Corporations Hiring Hooky Hunters

No longer satisfied with your crinkled doctor's note, a growing number of corporations are hiring "Hooky Detectives." Private investigator Rick Raymond says he's staked out bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings and even funerals looking for people using sick days. From the article: "Such techniques have become permissible at a time when workers are more likely to play hooky. Kronos, a workforce productivity firm in Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of salaried employees take sick days when they're not sick — almost a 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008."

Comments

Why should your employer govern your behavior?

[elucido]

Why are we allowing employers to put us into neo-feudalism? Can't you see these employers are doing what government wants to do but can't get away with?

Re:Vacation time

[emj]

This is a list of the amount of paid days you are required to give your employees:

Finland 30
Frankrike 30
Förenade Arab Emiraten 30
Estland 28
Litauen 28
Polen 26
Danmark 25
Grekland 25
Luxemburg 25
Sverige 25
Österrike 25
Israel 24
Malta 24
Tyskland 24
Ungern 23
Portugal 22
Spanien 22
Cypern 21
Egypten 21
Marocko 21
Rumänien 21
Sydafrika 21
Australien 20
Belgien 20
Bulgarien 20
Irland 20
Italien 20
Japan 20
Lettland 20
Nederländerna 20
Nya Zeeland 20
Slovakien 20
Slovenien 20
Storbritannien 20
Tjeckien 20
Sydkorea 19
Malaysia 16
Libanon 15
Hong Kong 14
Pakistan 14
Singapore 14
Taiwan 14
Vietnamn 14
Indien 12
Indonesien 12
Kanada 10
Thailand 6
Filipinerna 5
USA 0

from unt.se

Re:Perhaps a structural solution would be better

[epiphani]

Yeah, except that you get sick and you spend your entire time "off" in bed. I had that once and I hated it.

If I'm sick, I'm told to stay home, and I'll happily try to do some work from there. If you tell me that I'll lose vacation time by staying home, I'm gonna come into the office short being unable to walk. Take your pick, which do you prefer?

Keep up with the times

[dazedNconfuzed]

Employee longevity has dropped from 30-some years to about 3. Maybe corporate hiring policy should take that into account when doling out vacation time. I may not have been with the company for long, but I do have 20 years behind me and would like a new position to start out with something more than 2 weeks off.

Hopefully they'll be there...

[marcsiry]

...on the Sunday morning when I'm on an eight hour outage call starting at 4AM...

or the Monday night when I stay at the office until 10 working on a time sensitive launch...

do they turn the "hooky" clock backwards in that case?

Re:Hopefully they'll be there...

[PRMan]

Seriously. I worked as an Assistant MIS Director at a university. I worked my way up from student worker.

My boss complained when I came in at 8:05 AM after staying until 10:00 PM the night before, and I didn't get overtime!

I told her, "Fine, but be careful of what you wish for. From now on, I will come in at 8:00 on the dot every morning. But I will take a break from 10 AM to 10:15 AM, no matter who is here, what they want or what's on fire. I will leave for lunch at noon exactly and I will come back at 1. I will leave at 5 on the dot, and don't expect me to stay a minute later. If you want to count time, that's what we'll do."

Sure enough, since we were hopelessly understaffed, there was a line in my cubicle at 10 AM. Too bad. I put up a pre-printed sign that said, "On Break" and made them wait. There was a major problem right before lunch the same day, but I went ahead and left it. (The network admin had to struggle through it, but he applauded me for doing the right thing.) When I came back at 1, she brought me into her office and told me that she had rethought it and that I was right!

Re:Everyone has skeletons.

[TheRaven64]

Most people don't have the privilege of just deciding to have more money.

And a lot of people do, but choose not to exercise it, either through greed, ignorance, or laziness. Check out the current poll - look at how many people don't know their average electricity consumption. That means that they didn't pick the electricity supplier and price plan which best suits their consumption. When I did this calculation, I discovered that picking the wrong plan could cause me to spend two or three times as much as picking the right one. If I'd just gone with the first one that was offered, I'd be spending at least 50% more. This saving is roughly equivalent to a month's interest on my mortgage over the cost of the year, and I have a relatively low energy usage - for people with the kind of consumption in the poll it could be a lot more.

Saving that much on power bills means that you have enough spare money to spend on supermarket discounts. I rarely pay more than half the list price on things like shampoo and nonperishable ingredients, because I buy a few months worth whenever it's on special offer. This doesn't require much capital investment - less in any given month than I pay for gas or electricity.

I cook fresh food and make my own bread, so my food bills are quite low - much lower than if I ate preprepared meals - but I eat very well. And I'm a very lazy cook - I rarely spend more than 10 minutes preparing a meal, and most of the time I do is when I have guests.

Some people really don't have the option of reducing their expenditure, but a lot do and for many of them it wouldn't even result in a noticeable reduction in standard of living.

Re:Everyone has skeletons.

[RollingThunder]

Sick days are for being sick.

I agree.

I get sick days, personal well-being days, and vacation days.

Sick days are for legitimate illness, short-notice.
PWB is for "I am in a mental state where I can't see my ass coming in to work and being productive", short-notice.
Vacation days are scheduled in advance.

It works well. We're happy because we don't feel shackled to the desks, and the company's happy because it has predictability in who will be available, and both sides are happier because there's no falsehoods being perpetrated.

Re:Everyone has skeletons.

[MarcQuadra]

I didn't say -any- of those things.

This really pisses me off, people are -very- quick to toss you in the 'far left' or 'far right' camp.

Look, I think wages from a full 40-hour week need to meet the bare-minimum basics for living in an area: Food, shelter, energy, transportation, and enough to save for retirement. I'm all for a well-defined and sane 'living wage' for workers. I've worked for abusive and exploitative employers before, taking home 10% what they made off of me.

I'm also of the mind that there's enough wealth to go around where we shouldn't have to deal with a starving, freezing, uneducated, and homeless pool of non-workers. Social programs -should- cover the bare necessities of human existence.

What pisses me off is that while I work a 50-hour week, wear a jacket inside in the winter, and drive a beat-up subcompact, there are 'welfare moms' I know who jack the heat up to the mid-seventies, use their food stamps to buy their kids soda and $5/box Corn Pops, and drive luxury sedans they pay for with their off-the-books jobs.

I think technology can solve part of the problem: I think that thermostats for people getting heating assistance should 'lock' at 62 degrees, which is comfortable, but not 'warm'. That could be done wirelessly. I think food stamps should cover a family's needs, but be limited to the 'lowest cost-per-unit equivalent item' in a store's inventory (so 'no' to 'Corn Pops', but 'yes' to generic big-bag-o-cereal). Employers should be credited 100% for purchasing free mass-transit passes for their employees, get the money from the gasoline tax.

And yeah, you know what? I really like the idea that if you're on long-term public food/heat assistance for no discernable reason, a condition of getting it is that you also don't have a $39/month account with the local cable monopoly. It's not responsible to pay for entertainment if you need society to help you pay for food and heat.