an assistant. Fuck RS.
Re:True (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure about the final outcome though, like a lot of US news, it just kinda gets hot for a while then fizzles out and people lose track of it.
UPS (Score:1, Interesting)
I was a part-time supervisor in the morning "preload" shift in a United Parcel Service package facility. One of the things that I was told to do was to stagger the start times of employees on the belt. The idea was that the loaders on the back of the belt had several minutes wait before the first packages arrived there. The actual belt time for a package to move from the front of the belt to the back was a little over a minute, but the stagger times was anywhere from 1 minute to 10. Plus, we were told to give the "official" start time -- the time where everyone had to be in their work area -- and employees who weren't on the belt by this time were considered late. It was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. Not only did it complicate my time card duties, but I also had to explain this to employees, and had to deal with justifiably pissed-off employees not showing up until exactly the start time. I'm not convinced that it saved any money over the length of the shift.
Re:work the clock (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This would be a better article... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sam Walton speaks from the grave. Thank you Mister Walton, you may return to hell now.
It's against federal labor laws to work unpaid hours whether it's the employee's idea or otherwise, and for reasons which are OBVIOUS unless you're retarded.
I had this happen to me and I reported it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides charging the employees for their uniforms, and then demanding them back at the end of their employment or they'd withhold the last paycheck (and no, you got no refund), they'd shave hours flagrantly.
With me, since I often worked long shifts, sometimes open to close, they'd clock me out for breaks on my timecard whether or not I took any. I even went back and changed my timecard after the management did, and they'd just change it back. Some weeks, they'd even track it back more to make sure I never went into overtime.
I got tired of this, so I waited until a friend who was training to be a manager was on duty late at night. I took my timecard with me on a delivery route to copy it before the end of the pay period, when they'd change it. My paycheck, of course, reflected a lower amount of hours, but I had proof now that they had cheated me.
I sent the proof to my state employment board and filled out a complaint form. I had left the company before any investigation happened, but about a year after I filed, the main corporation bought out the franchise and fired nearly everyone in the management fields.
I feel great knowing they can't cheat anyone else. I'm upset that I lost perhaps $500 in the few months I worked there. But you *can* sue, and possibly win, to get those hours back, with interest, and your state will probably investigate and fine the company higher amounts than they saved, only if you take the initiative.
missing time and lunches (Score:3, Interesting)
The missing time happened at a laundry facility named Cintas. We were allowed to clock in up to 7 minutes early, so 7 * 5 days a week = an extra 45 minutes of time no? Not to them! It never got added to my checks. Yet, if I arrived early to compensate for variable road conditions, they would threaten to fire me if I didn't clock in right then and get to work. They would also have us work three hours later than usual one night, then the next 3 nights run us ragged to get out of there an hour early. Therefore no overtime.
The missing lunches happened at a landscaping company which would remain unnamed since I still might go back there this summer. I worked a 12-13 hour day driving a delivery truck and working in the yard, working 6 in the morning till usually after six at night. Awsome over-time, I made 10$ an hour and would make over a grand on some paychecks. But, I was worked very hard. I kept up with it, but they didn't like me taking lunches, and I never got my full half hour for lunch. I would have just enough time to sit down, eat a sandwich and gatorade, and get my ass back to work. A few times my boss didn't let me even do that. We were so busy, and he was so lazy he didn't want to work my job for a half hour while I ate, that he ordered pizza for everyone in the office, brought me out a few pieces, set them on a pallet of bags of mulch, and told me to eat in between helping customers. HOW THE FUCK CAN I EAT IN BETWEEN CUSTOMERS WHEN THE LINE OF CUSTOMERS IS A FUCKING MILE LONG. Lets just say I dissapeared for about fifteen minutes, ate the damn pizza, took a piss and sat in the staw trailer. I figured if that bastard ever bitched about it, I'd threaten legal action.
I got them back for all the missed lunches this last winter though. I ended up working with the laziest foreman ever. It was so cold, we'd work about an hour, and sit in the truck for a half hour to warm back up. We would also sleep on our lunch break. Once we took lunch at eleven, both of us passed out and didn't wake up till after 2 in the afternoon.
LARGE chains? (Score:3, Interesting)
The time shifting between weeks thing happens regularly in my little indie bookstore. At least at the big boys there's a bureaucracy in place for people to go to with problems, even if it IS a part of the system. At my store, who do I talk to? My manager? He's the one doing the shifting. The owners? What're they going to say?
I have been warned by management NEVER to mention the U word (Union). It's an instant ticket for dismissal. That manager got canned out of the blue shortly after that conversation, so...
The sick thing is, as an independent bookstore, we're the last and only line of defense against megastore encroachment. I used to work at Barnes and Noble, and you know what? I was treated better, given more hours and paid more (way more) to work for them than I make now. With practices like this, I understand why people give in to the big boys.
Anybody want to talk to me about setting up a bookseller's union? I'm so completely serious it's not funny.
Triv
& at call centers., the experience is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
At a different call center, we had time cards, but no one ever used them. So the manager would simply see who was present each day, and fill in a form saying we worked our five hour shift, regardless of the hours we actually worked --- which was usually somewhere between four and four and a half hours. If he paid us for 5 hours, and we were only there for an hour, his attitude was "Don't worry about it." [And no, that time did not have to be made up.]
At a third call center I worked at, we would be penalized if we worked overtime. Management was supposed to hand us a sheet every morning, showing our worked hours this week, and the time to leave that day. Three violations, and you were terminated. [The major problem is that managers seldom showed us the sheets in the morning, so more often than not, we would come back from break, and be told to sign out for the day. The next week we would get a verbal warning, because we took a break that we were not entitled to.] [That company is now also out of business.]
Employee Abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
The people that I "feel" for are the ones who honestly are stuck doing 'something.' They really want to go home, they're dying to punch that clock, but they have to complete their task. They're not gaming the system like our friends above, but in the end the manager will audit their time as well. So while the folks who wrongfully have eighteen hours of overtime get their time cut, the "nice guy" who has two hours gets the same punishment.
My company recently initiated a policy to stop overtime reapers. We all manage our own time-sheets. It's all computerized, stored in a text file on the UNIX system. You can edit your own time card, if you wish. Many people do, often to add overtime they didn't do. To combat this, anything over ten hours now requires manager approval.
You could probably set that hour limit lower for different companies, but it seems to do the trick. Your time concious employees who want that overtime dollar, seem to watch the clock a bit closer :) in order to avoid getting audited by the manager.
Pro Employer (Score:3, Interesting)
Its unfortunate unions in the U.S. went out of control and vastly overcorrected to the point unionized workers are largely worthless. Without unionization, which is in rapid decline in the U.S., we end up over correcting in the other direction, like this, where workers are abused and exploited and there isn't much they can do about it unless they want to get fired, find a lawyer willing to take the case for a percentage and survive a lengthy court battle.
Its a little off topic but when you see working people being screwed out of precious dollars its kind of instructive to see how the members of the Bush family, especially Neal Bush, get by:
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair04032004.htm
Or a little background on our current Labor Secretary might be interesting. She is unfortunately decidedly unsympathetic to labor, as evidenced by the Labor department's guide to employers last year on how to avoid paying workers for overtime, which accompanyied the Bush administration's new rules that deny overtime pay to millions of American's like firefighters, police and nurses:
http://www.counterpunch.org/flanders04012004.ht
When you hear on the business about worker "productivity" gains, you need to realize sometimes this might mean workers are more productive but more often than not it means they are working more hours for less money.
Time and Attendance (Score:5, Interesting)
Now what i do see a problem with is rounding. A lot of places like to round punches in a very unfair manner. If you're 15 minutes early it rounds forward, and if you stay 15 minutes late it rounds back. This is VERY common, however illegal.
The law states that whatever rounding rules you apply at the start of the day must be the same rule you apply at the end of the day, so if your employer uses these techniques to cheat you, do something about it.
normal practice at abercrombie and fitch also. (Score:2, Interesting)
since schedules are sporadic there as it is (3hrs one day, 8 the next, not working for a few days), and since you never had the same schedule every week, or got a detailed report of your schedule with your paycheck, this made it really easy for managers to pull the wool over many eyes.
some employees working there while i was caught this and only because they kept all their time receipts and schedules were they able to get some redemption. i wouldn't be suprised if similar things went on at other clothing retailers and companies that hire people with similar shifting schedules.
Best Buy (Score:5, Interesting)
In my situation, I was the 'in home pc-tech'. I had to use my own car. When I was in a car accident, I obviously could no longer continue in that job. My computer access was immediatly restricted so I couldn't finish the invoices I had outstanding. The white bankers box I had put all my invoices into while I was BEGGING to have my computer access restored 'vanished'. Shortly after that I was 'fired' for theft. Was I jailed? Nope. Fined? Nope. Had my pay check shortened to cover the 'loss'? Nope. They simply wanted to hire another in home computer tech and didn't have the money to do so without getting rid of the highest paid computer store tech that they had -- me. I saw all the 'tao' messages that had been sent back and forth to the support manager of the tech area.
This kind of crap goes on all the time, and it needs to stop.
What happened to the general manager of the store? Well, after being caught in MORE time-stealing, he was promoted to REGIONAL MANAGER!
That's business in the US for 'ya!
How to Fight This (Score:5, Interesting)
Daughter #1 came home from her job at a regional restaurant chain, one night during high school, and complained bitterly that she was getting cheated. It seems the restaurant's assistant managers had decided that they were going to make some policy changes to save costs--and the costs they had in mind were the payroll costs of the "cleaners", two or three people who did cleaning chores in the kitchen and the restaurant area. Their brilliant plan: the cleaning chores would be assigned to the wait staff--who would have to perform them after going off the clock at the end of their shifts.
For those of you keeping score at home, this is a federal crime.
An Internet solution...
So I registered for a Hotmail account, under the pseudonym of a noted villain [wikipedia.org] in American labor history, and found an email address for the chain's corporate parent from their web site. The email went something like this:
The company jumped
I sent the email late Friday night. By Saturday afternoon the company had descended, announced that the restaurant would be closed on Monday and Tuesday for "training," and Tuesday night had a staff meeting announcing that this would not happen again, yadda yadda yadda. The assistant managers got spanked.
In an age of anonymous email, there's no excuse for putting up with this
Especially because, for just a couple of bucks, you can register a domain that will scare the stuffing out of your typical PHB (oh, like "People United for Fair Wage Reporting", "Pennsylvania Labor Standards Action", "Mid-Atlantic Coalition for Labor Justice", and so forth), and be sure to "copy" your anonymous emails to a name at that domain. Or, for that matter, copy a local newspaper columnist.
The cockroach principle
Shine a bright light, and cockroaches will scatter like, well, cockroaches. An anonymous email to corporate headquarters, or the local newspaper, will focus a lot of attention on the cockroaches who are trying to pull this stuff.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Interesting)
My Theory of Unions (Score:3, Interesting)
A fews years later, and the plant's not doing that well. The plant manager announces a layoff of a few hundered employees. Meanwhile he decides the wood desk in his top floor office is not big enough. He orders a huge wooden desk. It arrives and won't fit in the freight elevator. So at the same time the factory workers are being laid-off, he's got a crew removing his office window, and using a four story crane to haul his new desk up to his office.
Later I worked for a computer company still run by the founder - a former EE. He believed - that if you treat people well, and show them respect, they'll work hard for you. He was right - people had a 'whatever it takes' - attitude. People worked hard, they worked (for the most part) smart and things got done. At least till the bean-counters took over the company
Anyway, today there's an imbalance in power between companies and workers. Large comapnies are viewing workers as a cost (at best). Treating people well, treating them with respect is out of fashion. Management theory has gone from X to Y to Z and back to X again. A very fertile environment for the resurgence of unions.
Not quite so anonymous any more (Score:1, Interesting)
In any case, the anonymity probably wasn't a big deal. A certified letter under your real name, sent to the CEO or the person listed by the SEC as the one to receive legal service, would have likely been as effective.
I agree with your general point that there would be a lot less of this if people stood up a bit more. Sometimes simply recording your arrival time on a piece of paper, letting others see you do it, is enough.
Another avenue is to treat this as a criminal matter, not a civil matter. In some jurisdictions this can be prosecuted as a theft of service, with fines and even jail time.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Electronic Time Tracking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ugh (Score:1, Interesting)
Lets say each employee makes a little more than min wage 6 dollars an hour. Lets say they are shaving 1/2 hour per employee.
8x6 = 48
8x7.5 = 45
For a 3 dollar kick back per employee per day. Lets also say 50 cents of 3 dollars must be fica/ss which MUST be matched by the company.
So the 3 dollar kick back goes to 3.50. Thats probably to high but gets the point across.
1 month lets say all months are 30 days
48x30 = 1440
45x30 = 1350
for a 90 dollar kick back with out fica.
or 105 dollars
Lets also say they employee 30 people (small number for A wallmart).
30 x 105 = 3150
That is a 3k kickback. That manager is 3k more profitable to the company for what they do. If that 3k is the difference between making the 'labor money pool' and not. What is the manager going to do? Given that HIS manager is hanging the 'or else' thing over his head.
These number do not even take into acount OT and other things. That 3k could easily go to 10k. It adds up quick.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like someone without a grasp on how to manage resources. A well run store will rarely if ever have these problems. If they do come up then obviously your manager isn't doing his/her job and should be disciplined.
What bothers me most about your post, is that you seem to be saying that it is "ok" to short change employees that are working for you. Are you trying to tell me that if your boss started knocking hours off your check to meet the bottom line you would just smile and say "whats good for the company is good for me"?
Hyperbole works both ways you know.
Easy way to kill overtime... (Score:4, Interesting)
No kidding, you can get away with anything by using salary as a defense. I used to work for a company that was based on "Good Ol' Boy" rules from Texas (Cargo Furniture, division of Tandycrafts, who put tiny crate-style furniture showrooms in malls). That was work 48hours, six days a week. Of course, we had a staff of three to run a whole store, so this was broken up by two full timers (a manager and assistant manager) and one part timer. Luckily (or unluckily) the stores were usually empty (and thus, no longer around), so crowds were not a problem. The part timer was only there so no one, in theory, had to work a full 12-hour day.
The salary went like this: they said it was hourly, but they paid you overtime. I can't recall why they paid you hourly, but there was some odd tax thing of salary vs. hourly. So, as a manager I got paid:
(40hrs x 1.0 x $7.00 = $280 for "normal time") + (8hrs x 1.5 x $7.00 = $ 84 for "overtime") = $364/week = $18,928 a year as "salary"
Now, it was never explained why we were paid hourly, because if you worked 50, 60, or 80 hours in one week (like your assistant was on vacation), you didn't get overtime. But on your paycheck was your hourly wage. But it was salary. You had to clock in, too, but you weren't allowed to report the real hours and so the timecards never matched anything in reality.
Now, tell someone you want hire, "We'll pay you less than what people around here are getting paid for assistants, but you have to work six days a week, 48 hours a day." Then tell a part timer he or she's getting minimum wage and can only work no more than 10 hours a week. I never got many applicants, and many managers were totally starved for staff. 80 hour weeks were common. Those who had a staff often worked other stores that didn't have staff just so the only employee could get a day off. For nothing. My record was 2 months of 12-hour days with no time off, and I wasn't even close to the record holder. It was insane.
Confused? Yeah, those who questioned the legality of it got fired. This was back during Bush Sr's recession of the early 90s, so I was happy to have a job at all (previously, I had been unemployed for 2 years, and was living in the projects - I could NOT afford to be choosy about my employer).
Wall-Mart uses the same tactics. They hire people for low wages, and those that agree they know are too stupid, have no self-confidence, or otherwise unable to get a job elsewhere, either because of local economies, or previous employer problems. In fact, if you DO sue a company for defrauding you, good luck getting a job elsewhere! Maybe that's not legal, or even true in some states, but try telling that to your average Wall-Mart employee, who wasn't able to get a better job in the first place. They may bitch about having rights, but they can't afford to go to court if they want to also put food on their table.
The Down Side (Score:5, Interesting)
It's everywhere (Score:2, Interesting)
In order to "keep the company business", (and for Compuware to make sure they keep their margin), we were instructed to NOT bill more than 8h a day, despite the fact that clients would have us work overtime and more.
Apparently, the only difference here is that managers don't even hide that fact. I am not sure how more or less illegal does that makes it
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Interesting)
I hear that. For the first few years of my career I was a brown nosing ferret. "Jump, Jump, oooo How high!." It was after being utterly screwed a few times by the folks upstairs that I realized that when I bust my ass, they look good. But good doesn't trickle down. I also learned that when you stop jumping through hoops, they start getting mad at you.
It finally took having a heart to heart with my boss about the fact that there is a life outside these walls. Yes, believe it or not, bosses are human too.
I think it's like sharks. There are almost no recorded attacks by sharks on divers in the water. (Unless of course they were feeding sharks and had a nice pile of bait strapped to them.)
Why? Scuba divers don't look like food. Almost all shark attacks on humans are on the surface, where they mistake us for seals, or injured whales.
Bosses can smell fear. They know who they can intimidate. If you stand your ground, and don't act like a victim, they have to change modes and treat you like something else.
Or they just invent a reason to fire you. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Interesting)
> With your plan, the employees make only half of what they used to.
You don't implement such a thing suddenly, cutting everybody's hours in half
overnight and hiring a bunch more half-timers to fill out the schedule. What
you do is, when you hire new "full-time" people (e.g. as a result of turnover),
you hire them for 30-35 hours, instead of 40. Also if possible you hire a
couple of part-timers for 20-25 hours. Then when you need to keep somebody
over past the scheduled end of their shift, you pick one of these people. In
time, you can convert your entire staff to being scheduled 30 or fewer hours
and actually working less than 40 almost 100% of the time.
Yes, *some* employees will be annoyed because they'll want 40 hours, and they
might even look for work elsewhere, but there are other people who will be
grateful not to be made to work overtime all the time because they prefer to
have some time left for other stuff. Six of one, half a dozen of the other,
but you can pay out less overtime this way, if that's your goal.
This does not, however, solve the scenerio where the higher-ups tell you to
run the place with less than such-and-such payroll.
When I worked at McDonald's, the system they used was to watch what payroll
was costing *as a percentage of gross* on an hour-by-hour basis. If it got
to be too high, they sent somebody home. This system had the advantage in
general of not sending home employees who were sorely needed to keep the
place running, because if we were busy then gross was high enough to support
more employees.
As far as I am aware (and I *think* I would have noticed, though it's hard
to be entirely certain), I have never seen time shaved per se at any place
where I've worked. I *have* seen all time rounded off to the nearest
quarter-hour, at places where timesheets are filled out with pen and paper
and the person doing payroll doesn't want to do complicated calculations.
But the employees did their own rounding. I'm not sure of the legality of
this arrangement (I suspect it's dubious at best), but it's not as near as
I can tell designed with the intention of cheating employees (if anything,
the employees could easily round up if it's even close); the goal is
simplification. I was always uncomfortable with it, though, and as I said
I'm unsure of the legality. I've also seen various other technically illegal
things...
I have seen a situation where "comp time" was heavily abused to shift time
from heavy weeks onto light weeks; I personally wouldn't have stood for it,
but the employee wasn't me but someone else I know, and he didn't even see
the problem when I explained it to him or seem to mind, so I let it go as
not my problem.
I've seen break times recorded as different from when the breaks were really
taken, to hide the fact that the employee worked more than five consecutive
hours between breaks. The employees did get the break, though, just not at
the time the records said. I've also seen employees voluntarily forego
breaks that _technically_ they legally have to have, and the employer
permitted it, which they legally aren't supposed to do. There was no
_pressure_ to forego breaks though, at least, nothing that could really be
construed as strong or direct pressure. (The place was busy and the other
employees busting themselves, and the person knew it, but nobody would have
objected if he took the break, and he knew that too. Call it pressure if
you want.) Again, this is definitely not legal, but it's also not quite
the same as the shaving discussed in the article.
I've seen (non-payroll) records falsified. I refused to participate, so
someone else did it. She was annoyed, but no action was taken against me.
I've seen managers instruct employees to do things that everyone present
knew was offi
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Interesting)
However one of these choices needs to be made, or you end up with one of two situations: either customers leave due to slow, poor service, or employees resent the employer for forced, unpaid overtime. Neither situation is good for anyone involved.
It is frequently a self-correcting problem, although when a business gets big enough then statistics demand that the problem not correct itself and another power is needed to balance them. However, if your goal is to treat your employees well, not overwork them but not underpay them, the problem is self-correcting for this reason:
I don't know how many times I have been into a business and received slow, unfriendly service. Needless to say, I shop elsewhere next time.
Emphasis mine, of course. :) Also, I should mention, the employer should *never* force anyone to work overtime. If the business needs someone to stay late, they should *ask*, and if nobody says yes, then do without. I've quit jobs when forced to stay late, and one I even called in and quit over the phone the day after I was forced to stay late. So the business also needs to have incentives to make the employee say "yes" when they ask. It's the whole "scratch my back I scratch your back" deal. An employee that comes in on his days off when called is more likely to get preferential scheduling, requested days off, and so forth. An employee who never stays late when asked, never comes in on their day off when called, is not likely to get preferential treatment (although may get other types of good treatment if the reason they never stay late or come in on their day off revolves around baby-sitters and other problems. I've seen ladies working that were single mothers who had no flexibility in their schedules for that reason get raises and bonuses over and above other employees who arguably worked just as hard. Suffice it to say, those ladies didn't feel a need to look for another job). I should also mention that I've seen some pretty nasty work accidents caused by exhaustion.
It's all like I said before. :) The relationship between employers and employees is a delicate one, and when treated with respect can be very rewarding for both the employer and the employee. It's like marriage in that regard, and in the regard that both the employer and the employee have placed a certain stake in each other's performance and abilities.
Now I"ll open up for flames again.
See, there is also something called "job requirements". If the job occasionally requires an employee to work extra, and the employee knows this before taking the job, and the employee later refuses to ever work extra, then that employee is not fulfilling the job requirements. It's one thing to say "You never told me I'd need to stay late" and quite another thing to say "I knew this when you hired me, but I refuse". That employee shouldn't be forced to stay late. But then, neither should that employee continue his employment there. It's something that can usually be worked out, but I've seen cases where it couldn't and the employee quit. Mind you, firing is always last resort. Nobody should ever have to deal with "Do this or your fired". There's no reason for that sort of behavior. On the other hand, the manager has to ask himself "What good is this guy if he can never work late when I need him to?" It will affect scheduling, and it will affect requested time off, and so forth. I know I've gotten a lot of extra good treatment by being flexible with my schedule, coming in on my days off when called, and I certainly enjoyed seeing the extra cash on my paycheck. I've always had the option to say no (except for one time when the guy called and I said no, and he said "If you don't come in now, don't come in again" and I said "Ok. I guess I'll see you when I pick up my last paycheck, then.") without fear of backlash, but I've always known that saying "yes" meant I got something in return.
I've also seen people carrying pa
Re:Unauthorized overtime (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but most programmers don't get hired hourly/no overtime. Smart managers hire them salary/exempt, because you can really crack the whip over 'em then.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't agree with you more. i don't see were the disagreement or misinterpretaiont exist at this point.
Re:Normal Practice at Wal-Mart (Score:3, Interesting)
Very simple: pay him the overtime and then fire his a$$. If he's taking serious overtime (several hours a day) then you (or another manager) should notice it in a few days, if it's only a few minutes then it might go unnoticed until the next paycheck, but either way you'll catch him.
And while I agree my scenario isn't perfect the alternative, which is allowing employers to rip-off employees, is far worse.
In our economy it's far easier for employers to find new employees than for employees to find new jobs, so I seriously doubt there's a large number of people out there willing to risk losing their job and going weeks or months unemployeed for just a few hours of time-and-a-half.
Re:You don't even need electronics. (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you encourage your employees to leave early to make up for the time that they showed up early?
Not exactly. If it's slow and I need to send someone home, the first person who got on the clock is first in line to leave, to make sure that people who showed up later (but on time) have a fair shot at getting all of their hours. It works out to be more equitable to all employees that way.