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Are You On Time To Work?
gravitie asks: "I'm a developer in my local area. I'm on what is supposed to be 'flex time', so I can work the hours that my boss and I see fit for me to fullfil the number of hours I'm required to get a week. Besides this I must clock in at 7:30 AM every day I am at work. If I clock in at 7:31 I am late, no questions asked. If I am late 3 times in one quarter I get a verbal warning. Next time I get a written warning, then it just goes down hill from there (docked pay, etc..). Is this standard in todays business world? Should 1 minute late really be considered 'late'?"
If you have flex hours, why do you have to clock in at 7:30 AM?
Are you late even at 7:31? One minute past? YES! Your employers set up the rules, as a good employee you should respect an abide by those rules. To be honest, it should never be an issue. You should make an effort to arrive at 7:00. That will give you plenty of time to deal with any unforeseen traffic conditions in your drive in to work, issues with weather, car problems, breakfast, etc. As well, if you are consistently early for work, your employers will take note, and will be impressed by your attitude and willingness to get started with your work! Those are the kinds of things which give you good reviews and get you better raises and help with promotions. You should never be late. You should strive to make sure that it will never be an issue.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
I have true flexitime, and no-one bats an eyelid if I turn up at 10am, or leave at 3:30pm. It says that we operate a flexitime policy in my contract, so that's fine.
Your contract tells you your conditions of work. If you don't like having to be there at 7:30, read your contract. If they're the rules, and you still don't like it, you're free to get another job. Obviously, most people don't work in places where being a minute late a half dozen times can get them sacked, but perhaps you do. If it troubles you, stop whinging and do something about it.
My company recently adopted a similar policy - 12 times late in one year and you're suspended without pay (though we do admittedly get a more generous grace period of 4 minutes - start at 7:30 and you're not late until 7:35). Prior to this, one had to be late 5 times or more in a period of 2 weeks to even get a warning, and several warnings were required before any real disciplinary action was taken. Seems that with the job market the way it is, employers are finding they can get away with squeezing more and more time out of their employees; They know we've got nowhere to go and, more importantly, that they'll have no problems finding qualified replacements should a few of us happen to walk out anyway. Sad times for the workin' man.
In fact I just got in (09:50 BST) and after reading my mail, I went straight to SlashDot.
I'm supposed to be in at 9:00, but pretty much everyone gets in when they feel like. Then again, I don't leave work until almost 7, so I still put the hours in, and beat the traffic into and out of work.
How does treating creative workers like assembly line factory workers improve the company's bottom line?
How does having your biggest asset -- your employees -- breaking out in a sweat for being a minute late (and probably spending half the day worrying how many more late days they have in their "quota" before being punished), make the company more competitive?
How does explaining that your company has more petty rules than the local McDonald's franchise attract the best and brightest employees?
Don't get me wrong: some coordination is necessary, so that employees can confer with their fellow employees. But a goodly number of people aren't at their best at 7:30 (I sure as hell am not), and won't do their best work if some Pointy Haired Boss greets them each morning with a stop-watch in hand. This creates resentment, not loyalty.
Times are bad in IT right now. If the past is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future, times will be good again, and employees will be more scarce. And employees (and potential employees) will remember how the company treated people in these lean times.
I expect the poster's company will have a terrible time attracting talent at that point -- if they haven't already gone under by then, because only the most desperate and talentless of their employees won't have found jobs at a place that doesn't treat knowledge workers like unskilled factory workers.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
The respect and latitude my boss has given me has earned him a less than 3 minute pager response time and a "yes" every time there is a weekend problem or a 2 am "Can you go in and fix it?" When he needs a long day, I'm there. My record so far is 25 hours straight, on-site.
If you need to be in the office at a certain time, it's not "flex time" that people know of in Silicon Valley. Flex time is when the employee sets the time/day when projects get worked on, not the manager.
The last jobs I have had in the industry have been like this:
We need you to be in between 11 AM and 3 PM so we know we can schedule meetings with you. Please warn us if can see you aren't going to be able to make it one day.
Other than that, no monitoring, no punishment and other bullshit.
I don't want to work for someone who doesn't trust my common sense. I feel the same way about dresscodes.
Give me liberty or give me kill -s 9
This doesnt sound very much like flex-time as I know it. I'm currently on flexible-time my employers requires 7.5hour per day for 5 days a week. I must be in between core hours 9:30 to 4:30, and this is probably one of the least flexible schemes by UK standards since I cannot carry over-worked hours to another day, which is more typical.
it's not flex time you're working on.
other than that, get over it, and get the managers to call it other than flex time.
though, the system you're working under sounds utterly stupid, there's factories that have more 'flex' system than that(the systems can count minutes, and even pay or award extra days off after you get enough overtime). in a 1 minute system you definetely don't get the real slackers out of the payroll(because they'll show up to check in, and then go to their office and stare at the wall, or read slashdot or whatever). the whole point of flex system and check in cards and whatnot in todays world is that the hours you're at work are easily calculated even if you don't show up at a certain minute(plus, i imagine that on some tight schedules it could end up being more actual working hours if you could show up late and then work later, like in a real flex system, in case somebody else has to do someting in the morning before you can actually do anything & etc).
-
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yes, you should go work on time. If they require you to be in the office ay 7:30, be there at 7:30 or earlier.
However, since you said you're supposed to be flexitime, aren't you supposed not to be late even if you report at 8:00 or 10:00. That's why they call it flexitime. You should talk to your boss about this since you had an agreement that you should have a flexitime schedule.
If the company you work for is profitable, the best solution is to leave and start up a company that does the same thing, it will clearly be more profitable as you won't be treating your workforce like prisoners.
If (as it would appear from their management style) they are a sinking ship, you could content yourself with leaving just as promptly at the end of your shift, and arranging that your departure occurs when you are midway through a sentence talking to your boss.
When he asks ask why you are going home halfway through a sentence, tell him, and bill the company overtime for your explanation.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You ask:
Should 1 minute late really be considered 'late'?"
Let's rephrase it:
Should 1 minute early really be considered 'early'?"
Being on time is easy. Your boss knows that it is easy, so when you are late, it is a great big "fuck you" to his desires. Of course, occasional tardiness is understandable, and even sometimes unavoidable, but that you can't drag your ass out of bed or leave the house five minutes earlier is not your bosses problem.
After all, the only important difference between an adult and a child is that an adult does what he/she is supposed to do (i.e, meets his or her responsibilities), even when they are tired, hung-over, etc., otherwise you are still a little boy or girl, and of no use to most employers.
I'm not ragging on you, I'm just stating the facts as I know from experience a large number of employers see them.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
What are the legalities of treating a salaried employee as an hourly wage earner?
My work schedule depends on whos my boss this week. Ive been at the same company for almost 5 years, with a new boss each year. Working in operations, its always been core hours, because we work maintenance windows, 9-3 is core hours for meetings, etc.. And you worked all the time, so nobody said a word about the night hours for upgrades, etc..
Now the last couple of managers its been 7-5 and 9-6 with maintenance at night. Hours are like the east coast, 9 hours including lunch, we use to be westcoast hours, 8 hours with lunch.. They also shit-canned telecommuting for our groups. They also axed OT, made everyone salary. Increased the work hours to 55+ also. Hired 1 night time guy, but he cant ever do all the work, so someone has to come in and help. Then the oncall pay went away, comp time went away.
Basically, depends on what your manager will fight for your group. I look around at other groups, and see they still have core hours, etc. But ours wont. Each manager can run his department the way he wants, wink wink nod nod.
As an old unix sys-admin, used to be noon to night, get out of my face. Now im in at 7:10 (late on purpose) and skirting a PIP, just for the hell of it. I tell you thou, when its quitting time, im gone. The "You need to stay late to get this project done" times are getting old when your a paid slave. I hear it only takes 9 to bring the telco union in. Humm, they specialize in IT/IS groups now...
YMMV, IMHO, and all that jazz.
Well, there is the whole cliche: How would you feel if your employer were a day late in paying you?
But, if a minute is "late" then you work for somone who's too strict with the rules. You SHOULD respect them, however... but likewise your employer shouldn't be asking you to stay a minute after 6:01 (or whenever you get off).
Though I guess if you are an employer, you might not run into that situation with your attitude...
If I clock in at 7:31 I am late, no questions asked. If I am late 3 times in one quarter I get a verbal warning.
Well, at least if you're running one minute late you can make the best of it and go out for breakfast, coming in 3 or 4 hours late.
Not only you must get back on time, you MUST get back before your boss, and leave later than her/him.
It can't be wrong in any economic situation.
My previous job, I had ultimate flex time.
I was always on call, both with cell and pager, vpn access from home. I strolled into work sometime before noon (and somedays slightly after) but normally worked till 10 or 11 pm, regardless of when I came in. I worked at least a 60 hour work week.
When production ramped up, it went from 60 to 80 hours. Then from 80 to 100 hours. When the project was finished, I went back to my old schedule of comming in at 10, but since little was left to do at the time, I would leave about 5 or 6, cutting my work week down to 35 hours.
Others in the company had a more strict policy. Similar to the one described above. These were artists, some of which didn't function well until 10 am, but were still expected to be in for the 5 minute 9 am meeting. What was once a bunch of artists that did everything it took to get ahead in the work became a group that did just what was needed to get it done. The mandatory 9-6 schedule with the hour lunch at noon and 2 15 minute breaks drove them insane and ultimately turned a group that got things done before time and under budget into a collection of disgruntled people who were running behind and over budget. The sadest thing was that the management did not pick up on it. Sometimes a little bit of freedom is what is needed to get things done right.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Obviously I have no idea about your specific circumstances but the logic behind a very strict clock-in time could be...
:-)
A: "When do we want people to start?"
B: "7am."
A: "Hmm, that's a bit early. What if they're late?"
B: "We'll punish them. Dock their pay, something like that."
A: "Okay, punishing is one solution. But it would be better if we could get them to just be here on time."
B: "Tricky..."
A: "Hey, how about we say the start time is 7:30am but then we really hit them hard if they're late?"
B: "Yeah, that could work."
Really strict rules are often intended to achieve something slightly different.
But of course I could be talking a load of rubbish, it's just a suggestion
You got to set the limit somewhere. If people know they're supposed to be there by 7.30 but "late" isn't really until 7.40, it will mostly mean people get there 7.41. I wonder how one calls this "flex time" though. I usually arrive between 8.00 and 9.30. No questions asked.
I've got a C compiler that doesn't like my syntax. I mean, I know I've read the spec and it lays out the syntax, but I don't really like it. I mean, can't they change the C spec to suit my code?
I know it costs $0.48 to mail something, but I only want to use my $0.47 stamps. Can't something be done? It's only $0.01 difference. Sometimes I'll be willing to pay $0.49 to make up!
Does anyone know how to go 130 kph when the speed limit is 100? I mean, people keep giving me tickets. Can't something be done about this? Really, the rules should be changed.
If your hours are stated in some form of contract, then honour it. If you don't like it, try to work with management. If that doesn't work, you can literally quit your job.
If you don't like getting there early and having nothing to do, bring a book, bring some music, bring an audiobook, etc, etc. The worst that can happen is that on days where there's traffic/construction, you won't be stressed out because you'll be 3 mins late for work. Instead, you'll arrive there 20 mins early instead of 30.
In all honesty, it does look disrespectful to other people when you get there late and most everyone else got there on time (or early). Especially those that travel longer distances to get to work in the first place.
You have a contrat or agreement.
Stick to it.
If your boss is a compulsive workholic, and irredent slacker or both it is not your duty to show any support.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Should 1 minute late really be considered 'late'?
In a perfect world, one wouldn't be subject to insanely retentive morons who consider being one minute late a punishment worthy offense. As should be obvious these days, this is more of a pessimal world. So the best course of action is probably to make your target arrival time 7:15. Sure, it's another 15 minutes of uncompensated time out of your life on top of the hour or so you already lose to travel to and from the job, but at least you're employed.
There are several reasons for following these rules, and some may even apply to you!
I've tried to adjust my working hours to the rest of the project (which means coming in one hour earlier than at my previous job), but even then, that is not enough.
So - follow the flex rules because otherwise you can make the job of others so much more frustrating!
You really have to puch clock? No, seriously, I've NEVER heard of clocking in at ANY professional level company. If you're salaried, then all that crap goes out the window and expectations move from "working the required hours" to "working the hours required", if you catch the subtle difference. Funny how it always works in their favour, they never acknowledge the extra hours we put in at the end of the day to actually get the job done. So use it against them.
As someone has noted above, read your contract, get some legal advice (join a union, they're good at that sort of thing), then sit down in a quiet, friendly chat with your manager who says you are on flexi-time and explain your concerns and point out whatever favourable legal stuff you find in your contract. Point out politely that if the company insists on you clocking in at precisely 7:30am, then you will insist in clocking out precisely X hours later, as per the exact terms of your contract. If/when management caves in, get it in writing from the highest possible person, counter-signed by someone high up in HR and get a notarised copy lodged somewhere safe. Worst case scenario is you piss them off a bit and miss a few bonuses and promotions, but your job is 100% safe unless they can pin some other crap on you. Then you sue their arse...
John.
P.S. If you're looking for examples, IBM has a flexi policy that so long as you're in by 10 and don't leave before 3, and make your hours for the week, no questions are asked. For those on call, hours worked the night before count to your weeks total and can be used against that days core hours. I've seen DBA's crawl in at 1pm and leave an hour later after a really bad night. Hell, my manager NEVER arrived before 10am, sometimes 11am...
My last job, I was used to coming in and leaving when the work was done. No questions asked. Even though I worked 60 to 80 hours a week, I was still fairly happy. Then I had to go do something stupid and go somewhere else for less hours. If I'm a minute past 8, I'm late. I just got a written warning and stuck on 90 day probation for it. It's all a stupid perception thing. I get my work done, early, and my stuff just works without problems. Yet, my boss doesn't see that, he sits there with the stopwatch waiting for me to come in and it pisses him off.
IT is not like a job at a convenience store. People should not be required to have strict hours. I guess it depends on the company though. Old companies have hours, young companies don't. The people at the young companies seem happier and tend to get more work done. If you treat your employees like 5 year olds, they will act like 5 year olds.
A minute late three times and you get a reprimand? What is this, gradeschool?
Last Tuesday (not yesterday) I was supposed to be at work at 6AM for copyout. My alarm never went off, so I woke up at 6. I got to work 90 minutes late (I'd called and left a msg for my boss telling her I had to shower and would be in ASAP.
Not so much as a stern talking to when I got there. Sure, I had to stay late but my regular work days (aside from copyout) are 7-4 anyway.
This was the first time I've *ever* been late to a job, and I've been working since I was 17 (14 years now).
My question to those in a situation similar to the subject author's: What do your employers have to say if you have kids and have to 1) drop them off at daycare or school, or 2) have sick kids that require attending to before you leave? Are they such hard-asses that they'll ride you for taking care of family?
If so, I'd suggest finding another job. We're all supposed to be adults, and should be capable of policing ourselves.
The only time something like this should be done is if you're working in a call center.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Both of my parents are "professionals". One is in IT, the other is in administration.
When you're paid a professional salary, and working for a signifigant company, they should be more forgiving about minor details like that and be more concerned about the quality of your work.
If you're hearing rhetoric about Linux, open source, or Mac and everyone's bashing Microsoft, you've found Slashdot.
One company I worked at, if you were one minute late clocking in, (07:31), then you got docked one minute's pay. Not too difficult is it? Neither the company nor the employee notices one minute here or there.
***You learn something Every day. And then you die.***
But what my boss cares about is effectiveness - if, even if I arrive late from lunch.
The HR department deducts this tardiness from my salary but he always authorizes it to be added back. Those folks really hate my boss because of this.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
Henry Ford (paraphrased, in reference to the Model T): You can have any color you want, as long as it's black.
Your Boss: You can show up anytime you want, as long as it's at 7:30.
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
I usually show up a good 10 to 15 minutes late and sneak in the side door. Then I zone out at my desk until around noon or so. Go grab some lunch and come back, and zone out until about 4:00 then I sneak out the side door. I'd say on a given day I get about 15 minutes of real work done.
When I worked at McDonalds we had a similar system to this. The only thing is IMHO McDonalds only hires relativly consciencious workers. You see when I would be getting on for a shift at McDonalds I was replacing somebody who desparately wanted to get the fuck out of there. Same thing with when I had been making burgers for 8 hours straight. Everyone actually clocked in a few minutes EARLY to make the shift change go as smooth as possible (less orders in the queue when you get on). This was a great system because if you were late it wasn't the managment who you were fucking over, it was your friends because usually noone would leave if the next shift wasn't there. Currently I work at A&P and it is quite different, since the time clock only checks who is/isn't clocked in every 15 minutes you can clock in 7 minutes early or 7 minutes late and still be on time. The same goes for clocking out at the end of your shifts and clocking out for lunches. On 1 8 hour shift with 1 unpaid lunch (and 2 paid breaks) you could actually get paid for half an hour that you didn't work. A&P is alot more laid back than McDonalds I will clock out if there is another person to replace me or not, the produce floor won't suddenly explode if someone isn't watching it like a hawk.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
It's highly unprofessional for employees to be late constantly, but it's equally unprofessional to expect exempt employees to clock in.
When companies suddenly become Nazi-esque regarding things like time reporting, it usually means that they are targeting people for termination. At most places, the little rules only are enforced when management wants to get rid of someone of flex their muscle.
That being said, if you have flex time available to you, pick a start time that is compatible with your commute and try to be at work 15 minutes early.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
When you are late for a good reason, so be it -- just take the hit. If you're that valuable, they won't fire you. Life can suck sometimes, now suck it up and carry on.
No bloody wonder the world is going to hell in a hand basket when no one can appreciate the value of having reasonable working standards.
You "creative" types slay me. Go "create" on your own if you don't like "working for the man". It's your decision, no one owes you anything.
"A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to." -- Gandalf
---
Heavily armed, easily bored and off my medication.
You could have a buddy clock you in or something.
Many guys at factory jobs clock in/out for other guys and people just leave the site.
I worked at Johnson Controls, making car interiors. Sure, factory job, but you've gotta clock in on time or else. You'd get fired and they'd find someone else with a pulse to take your job.
At Best Buy you had to have a manager punch you in/out if you weren't within 7 minutes of your scheduled time. This way they can control hours down to the minute.
At Applebee's they have what's called "Apple Time". You were supposed to show up 5 or 15 minutes before your shift and get ready for the day. They'd even pay you the extra hour or whatever you would be there during the week by getting there early.
I worked for a mom+pop network shop, and we were all salaried. The problem was, the cunt that worked up front would record what time we all came in and would email them all to the boss.
Bob - 8:01, Marc - 8:14, Ray - 7:55, John - 8:20
I hated that fucking job.
I'm always on time since we started getting bagels/donuts. Ever been the last guy to get a donut or bagel?
The cream cheese is all dirty, the donuts are all picked over...
I used to work for a government department that inflicted this sort of thing on me as well. It never worked for me because I would sleep in despite my best efforts.
As a result, if I slept in I would just phone in sick. Being sick was a lot more acceptable than being five minutes late, no matter how much more expensive it was to the organisation. We had rules about being sick that required a doctor's certificate only for sick leave in excess of two days, so no matter that nobody actually believed I was sick, they couldn't pull me up on it.
When I left I'm afraid I had no respect for that kind of clockwatching (well, given my behaviour I guess I didn't have a lot of respect for it to start with :-), and I still don't.
Every job I have ever worked in since then I have made damn sure that nobody gives a flying F*** what hour I leave or arrive, in general. Of course there are occasions when you need to be on time - it just isn't an every day sort of rule around any workplace I have worked at since, and it never will be in the future.
Some jobs require it, of course. If you are in a customer service position in an organisation that opens at 7:00am, then I would expect repeated lateness to be a perfectly reasonable cause for dismissal. I wouldn't expect the owners of such a place to say that your hours were 7:00am - whatever though: I'd expect them to be (e.g.) 6:30am - whatever, so that turning up 1 minute late would not be an issue.
That'll be 2c, please.
Mod this up.
is being 15 minutes early.
simple as that.
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
If you discipline yourself no one else will have to.
Why don't you start going in at 7:00? If you clock in at 7:01 (or even, <gasp> 7:07) you'll still be "on time."
Traffic will probably be a hair better on the way home too.
Well, got to go. I'm running late for work!
-Peter
You insensitive clod
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
I expect the poster's company will have a terrible time attracting talent at that point -- if they haven't already gone under by then, because only the most desperate and talentless of their employees won't have found jobs at a place that doesn't treat knowledge workers like unskilled factory workers.
While in general I agree with everything you've said, I'd caution you to be just a little more temperate in your choice of language. Factory workers must be punctual because the assembly line can't move unless everyone is present at their posts, not because they may or may not lack some particular set of skills or aptitudes that a different worker or type of worker might or might not possess.
Time was that Americans understood they were to treat all their fellow citizens equally. Granted, if you're a typical /.er, your childhood and adolescence were inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred, and that's about the only kind of political discourse you've ever heard, but it was not always so, and, for what it's worth, there are plenty of us out here in fly-over country who pay reverence to the old ways.
I'd reply, but i'm late for work.
Back in my teenage years I worked for McDonald's and they required me to punch a timeclock.
They basically calculated your hours to the nearest 1/4 hour and you paid (if you could call it that) to the nearest quarter hour.
If you were 2-3 minutes late, not a big deal.
If you were 10-15 minutes late, you'd start getting comments from an assistant manager and after some number of such incidents unreliable employees would get canned, pretty much as you would expect.
The interesting thing was that I would sometimes clock in about 8-10 minutes early and might clock out a few minutes late, enough that I would, horror of horrors, work 8.25 hours that day, which meant some 1.5 salary according to law.
I'd say on the one hand that your employer ought to cut you some slack, just to allow for the variability in commute times.
The flip side is to start punching the clock religiously, go ahead and let `em start paying you a quarter hour of overtime here and there and see if the bureaucracy doesn't start to get to them.
If your employer is adamant about employees providing high precision coverage of a time window, then they can afford to pay it.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If you have a rule like this, some employees will never be in before 0925 and the others will seeth with resentment.
And this is called flex time?? No, it is not normal for a programmer/software engineer type job by any stretch of the imagination.
I come in to work any time between oh, 8am and 10am and leave approx. 8 hours later. No one bothers me as long as I get my work done on time. I regularly eat lunch at my desk, and don't spend much time chatting, so I'm fairly productive. I've always thought this to be more or less normal in the work environments I have been in.
Sure, some employees raise an eyebrow if they see me walking in at 10am when they came in at 7 (that's nuts!!), but they're not signing my paycheck, so I don't give it a second thought.
I'm a consultant, thus always right on time.... :)
Seriously, that sounds a but extreme. We're all adults should be able to manage our schedules--if you're 15 minutes late, make it up over lunch or in the evening. Any sane boss shouldn't be upset if they found out you made up the time later that day. And if it becomes a consistent problem for you that management has to get involved, then I think you have to look inward first.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
I'm routinely "late" by an hour or more. But, considering I routinely work 2 1/2 hours late, nobody complains.
----------
perl -e 'print(pack("H*","646176652e7761676e657240676d616
It's 8:13 AM, I'm "supposed" to be at work at 8:00 AM. I'm sitting here in my underwear at home reading Slashdot before I even bother taking a shower.
Then again I work until whatever time is required when a project is due and my boss knows that I'll bust my balls when it's needed.
I could work in a structured environment like that if I was required to, but I wouldn't put in the extra effort. If 1 minute late gets me written up, then 1 minute late clocking out would too. 8 hours, get up and go.
It's all in the relationship.
My reality check bounced.
You might want to talk to your local labor department. If you are a salaried employee, any company policy that states you will get your pay docked for being a few minutes late like this would probably cause you to become non-exempt and eligible for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
We just picked this up, too. Each "late" is an "occurance," which add up to verbal warnings, written warnings and dismissal at 7 occurances.
I think it's just that companies are trying like mad to shift the base definition of work, given that ecomomic circumstances keep most of us as a captive audience. When the economy picks up and we all start to bail, they can "negotiate" a more relaxed environment again, which won't do more than return to the status quo of a couple of years ago. I agree that it seems short-sighted to treat your employees like children... any of your employees.
That said, I'd also add that my group is extremely lucky that our managers stood up to say "we work on infrastructure, so we can't work 8 to 5 like everyone else." They could have just as easily said "a 40-hour week? my people will be thrilled! no more late nights and long weekends!" Other departments weren't happy with that ("why does I.S. think they're special?"), but they don't have to show on several weekends a year for routine maintenance and system outages.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Some company's idea of flextime ( I worked for one) is actually comp time. You they compensate you with extra time off when you are required to work late, but otherwise you have a fixed schedule. I suspect that this may be the case here
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
In twenty years of working I've had one job like that. I lasted six months, and have never been happier to quit a job. Want to punch a clock? Get a real blue-collar job that pays real overtime.
Hell, even when I was in the Navy, nobody bitched about a minute or two here or there, as long as it didn't become a habit. Except for that one job I mentioned before, I've worked for places where as long as I was productive, the time didn't really matter. Most have had expectations that I would work a "normal" day, but the only times I was expected to hit perfectly were meetings with others, expecially customers.
I've also worked shiftwork where I was actually relieving someone, as part of a team. Even there, as long as you were prepared to assume the watch on time, it didn't matter if you were there an hour before or 5 minutes before.
Go Find Another Job
Yes, they're not easy to come by, but the long-term effects of working at a job like yours SUCK!
I worked in aerospace for a long time, and you have to fill out timecards (not punch-in/out, just record the daily total). Even that Sucks. When I went to work as a lead at a very small company, the first thing we did was get rid of timecards, unless we were billing the customer by the hour. And even then, you didn't have to account for every hour of every day.
But remember the flip side
In really god jobs like that, you won't need to take time off to head home early because of a sick kid. But you won't get paid for working Sunday because a big project is due. Overall, I like that trade. If you want to only work your 8 and go home come hell or high water, you've already got a clock-puncher mentality.
Do you want to truly be treated like a professional? Then demand it, and act like it. If the current job won't give it to you, move on!
I can work the hours that my boss and I see fit for me to fullfil the number of hours I'm required to get a week. Besides this I must clock in at 7:30 AM every day I am at work.
That doesn't sound like flex time to me, in fact, your two statements sound contradictory. You can work the hours you see fit, but you have to clock in at 7:30?
Problem is, that doesn't really matter. The terms of your position say you must clock in at 7:30 AM, so that's what you need to do, regardless of whether or not anyone else believes it's flex-time or not.
I work for a medium sized corporation as a sys-admin. I'm normally around during core hours -- 9 AM to 4 PM -- but depending upon what I've had to do the previous weekend or the previous night, I may come in late or leave early. Or take the day off. Management knows that I work weekends on occasion, so they understand that I may take time off during the week.
My real point is that you have to follow the rules of where you work. If the rules say clock in at 7:30 AM, you've got to do it. About the only thing you can do now is try to renegociate the rules. It sounds like you and your manager have a reasonable agreement and that you're being held to rules meant for people lower down the foodchain. You might be able to talk management into relaxing the 7:30 AM clock in rules if you can show that your work doesn't fit those rules.
On the other hand, if you actually have to clock in, then the odds aren't good that they'll relax the rules for you.
Sean.
I'm sure this doesn't apply to you, but sometimes they try to use some nit-picking thing like this to get rid of someone they don't want for other reasons...
computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the
sure I am late sometimes and early other times - sometimes we have to work all weekend and get comp time. Most work places that I have been in especially in IT have been pretty flexible - being late 1 minute?? that is insane I would seek employement elsewhere if I were you = )
Well 2 things said elsewhere
1)It sure doesn't sound like "flex" time, unless 7:30 is the latest start time. Let's say your day is 7:30-4:30 - does he allow you to start at 7:00 and work till 4:00? If not, it's NOT flex time
2)The minute he starts docking you for time, you are no LONGER an "exempt employee", and they MUST, by law, pay OT!! Even if they SAY you are still "exempt" (what most people call salaried), if they dock time in LESS than FULL DAY increments, they don't live up to the Federal Law.
Remember other law rules IF you are non exempt (some may be NY law - check)
1)(Federal) They MUST give you a paid 15 minute break for each 4 hours worked - this is why you get a 30 minute lunch.
2)You can NOT be required to work more than 6 days in a row. After 6 days, you must be given a 24 hour "off period"
3)They must pay you 1.5x Base Salary for all hours over 40 hours/week
I had a boss (MANY years ago) who was doing about what your boss is trying to do - play fast and loose on the OT, but have us on the clock. One day, one of the other employees got in touch with the Dept of Labor (I never did find out WHO, but I think I know). About 3 months later, we all got a nice certified letter, explaining exactly what my boss did wrong, what the rules were, and the best part? A nice check for all our back OT. Being all of 20 at the time, and not earning all that much, that extra few weeks pay was nice (the OT stuff had gone on for a couple of years before the complaint). The most interesting part was they were not allowed to call us "exempt" again for a BUNCH of years, and they had to keep paying OT. We eventually got our flex time, and other perks back, but if we were in for more than 40, we got 1.5x
You could always punch the clock (MAKE sure you are on time), make SURE you work at least some OT every week, (keep your own records), and make a call to the labor dept in a couple of months
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
want to trade with my job you arrogant, feed-me-i-m-kind-of-the-world-and-people-should-gr ant-my-every-wishes.
Comparing when I expect to get paid to when I get in is invalid. The two are not related. I work the hours I'm paid to work, they pay me for working them. A mistake on my part doesn't give them any reason to not hold up their end of the bargin. They may dock my pay if it is part of the rules, but they still pay me on time.
It isn't just that they shouldn't turn about. Companies that don't pay their employees on time are telling everyone that they are nearly bankrupt - they can't even pay employees. Suppliers often have to wait a few months to get paid, but if they find you can't pay employees they assume you are going to declare bankrupcy and won't ship product until they are paid for it. Not a good situation to be in. There are payroll problems once in a while, but they are rare and even when claimed you should assume it is lack of money until proven otherwise.
here's a hearty "HA, HA, HA" for a funny joke well told!
First, your boss/employer seems to feel threatened by the concept of "flex time" as the rest of the world sees it. The "7:31 and you're late" thing seems like either an attempt to feel like they're in control OR (giving them the benefit of the doubt) they usually schedule group activities (ie, meetings, inspirational talks from the CEO, whatever) first thing in the morning.
Second, I agree in principle with the people that are saying that contracts only outline mutually acceptable conditions. In order for the relationship to prosper, both parties should exceed the terms of the contract.
Third, you are a broker for your time and talent. Your customer is your employer. I'm NOT implying that the customer is always right, rather it's up to you to decide if the relationship with the customer is profitable for you.
Finally, at the risk of over-simplifying, there are things that are not in your control and things that are. Focus on the things that are. You are not in control of their morning attendance requirements. You are in control over whether or not you will comply. And if you won't comply, you should probably be looking elsewhere for work. That's another area of your control. The "economic downturn" (not in your control) only limits your prospects, it doesn't prevent you from looking.
You've got a lot going for you, just some decisions to make. Good luck.
We all get along together like tornadoes and trailer parks.
Our city has terrible traffic, and rushhour is from 6:45am to 10:00am, and from 4:00pm to 7:00pm. As a result, all companies here offer flex time as a matter of course. I know a lot of people who work from 10:00am to 7:00pm as their regular hours.
I work for a large cellular company (with a logo named "Jack" -- can you guess?). Our illustrious CEO was late for the airport one day because his driver (I'm seeing a problem already) couldn't get out of the parking deck at 8:30 because of all the employees streaming in. Our airport is the busiest in the country, and they recommend you arrive 2 hours early, but of course he did not, so he missed his flight.
After that, said CEO instituted "Core Hours" for employees. Most people think of core hours as something like 10-3, when you can schedule a meeting and expect everyone to be in the office. But our CEO says core hours are 8am-5pm. So everyone has to be there during those hours. As a result, nobody works late anymore, nobody comes in early, and people take a full hour for lunch instead of 15-30 minutes. Brilliant.
Who hires these morons and pays them millions anyway?
Your bosses are Nazis. Go somewhere else. Seriously! I have to say, that since I started working from home, my schedule goes like this:
1] Wake up at 7:50am.
2] Log into VPN, AIM, VNC right around 8:00am.
3] Work until 5pm.
4] Log off of VNC, AIM, VPN.
5] Profit!!!
Although sometimes here lately I'm working past 5pm, or working some really weird schedules because that is when things are going on. But I get comp time, which really is cool.
Those excuses don't add up.
Sure there will be bad traffic once in a while, but not often enough for the 3 time rule to kick in. Most companies will have a lot of folks late on that day and strike it from your record.
Everyone has a day where they oversleep. If it happens often you need a better alarm, and to start getting better sleep. (This is complex, if you go to bed too early you might have more trouble getting up than if you go to bed at a normal time) There are medical sleep centers that can help you if that is a problem.
Everyone's car breaks down. If it breaks too often you either need to do preventative maintance better, or get a better car. Preventative maintance can solve most breakdowns. Old belts break more often, old tires blow out. Even alternators and water pumps normally give warning long before they go, and can be replaced if you are alert to the signs. There will still be the unexpected incidents, but not often enough to be a problem.
If you have to be in on time, you should learn what traffic is like, and plan to be early enough everyday that normal traffic variences can be covered. Bring a book to read (mini tv, or a local shopping center open early) if normally traffic can mean you are half an hour early one day and barely on time the next despite leaving at the same time.
I've had to be on time to jobs before. Currently robots can not do those jobs. In some caess robots will do that job in the future, in others maybe not. Today they are not cheap enough to make it worthwhile. I planed my drive so I was on time. It was worse for me than for most because I didn't always work in the same location, timetimes I had to leave two hours before the day before to arrive at the same time.
That said, flex time is much better. With flex time (which the origional guy doensn't have) you don't have to arrive at any set time. Just get the work done.
Kudos, that was one of the best posts I've seen here on slashdot in a while. I've never seen a better description of the typical crowd here at slashdot, than yours.
"Should 1 minute late really be considered 'late'?"
:-)
<Snarky reply>
Yes, though other definitions of the word "late" can be submitted to Merriam-Webster for inclusion in their products if you have some new ideas.
</Snarky>
OK, by most standards, that policy is pretty harsh. It's probably designed to weed out the primadonnas. But there's an easy solution: just show up 30 minutes early EVERY DAY. 30 minutes is NOTHING. If you can't make a habit of showing up at 7:00, it's because your ego is getting in the way. Many people with big brains have big egos to match, as will probably be demonstrated in the responses below.
Now, there's nothing wrong with having a big ego. All the most interesting people I know have a very high opinion of themselves. Just don't let your ego get in the way of doing what needs to get done, or else you become a primadonna. Clean your toilet when it's dirty, wash dishes when the meal's over, and show up to work on time. Just do it! If you can't, why not? "I shouldn't have to show up at that ridiculous hour of the morning, because (insert irrelevant excuse)" If that's the tone of your answer, try Zen, therapy, or some other means of becoming aware of the extent to which your ego dominates your actions.
Your alternative is to find another job where they are willing to cater to primadonnas. There are lots of jobs out there where they will cater to your ego and let you come in almost whenever you please. But I don't recommend that. Fix the problem instead.
include $sig;
1;
Current boss: get your work done, and please don't mind if I need you to do stuff at all hours of the day in night (and he's good about it, always apologizes if it's after 5:30 or before 8:30). Try to get in 40 hours every week, and make sure you do track your hours per project. That's it.
I think I could sleep in till 9 and noone would've noticed I wasn't at work, and I often bailed out a bit early if there was nothing to do. Of course, we didn't have to clock in, we just got paid the same regardless of our actual in/out times, unless we took a day off of course.
This meant I was never stressed about time, and could focus on more important issues like debugging and testing.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I can tell ya, I truly feel for the poster of this article.
.. so I can arrive at work at 8:00 am.)
A year ago or so ago I was working for an employer whom... well.. I really had some problems with.
Before I start, please note.. I was working salery...
It was typical for me to give large amounts of overtime for this company. (did I say give.. I mean it was EXPECTED of me)
A lot of times, I ended up LEAVING the building, around 11 pm... yah.. close to midnight...
There where also a couple times where I ended up staying even past then... one time my boss tells me "Umm, I have to have this done by tomarrow morning before my flight out to taiwan" me asking "Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?", boss tells me, "I just remembered it".
So I get to stay in the office until 4 in the morning making sure my boss has her shit together.
Lets not forget being sent to a customer site, expected to fix a problem our manufacturing department in taiwan made... and expected to stay there every day... for weeks if need be.. working 9-10 or so until its done. (If you dont do this, the company could go out of business they tell me)
anyways... you get the idea. So add ontop of that.. the fact that my boss was always on my case about being an hour or so late.
"You need to stop coming in late luke, we will have to dock your pay", to which I reply, "You need to stop expecting me to work 14 hours a day, or allow me to come in late."
Literally.. at the time.. I did not mind working the hours I did. The thing that bugged me was that they gave me shit if I came in any later than 8 am. (Look, if I go home at 11 pm.. and get HOME at 12:30 pm.. and get to bed around 1:30 pm... you cant expect me to be up at 5:30 am, and out of the house at 6:30 am
anyways, needless to say.. after TRYING to work things out with management and getting exactly nowhere.. I quit =)
On my way out the door to go to work... so I cant spell check or anything =) But anyways... thats my story.
Luke
I have a flex schedule, but they cancled my vacation, because something might happen: nothing did or would. Then they wanted me to start showing up on time at 8. now I work till 4:30, as a rule. I have been staying till 5 recently, but that is about to stop.
I was normally at work by 8:30 hardly ever past 8:15 and I always put in the time on the other side of the day. I got in late I worked late.
I am salaried so I will do not get overtime. I get admin time.
-- tim
TKrabec Pahh
Every Friday, just before it's time to leave, my boss comes up and says:
"Hey, Peter. How's it going? Yeaaaa. I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in tomorrow....".
Then, if I'm one minute late, when I get home there's a message on my answering machine:
"Uhhh, yeaaaa. I was just calling to let you know that we did start at the NORMAL time today. So if you could just get here as soon as possible, that'd be greaaat. Thanks."
Sounds like your company has a flex time policy, but your boss is a control freak (and from the sounds of it a morning person). Read your contract and your company flex policy. If you want it, you're going to have to fight for it. You'll probably have to get his boss involved. If you don't think you can win, leave. Life's too short for this crap.
-=sig=-
I usually come in about 9:15, through the back door so Lumbergh doesn't see me come in. Then I sit at my desk and space out for a few hours.
Space out?
Yeah, just stare at my screen, make it look like I'm working.
Don't be too sure that most /. 'ers are little Bolsheviks. Just as with most things in this great country, the majority is mostly silent and the minority is mostly overly loud. I call it the Small Groups Screaming Loudly syndrome. It is a basic tenet of propagandism
We have similar sillinesss popping up at my job occasionally. This in spite of the fact that I have in the past come in for a system upgrade or repair on a Friday and still been at work the following Monday evening.
You never get those hours back. As Scott Adams (Dilbert) says, "Work will take what give it." and never even say "Thank you." With that in mind you're nuts not to give exactly the 8 hour day work is requiring and not one minute more.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Anyway, naming confusion aside, 7:30 is the rule and you have 3 choices: take it, fight it, or walk. In a better job market, "walk" would be the obvious answer for me. Right now...
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
I watch my coworkers get lazy with arriving on time and flaking off in general. Management was light on enforcing start times and people took advantage of it.
There is a fine line that management must walk. We have flex time but it is at the managers discretion. Those who have child care issues, etc. are allowed to work flex time in that they arrive a little late once in a while and stagger their shift to accommodate a working spouse and child care. Those employee's who start the day and close the day (multiple shifts) have no recourse but to start and end at the proper times. Those in the middle can come and go as long as it doesn't impact staffing needs.
I have witnessed extreme abuse. i.e. 20 minutes late on a daily basis. Excuse after excuse is given. The employee is warned verbally, then warned again and again. One guy receives a morning phone call from the manager each morning to get his ass in gear and on the highway! This employee has now been told that if he's late one more time in the next 3 months he will be written up and if it happens after that he will be docked from his vacation time. If it continues to happen he will be fired. This is a valuable employee but he's about to shoot himself in the foot.
Another bad employee has mastered the art of work avoidance and learned a disappearing act. His manager is in another state but his managers manager sits nearby. The upper manager made a comment the other day about whether or not this employee realizes that his manager reports to him. Even though we don't use time clocks, this upper manager has started a spreadsheet to account for this AWOL employee who shows up but takes long breaks and blames it on non-existent meetings. He now spys on the whereabouts of this employee on a daily basis. It's only a matter of time before the evidence mounts and he is terminated.
They don't want to fire this person, but if he can't show up on time then they will find someone who can. Jobs are scarce and they don't have to put up with slacker lateness.
Most managers are rather flexible if you've been working overtime (unpaid) and you are late because you worked till 2am the night before. Heck, most who experience that type of overtime simply take a free day off without question.
My employer is reasonable with regards to being late but it gets abused. Perhaps the Slashdot poster doesn't know the history of his department. Maybe the manager had to crack the whip and now has to enforce on time arrival because it was so heavily abused.
I arrive on time 99% of the time and I usually work late. Most of the time I am early due to traffic planning, etc. I get there about 15 minutes early every day. I don't get paid for the overtime but I do get recognition from management. I receive the highest bonus every time, I am instructed not to tell coworkers what I received because it's more then double what most received. I get a shift differential and excellent benefits. I am shocked every time I check my account balance. I drive a luxury car and have 10 computers at home. I can afford fancy travel and jewelry for the fiancee. I really cannot complain about being required to show up to work on time.
It's a matter of respect and honor. I am getting paid a heck of a lot of money and I have no problem with performing the minimum requirement of showing up on time.
I make it to work on time every day, and I consider punctuality to be a matter of pride. That's just me though, of course.
If your workplace has strict timekeeping, which is not at all an unfair practice, you would expect your employer to name some time that would be considered "late". It's a simple necessity that a hard line be drawn somewhere. If you're only considered late if you're 15 minutes late or more, everyone will start showing up 10 minutes late.
If you're being paid to start working at a certain time, show some self respect and start working at that time, and don't whine about it.
Moreover, and this is just personal opinion, I also feel that if you're expected to be at work at 7:30, you're actually expected to be ready to start work at 7:30, not take 30 minutes to get coffee and "settle in." I'll probably be tarred and feathered for this one though.
I just figure my time is my business, and my boss's time is my boss's business. Simple.
-- That tickles!
Flex time, at least in the way I've always seen it implemented is: Work whatever hours you want to, as long as you get your eight hours in. Generally, this means being in most of the day, and ALWAYS be there for meetings, demos and customer visits. In practice, it's usually be in by 9 am or so...
The thing is, having you clock in at 7:30 and getting docked if you're not in by that time is not flex time. Calling a "cat" a "dog" doesn't make it one.
I have to say though, that if I were to find myself in that situation, I would clock out the SECOND the eight hours were up.
Billable hours. Now, 'Why does a salaried professional have to clock in' is another question entirely.
Im normally a few minutes late, but i could fis that. However, if they start making me punch a clock, well then, no more working through lunch, no more staying after 5:00 to finish up, no more letting that extra 15 minutes of OT slide, no more cellphone on the weekends for emergencies. They want me to punch a clock? FIne. 40 hours, thats all they get. They keep making noises here about requiring authorization for OT. I would LOVE that. "SOrry sir, i know you printers not working yet, but im not allowed to work past 8 hours without written authorization, so ill have to pass this on to another tech, he should be here in less than 4 hours"
They want to clock me down to the second? Fantastic. THEY get clocked to the second also.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
And you need to lear about hyperbole.
Reminds me of when Catbert decided to implement flex-time..
"All salaried employees can now work whichever hours they want, as long as they are here from 9AM to 5PM."
"Isn't that technically called 'unpaid overtime'?"
dollars to dogshit that every day, that 1 minute of time is sucked into a big vortex of Doing Nothing (pouring coffee, checking web/mail/phone, hellos, tidying up).
If you don't like it, fight
While in general I agree with everything you've said, I'd caution you to be just a little more temperate in your choice of language. Factory workers must be punctual because the assembly line can't move unless everyone is present at their posts, not because they may or may not lack some particular set of skills or aptitudes that a different worker or type of worker might or might not possess.
/.er, your childhood and adolescence were inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred, and that's about the only kind of political discourse you've ever heard, but it was not always so, and, for what it's worth, there are plenty of us out here in fly-over country who pay reverence to the old ways.
/.er". I wasn't "inundated with the propaganda of class warfare and class hatred", but had I been, it might not have gone the way you assume: when I was a kid, Mom was a waitress; now Mom's an MD.
There are skilled and unskilled factory workers. Actually, I was thinking of a job I had during college, sorting audio casettes for return/restocking. The only "skill" involved was grouping titles together.
Nothing I wrote implies that all factory workers are unskilled; my point was to create a strong contrast with skilled knowledge workers. You're inferring a generalization I wasn't making.
Time was that Americans understood they were to treat all their fellow citizens equally. Granted, if you're a typical
Now I think it's you who are generalizing, this time about the "typical
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
;) hehe,
You're asking someone who just walked in 32 minutes late; yet still has time to post to slashdot.
gotta go.
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
What is acceptable? 7:35? 7:45? Let's say 7:45. Well, now you get used to sauntering into the office at 7:44. And then you come in at 7:46 one day. 'But boss, I'm only one minute late'.
At what point is the one minute demarcation acceptable? Furthermore, having things written in stone is to your benefit. It should prevent some manager from being capricious and calling your 7:31 'late' and the hot secretary's 7:31 'on time'.
What would you say is acceptable?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Time was that Americans understood they were to treat all their fellow citizens equally.
So what you are saying is that a McDonald's worker should be paid the same as a doctor?
i thought the standard was "3 minutes or more is late" due to possible time differences between clocks. i mean if you set your time to the "time" phone number, it may be as much as 3 minutes difference from setting to WWV. hell THEIR clocks might be 3 minutes wrong. it's only resonable to allow for that.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
33% pro-labor
33% pro-business/entrepreneurial
33% in the middle
1% anal retentives who notice that the first 3 items don't add up to 100%.
I adhere to the notion that the 1/3 in the middle doesn't post in these threads. As for my work experience, I've had one job where signing in and out was the norm, and that was a bargaining unit ("union") hourly position. As AC notes, there are valid reasons for fixed time slots in the workday (want your fireman showing up late for work?), but if they're calling it flextime, your management's Bullshit Bingo card is now filled out.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
If you must be at work by 7:30 and you get in trouble for being even 1 minute late you are not on flex time. Perhaps what you really mean is that you're allowed to work overtime whenever you feel it's necessary, but that is not flex time. Flex time means that as long as you put in your time and the work gets done it doesn't matter what time you come in (although it might be strongly recommended that you get there before a certain time, which is generally around 9:30 in my experience.)
Based on my experience, no this is not standard in the tech industry. It IS standard for production lines. If your boss is trying to run developement like a production line he is either an idiot or an asshole, probably both, and you should be looking for a new job.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
For me, its all about the respect your employer has for you.
In the 'lower functioning' positions such as a busboy in a resturant, it is probably a good idea for management to use a punch clock and heavily monitor the employees. Given a chance, the larger percentage of the employees will goof-off.
As you move up the ladder to jobs that require higher capabilities such a intellectual work, judgement calls or difficult skill sets you've put a lot more of you own effort into making youself useful to the company. A career is something you make for yourself, not the company. This generally involves a lot of learning, training, self disipline, etc. This effort, in itself, deserves the complete respect of any employer.
At any level, a company hires me to complete a job. At the higher level, I expect them to also trust me to perform that job correctly. If I know there are no meetings, and its going to be a bad day, I tend to drag my heels when getting to work (actually when I am working heavily, I can be late to work by hours, not just minutes). I do this because I need to get into the right frame of mind. Showing up frazzled is far worse than being late. I've been doing this for a long time, so I know exactly what I need to get the job done. State of mind is very important.
If my employers can't respect my decision to get to work late, then there is no way I return any respect for them. If I don't respect them, then I certainly don't want to work for them, so its extremely beneficial to me to start the process of looking for a new job.
If it was truely an accident that I am late, then quite obviously its not my fault, so why punish me. Either way, I don't allow my employers any input into my arrival times. I get to work, when I get to work. Although I frequently come in after 10am, if its critical I'll be in the office at 5:30am if thats what is really needed.
If there is an early morning meeting or client meeting that I know about and am late, then I can fully except any punishment for messing up. Beyond that, a boss screaming at me for something as trival as being a minute late will cause me to automatically start looking for a new job.
Quiting without somewhere to go to is a really bad choice. Soemtimes you just have to put up with the crap for a while. Also, for the most part don't even bother trying to change the rules, it will most likely work against you in the long run. If you have to stay, then try to find a more relaxed manager in the same company, some one who is a bit more undersatnding and respectful.
Are they trying to get rid of you? That's my first guess. The only time I've seen this first hand was when someone was looking for a reason. Are they trying to punish you for working flextime? This may be about something else.
Unless you being one minute late is having a direct and profound impact on coworkers or clients (and that's extrememly rare, military, cults etc.) I'd guess someone is after you.
It's a really bad sign, even if nobody is after you. A rule like that is an indication of a dangerous nitwit manager who will make worse decisions in the future. Those future bad decisions will not be "Free lunch in the breakroom on Tuesdays" but may include memos like "Omission of the cover sheet on TPS reports will result in docked wages (applies to hourly employees only.)" or "Mandatory lunchtime meeting in PHB's office, please bring vaseline."
Management is free to make whatever decisions they like within the law, but that doesn't make all their decisions right, or even sane. If the rest of management doesn't find a problem with this, you're in hell.
Mind you, I like to get to work early, but since my commute could vary from 45 minutes to over 2 hours, depending on the limits of human stupidity, I was occasionally late. Fortunately, my employers were more interested in the performance of duties which were:
In my job description
Actually provided value
If you can't find out what this is really about, and get the one minute rule ameliorated, then mind your P's & Q's while you look for other work.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
We are timed down to 3 seconds. 3 seconds late well that rounds up to 1 min late. also counts late coming back from breaks (2 per day) and lunch. Each time you are late thats a half occurance unless your more than 5 mins late thats a full occurance. 3 occurances in a rolling 30 day period and you are dismissed.
Dang I wish I had it as easy as some of you. My job will even schedule us for overtime in the mornings BEFORE you come to work.
How would you like it if you have to be at work from 9 am till 8pm but show up at 8:40 in the morning only to be told today you have 1 hour mandatory OT starting at 8am and btw your late and thats an occurance.
Where are you from Gravitie? (Topic Poster) ..... as long as you are on your employers premises by the given start time your ok, You then have 3 minutes to make you way to your desk/work space.
;)
I doubt you are from the UK however your Country / State may have simular laws prehaps?
If you live in the UK
Using this law maybe frowned upon by your employers however you may be able to have any verbal / written warnings against yourself dismissed.
Those extra 3 minutes with the other half in the morning emboss a smile on my face for the rest of the day
Now I think it's you who are generalizing, this time about the "typical
My point was that I, as a complete stranger [or, for that matter, as your mother's boss], should treat your mother with the same courtesy whether she was an hourly wage waitress with no "skillset" or a salaried MD with 20+ years of formal schooling.
Again, most hourly workers have to be punctual because their presence is required for the team to function, NOT because they lack a BS/CPA/MS/MBA/PhD/JD/MD/MCSE/MCSD/CCNA/CCNI alphabet soup after their names.
Funny thing that. When I wrote the Time and Attendance code, I never had that problem.
FYI:
Never have a non salary person maintaining the Time and Attendance code. (or anything else you care about)
F X=0:1:9999 F D=2:1 Q:((X>2)&(X#D=0)!((D>X/2)&(X'=1))) I D>(X/2) W:$X>75 ! W X,?$X+5-$l(X) Q
I didn't see anything that said what state you were in, but in PA, they have things called "at will" employees. We're basically servants who can be fired and any time for any reason. Under these guidelines, being fired for one minute tardiness is not a problem.
Just quit stating that as the reason. If enough people do this the company can either go bust or change the policy.
The only reason stupid policies like this exist is because a lot of people will simply obey.
I'm fortunate enough to have a job where I can pretty much come and go as I please, so long as my work gets done. I realize that this is not the case in many companies, but my current company, and my last two companies (Cisco and IBM) have all been pretty good about this.
I think that nit-picking about when developers get into work is just plain pointless. Obviously, if you have to be at various meetings or if you have a customer-facing role, your schedule will be more restricted. But barring those circumstances, what difference does it make if you work 9-5, 10-6, 11-7, or 12-8? As long as you get your work done and your schedule doesn't interfere with the normal flow of business and work at your company, who the hell cares?
My work schedule is largely dictated by my sleep schedule, which is dictated by my body. I function best by sleeping from about 1am to 9:30 or 10am. (11am is better still!). Trying to move that around just makes me less productive, more grumpy, and unhealthy in general. I have friends who have vastly different sleep schedules from me... some like to get up at the butt-crack of dawn, and some sleep mostly during daylight hours. Clearly, you can take this too far... there are job functions that require you to actually be in the office at the same time as your co-workers. But that still allows for a great deal of flexibility.
And remember, flex means flex. If your normal work week is 40 hours, and you end up staying at work late one night fixing a bug, then you should be able to get in late or leave early another day in the near future. Aa long as the system is not abused, it works great and makes for happy workers and optimal productiviy.
The exception to all this is that I have a standing agreement with my supervisors that if they need me in early or need my to stay late, I'll happily comply. They don't ask this of me very often, but when they do, I drink an extra cup or two of coffee and deal with it. So they know I'm always available in emergency situations (even on weekends, as necessary) and I know that if I want to take off early on a Friday or sleep in after a party, I'm good to go.
Again, my style may not be your style, but the general principles, I think, make for a very satisfying work environment.
Attitudes like this don't bode well for the company, so I wouldn't sweat it. By the time you'd end up making your way through the various levels of double-secret probation for your 3 warnings and get canned, the company will undoubtedly have wasted enough resources tracking down such flagrant miscreants and have gone down the tubes.
Real companies, companies with long-term prospects that are going to pay off for you and make a career, don't get anal about this stuff. They realize that you're human, and that what matters is what you produce for the company, not how well you dance in lock-step to the tune of the company culture or even how long you're there every day.
It's not you, it's them, and the sooner you take steps to find someone who values your work the better you'll do long-term.
Please note, if you are working overtime hours and are not being compensated at time and a half, you should consult a labor attorney. I believe in my locale that any skilled IT worker must be paid time and a half for overtime if they are making less than $27/hr.
I've seen local doctor's offices get sued by employees who came in 1/2 early every day and could document it. The office was forced to pay back wages at time and a half all the way to the hire date.
If you are working uncompensated overtime and you are in any way unhappy with the arrangement, see a labor attorney.
So what you are saying is that a McDonald's worker should be paid the same as a doctor?
"So, I have you down for one coronary bypass. Do you want fries with that?"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
You have hit it perfectly here.
As a small tangent, I would like to describe an excellent example from real life.
I haven't read any recent salary surveys, but... Someone I know, let's call him Jim, runs a small business (about 20-30 employees).
He needs 2 programmers on staff. He is forever complaining to me that he has the most crappy programmers, and that all programmers are lazy, self-centered sons of bitches.
Nice. Especially since I'm a programmer.
Well, I found out why he has such trouble. He hires a programmer. He expects them to be there by 8:00a, but that they are on time so long as they arrive within about 5 minutes of Jim getting there (random time, between 8:00 and 8:30 -- usually closer to 8:00. If Jim is really late, (9:00 or later) then the programmers had better be already hard at work when he arrives)
In addition, he starts to really harp on these guys any time they leave before 5:00 or if they leave before him more than a few times.
He takes the "the staff should be already working when the boss arrives, and still working when the boss leaves" mentality, but tries to be slightly flexible about it.
In addition, he pays his programmers $40K - $45K per year.
I talked to Jim about this several times, saying something to the effect that if you treat your programmers as if they are worthless, you will not attract the creme of the crop.
Besides, if a half-decent programmer with a degree can go anywhere and earn $55K - $70K (at the time -- early/mid 2000 these rates were very easy to come by) why would he work for you when you are both really aggravating AND are paying way way less.
His response? You programmers are so arrogant. Why should I pay you that much, you're not worth it. You're all lazy and incompetant.
So... he gets crappy programmers... and wonders why...
I'm surprised to hear that anyone clocks in for a tech job. I haven't clocked into a job since my part time job at a grocery store while I was in high school.
At my current employer, I am able to come in whenever I want, provided I make it to the morning's team meeting on time (anywhere from 9am to 10:30am) -- and if I'm late, it's peer pressure and open mocking that makes me on time the next day, not threats of wage garnishment.
Of course, we are all highly responsible individuals who have a finite amount of per-project work to get done, and we WILL get it done whether it takes 30 hours a week or 70 hours a week. Our employer knows this, and treats us accordingly -- with respect, and the understanding that the quality of work matters more than the specific time you start doing the work.
I suspect the poster's boss doesn't have much respect for his/her employees.
You can't manage knowledge work by the hour.
relevant messages about anything
This is how it's supposed to work! You give some [at 2am ] and they give some [early on friday for a hot date]. I've always found management of companies to use their "salary" benifits to the fullest, but complain when YOU do.
Soon they'll be requiring you to ask the line manager for toilet breaks.
And you'll have to make due with the 4 single-ply sheet toilet paper ration they give you, no matter how dire your bowel conditions may be.
I agree, get outa there!
I work for a small consulting firm. On days when I have no appointments, I take my time getting into the office-- though I'm seldom more than 15 minutes "late." I also got my traffic manager trained to not schedule me at certain clients before 9:30am except in dire emergencies, so I avoid having to sit in the horrific rush hour traffic that exists between my home and their location. Finally, I have clients that are cool with me breezing in within a 30-minute time window when it's not an emergency call-- mostly because they know that I am a dedicated worker who doesn't complain when overtime is required. Especially the one place whose RAID ate itself a couple months ago, necessitating my sitting up all night restoring 150GB of data from AIT2 tapes-- they were very appreciative of my efforts.
Sounds to me like the people where you work are dicks, and you damn sure aren't on flextime. Flextime is "you can work any n hours per week you want, as long as you get your work done" (for values of n equal to or greater than 40).
I knew of a project where very senior management started watching the 8AM start time closely and not realizing people were working till 3 AM. After a week of people leaving RIGHT at 5 (the majority of the engineering organization) the 8AM sign in list disappeared.
The only thing I would caution you with, is in these current times, it is hard to find work - and if your boss doesn't like you - he could fire you (are you an "at will" worker ?) and you would be on the street, of course with a time watcher like that - you might be better off (by the way WHOSE clock gets used for determining 7:30 AM anyway ?)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
If you want any type of protection from abusive workplace practices, move to Europe.
dock your pay. I don't know what your "local area" is, but unless it's the former Soviet Union, state and federal law require your employer to pay you (at least minimum wage) for your time. Docking pay = requiring you to work without paying you, which is illegal in most local areas. Of course, if they fire you after you complain about your pay being docked, you can sue them for what we in California like to call "wrongful termination in violation of public policy." See, it's illegal to fire someone for complaining about an illegal policy, like docking your pay. You can also sue them for all of your OT. "But I'm on salary." That's irrelevant. In the US anyway, all employees are entitled to OT compensation (time-and-a-half) for OT hours worked (40+ per week in the US, and/or 8+ per day in CA), unless covered by one of the specific, limited exemptions: Executive; Licensed Professional; Administrative Employee; or Computer Professional. If you're in IT, you're not in any of the first three exemptions. The last one is where you might get caught. Under US federal law, employees in the computer software field are exempt if they perform certain primary job duties, exercise independent discretion, and make more than $27.63 per hour. CA law is more protective of employees (the exempt level is $43.58 per hour) and whichever is more protective is the one that the courts apply. So, as you can see, your employer probably owes you a lot more than whatever he is going to dock you, and if you complain about it, you basically put him in a position where he: (1) can't continue taking advantage of you; and (2) can't fire you. But to answer your question, late is late.
Look, this kind of thing is ridiculous for factory line workers. It's absolute bullshit for a computer professional. If you have the leverage, I would seriously throw a fit about this. This is the type of shit that comes back to bite you in the ass 5 years down the road when you're looking for another job. When a prospective employer calls checking work history, which do you think HR will say?
1. Well, thanks to our ultra-strict tardy policy, there are many written warnings about tardiness, but in each case the person was less than 10 minutes late and always had a good excuse.
2. There are 10 written warnings about tardiness over 5 years in this employees file.
Yes, you could solve this problem by showing up at 7, but come on. If you're stuck because of the job market or other factors, not much you can do; we've all been there. But like I said, if you've got some lee-way, tell them that you're either going to start giving them 7:30-4:30 and not a second more, or they need to start paying you hourly like the time-clock slave you are.
b/c if you are "exempt" then this is actually illegal, though IANAL... (I know you were wondering... yes, but is this guy a lawyer?)
-pyrrho
My official start time is 0600. I'm usually in there anywhere from 0600 to 0630. If I'm later than that I call so nobody gets worried.
The way I figure it is that for what they pay me they can damn well have some flex. If anyone has any heartburn then I can go back to the private sector and they can go back to having crappy communications.
Nobody has any problem with it tho. That's because I stay late often for meetings and help out with other things that often don't fall within my responsibility. I also have a personal policy that my boss, 911 or the Sheriff can call me anytime, any day for anything.
Flex works both ways.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Hee Hee!
I assume that when quitting time comes, you leave at exactly that time ... cuz one minute past that makes you a sucker if they are going to treat you like that in the morning.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
I am a programmer on flex time and I actually have maximum weekly hours (40). I can work less. I don't get paid for more than 40 hours, so it's a good way of stopping me from overworking myself which I tended to do in my past jobs because I love my work so much.
...the produce floor won't suddenly explode if someone isn't watching it like a hawk.
::manic laughter:: ;-}
Hehehe... he doesn't suspect a thing.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Took the words right outta my mouth. Want me to get there right at 7:30? Fine. Then I'm gonna work exactly my 8 hours and I'm outta there. No more of that working till 10pm junk that I used to do.
:) ) in a timely manner, and everything is fine, and everyone is happy.
Currently my employers are very relaxed. I start work at 10am or so, and I usually work until at least 8pm, usually later, sometimes earlier if I have some place to be/need a break. But that comes from trust, I get my work done right, the first time (usually
Unfortunately, for the less skilled workin' people, its been this way for a long time. I decided to drop out of my programming degree after the first year, so I could get married, have kids, do the housewife thing. Financially, I couldn't just "do the housewife thing", so I had to get a job. Being unskilled, I routinely had to bend over and take it. There's loads of other average joe's out there willing to take the crappy jobs I did, if I didn't like it.
These days, I've remarried someone who can support us without my needing to work a crappy job. I only have to bend over for my husband, and I love it!
i'm a tech, usually do work in the field, who has dreams of having other such techs work for me in the future. Being on time for appointments are a MUST (i add 10 minutes to every travel time, usually arriving 10 mins early), tho in an office situation i think this works: if you are expected at 7:30, get there at 7:30 and clock in, get to wherever you need to be and get organized for the workday (late penalty 7:35, timepiece variation), though as company policy, no meetings, etc. start until 7:45 (if person mans a helpdesk effective at 7:45, he has time to get to work, clock in, get the latest info, check the inboxes, etc before the phones start ringing.)Ending times are similar, clock out at 4:00. 5 minute grace for the clock is law, 10-15 before management comes a kncking is common sense (who likes being bothered by the boss on their way to their desk when coming in? getting cought with your proverbial pants down isn't good for productivity, nor morale. In a professional organization, you wouldn't use that first 15 minutes as an excuse to be late (must be clocked in no later than 5 minutes after scheduled start time else late, won't be expected for any meetings, appts, etc til 15 mins after start time (if you're late for that, however, shit hits the fan, no excuse for being late when you've been in the building for 15 minutes already.) there may be flaws here, but on paper it works *braces for eventual modding down*
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
There is absolutely no benefit whatsoever to being THAT anal about being late. The only thing the company will get out of it is pissed off employees.
I've been there, done that. In my experience, any company who's that strict on being on time will pretty much fold. Whether it's going out of business or having all the best employees quit, it'll happen eventually.
Honestly, quit and find a better job. They aren't worth the time and hassle.
If you arrive at 7:31, technically you're late, but give me a break. It's 1 f'n minute.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
This is one of the reasons I love my current job, we get to pretty much set our own hours.
Normally I work 9-5, but if I'm up late doing something, nobody cares if I come in at 10 or 11. As long as we put in our 40 a week nobody cares.
And morale at the company is very high since the boss doesn't try to micromanage every thing we do.
All you have to do is claim that its against your religion to be exactly on time, and then file a suit for religious discrimination. Earnt $2million in punitive damages for this guy: nbc news.
Except of course this guy wasn't making it up. Thought I'd make that clear.
But it was because I had to wipe my cats ass.
Nobody can argue with that.
There are environments where you can't do real flex-time - assembly lines and basketball teams and such where you all need to be there at once, but the group as a whole may decide that they'd prefer to all start at 7:30 or 10:30 or whatever. If you've got that kind of environment, make sure that it's you and your coworkers deciding the time jointly. But that's not what's going on here.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Exempt employees are almost never unionized, and can normally be fired at will (at least until they acquire enough age or seniority for age-discrimination laws to kick in), and they can also quit at will (usually with some requirements for two weeks' notice), and if you treat them rudely you'll find that in a bad economy they'll jump ship for another employer the first chance they get, and in a good economy they'll jump ship first and find another job second.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you're doing the kind of job where either your pay or the amount you charge your customers (internal or external) is time-based, timecards or automated recordkeeping systems are not uncommon. That's entirely separate from *which* hours you're actually working.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Every college campus I have ever seen has bike racks all over the place. You could put a bike rack on your car, and you would probably go from 20 minutes walking from parking to work to 5 on a bike. In fact, I have known several professors and staff members who dispense with the bike rack and ride right into their office. In addition, many public transit systems such as buses allow bikes. Furthermore, if you aren't too far from campus, you could ride right from home. One piece of advice though, get a fender for your back wheel so you don't get a brown streak on your back when it rains.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Some kinds of managers have personality types that are easy to educate, and others need to be tricked into letting clues sneak in under the radar; you'll have to figure out which this is. Part of being professional is working cooperatively and doing lots of communication, and you'll need to figure out how to do this without totally pissing off your boss. Another part of the problem is finding out what your organization's core values are (at minimum that's your boss, and your boss's boss), and making sure your giving them what they need while trying to get them educated. And you'll probably have to show up at 7:15 for a while until you've got them understanding that they're working together with you, not bossing you around, even if you're just making coffee and checking email.
A typical kind of value that leads to this kind of behavior is that the boss needs to feel comfortable that work is being done, and doesn't feel that way when he/she doesn't see it, and for some of those people that means seeing bodies on chairs, but you can start to work on that with tools like progress reports, and the email messages that you're sending your boss in the evening indicating the items you need your boss to attend to the next day, and with bodies on chairs when *you* want them to be there, which means getting your boss sitting in the conference room when you and your co-workers are doing your couple-times-a-week status meetings at 5:30 PM or some other time that's half an hour after the timeclock-watchers expect to have left for the day, or making sure they're invited when you and your coworkers are going out for beer at seven to discuss the project status (and you've kept your boss at the office waiting for y'all.) Some of this is because you're trying to bring them into your value system, and some is because you're trying to create visibility in a friendly manner.
Another thing you can start doing is having discussions with your boss about development and project management methodologies. What's your boss reading? What do you need to *get* your boss reading? One really excellent book on such things is "Peopleware", by DeMarco and Lister. The second edition's from 1999, but the first was I think mid-80s, when too many organizations still thought it was the 1950s. Another is to start looking at some of the "Extreme Programming" stuff - those people seem to like working 40-hour weeks. And some of the Myers-Briggs personality type stuff can be useful, because programmers and creative types are different from clockwatcher types, and sometimes they'll get that.
Sometimes this is also an ethnic / cultural thing - I've found that the kinds of bosses who do that are often either Asians who haven't been around Silicon Valley very long, or else older white Americans who used to be in the military. You'll have to decide how to handle them, because it'll take longer for _you_ to find the values you share with them that you've got to ruthlessly exploit\\\\\\\\\\\\\ use to share your values with them. Sometimes it's a geographic thing also - at least in the US, people in some parts of the country get up earlier, and people from there don't always understand that not everybody's a morning person (that's another awareness thing you've got to work on, especially if, like 90% of programmers, you're not.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yeah, right.
this not about rules, this is about control! Get some of your own! Find another job!
Your job will be outsourced in 9 months anyway.
Keep coming in late.
I dare you.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The law only trumps a contract if the contract is breaking or violating the law.
Requiring that your employees come to work on time is NOT breaking the law.
Therefore firing them for being late, even a minute late, is perfectly legal and acceptable.
Get to work on fucking time and quit bitching or making up excuses. Or if you don't like it, leave.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
But docking their pay excessively for minor infringements might be. If you're fined $1000 for 1 minute tardiness, that doesn't sound legal. That's my point. There was an example in Australia just recently. Petrol station attendant was fined her entire week's wages because she forgot to take the license plate of a fuel-and-run (person who tanks up and zooms away without paying). There were no cameras to record the crime. That was found to be illegal: she can't be docked more than the damage she caused. In this case, her pay could only be docked the $50 worth of fuel.
Firing them, maybe. Excessive penalties for minor infringements, probably not.
BTW: Congrats on being the *only* reply so far that wasn't crap.
"BTW: Congrats on being the *only* reply so far that wasn't crap."
Garbage in, Garbage out.
I wish it were the 1950's (BC) then I could work less hours, and be a lot more flexable.
:
General Ludd's Stone Age Co-ops
"
Part 1 (of 4) If we're living in an advanced society, how come we work more than 40 hours a week when most so-called primitive societies have work days of between 2 and 5 hours?!
How come we have resigned ourselves to the 9-to-5 clockwork grind and the hierarchy of work when less than two hundred years ago our ancestors fought tooth and nail against the introduction of factory work and wage slavery?!
This article makes the case that regimented work
is not natural or necessary
means that our society is really the primitive slave society
was resisted by ordinary people who rightly saw it as the theft of their freedom and humanity
can be replaced by voluntary cooperatives and similar structures
can be largely superceded by a merging of work and play in to "creative activity for it's own sake"
It's a myth that in paleolithic societies people spent all their time in a desperate search for food and lacked the leisure hours for non-subsistence activities.
Studies of the aboriginal population of Arnhem Land, Australia show that the workday amongst these hunter-gatherers averages five hours eight minutes. Further, the workload seems not to be especially tiresome, either physical or mentally. To the contrary, some aboriginal groups such as the Yir-Yiront make no linguistic distinction between work and play. Among the Dobe portion of the !Kung bushmen of Botswana the average work week is approximately fifteen hours. In other words "each productive individual supporting herself or himself and dependents still has 3.5 to 5.5 days per week available for other activities". Among the Kuikuru people of the Amazon Basin the subsistence workday is 3.5 hours. The Kuikuru people spend a great deal of the rest of the time in dancing, wrestling, in some form of informal recreation and in loafing around. In Papua New Guinea "the Kapauku have a conception of balance in life [so] only every other day is supposed to be a work day. Such a day is followed by day of rest in order to regain lost power and health".
We live in an "advanced" civilisation where the base work week averages between 40 and 80 hours, exclusive of overtime, commuting time, time required for subsistence shopping and food preparation and time consumed in other domestic chores. The way labour time is organised is far more regimented and structured than in even the most rigidly structured indigenous society.
While it is undoubtedly true that industrial society generates a much greater abundance of material items than do traditional native societies, it is questionable whether this leads to a better quality of life, especially in genuine human terms such as sense of personal fulfillment, control over one's time and general peace of mind. "
This was the first page I came accross, not some hand picked example.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
General Ludd's Stone Age Co-ops :
"If we're living in an advanced society, how come we work more than 40 hours a week when most so-called primitive societies have work days of between 2 and 5 hours?!
How come we have resigned ourselves to the 9-to-5 clockwork grind and the hierarchy of work when less than two hundred years ago our ancestors fought tooth and nail against the introduction of factory work and wage slavery?!
This article makes the case that regimented work
is not natural or necessary
means that our society is really the primitive slave society
was resisted by ordinary people who rightly saw it as the theft of their freedom and humanity
can be replaced by voluntary cooperatives and similar structures
can be largely superceded by a merging of work and play in to "creative activity for it's own sake"
It's a myth that in paleolithic societies people spent all their time in a desperate search for food and lacked the leisure hours for non-subsistence activities.
Studies of the aboriginal population of Arnhem Land, Australia show that the workday amongst these hunter-gatherers averages five hours eight minutes. Further, the workload seems not to be especially tiresome, either physical or mentally. To the contrary, some aboriginal groups such as the Yir-Yiront make no linguistic distinction between work and play."
thank God the internet isn't a human right.