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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'?"
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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."
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.
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
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?
Find a new job, that is ludicrous. "flex time" my ass. You are getting raked buddy. If they require work outside normal hours, and that you "clock in" at a certain time, all they've done is renamed "mandatory overtime", and you don't get paid for it.
At my job, my boss tells people that "he's usually in between 8 an 8:30". I try to be in by 8, but my boss knows I'm scheduled to leave at 4:30, but it's more like 5:30 (or later, sometimes much much later) everyday. They are really leniant about that because "it all works out in the end" so he [my boss] likes to say. Of course he says that because I work more hours than I'm paid for, but that comes with the territory. I'm willing to trade that off to be treated like a proffessional, and not like I work at McDonalds.
Now back to you, you are getting screwed.
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