I started a new job this week and was told that everyone just works through lunch and eats at their desk. I inquired about it further and was told that since the company pays everyone for 8 hours they don't require people to clock out. I asked if people had an option to clock out if they wanted. We got interupted of course. I don't want to be "that" person that goes against the culture, but also, really I want to take my 1/2 hour break and be off the clock for that time. I have other job options as this may or may not be a transistion job for me, but really I want to last at least more than 1 week! : D
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/meal-rest-breaks-rights-employee-29773.html There is no national meal or rest break law, but your state may require one.
I get why you would want a break to get away from work. Personally, I would love to work through lunch eating at my desk and then get out an hour earlier but my work has a policy where everyone has to take a one hour lunch break each day.
That's one of the things I love about being salaried. No lunch, three-hour lunch, doesn't matter. I get paid the same.
What I hate about salaried is you get paid tge same for 40 hours or 60 hours and they pay you the same so the automatically want you to work more hours. That is why I stopped working salary and demand an hourly wage.
some advice - since you just got there/started working there I would say don't make waves just yet. Nothing wrong with being "that person" but not when you are the newbie. Establish yourself first, get a feel for things, then approach the subject tactfully with co-workers you trust. As for working through lunch or being forced to take lunch (or shorter breaks) it's often a "union" thing and done for safety reasons primarily. Going too long without a mental break (if not physical) can allow people to take their eye off the ball and make a mistake or otherwise get distracted.
I'm management so I don't have a choice. Plus I don't mind the longer hours because for every 60+ hour week I work I probably put in two or three 35-hour (or less) weeks. I also get comped for extra hours, which extends my vacation time by at least 50% if not more. When I used to be hourly, some years I'd nearly double my base pay due to all the extra hours I worked but now being paid to not be at work is more important to me than any amount of overtime, most of which gets eaten up by taxes.
I was union for the first 19 years here, then became salaried, but my mindset is still "I'm taking my damn 45 minute lunch break, dammit," since I still have to be here, officially, 8 hours and 45 minutes. What's been killing me is that our department has been whittled down over the decades from 40 people to 4. The other of the 4 who are left usually don't take lunch. Two are on diets (one's a workaholic too), the other works half days on some obscure schedule only she knows, and the other is the new boss, who puts in 70 hours a week and travels between company locations in other states without minding. So I seem to be the only one in the room who notices when it's 11:45 and gets up to go. At least the boss has finally stopped giving me the stinkeye when I do. Then I get the HR people putting on voluntary lunchtime team-building events and community action events. Voluntary for everyone but me, the staff photographer. The VP of HR actually sat me down and gave me a talking-to about trying to schmooze actual lunch breaks in the middle of these events. Yeah, yeah, lunch is provided during the event. Eating a slice of pizza while working is not a lunch BREAK, dammit. Sigh. Less than two more years...
Fuck that. I don't care if it's a 3 hour event with a gourmet catered meal. If I can't close my eyes and actually turn off the world, then it's not my break. I have the ability to be a very focused and efficient worker, but on the flip side I have to have that time to decompress.
When I was hourly, if the station paged, called, or texted me while I was on one of my rare lunch breaks, that nixed the whole thing. Even if it only took 30 seconds to deal with, at that point it became a working lunch and they paid me for the full hour. I once had a manager question that and my reply was, "If you don't want me to put down the time, then don't bother me while I'm on my break, especially if it's something that can wait" (which it almost always could). Same with texts and emails before or after my shift: if they "bothered" me too much when I was supposed to be off, I got paid for it.
It's all "too bad" now, with the new company ownership. If you're salaried, you work whatever hours they demand. My boss does allow comp time - work 2 hours OT, you can leave 2 hours early friday. So that's cool. Not sure what happens if we have one of our famous over-nighters during a critical proposal. That hasn't happened in a couple of years, and I did put in and get paid for the 12 hours OT that day. But that was under different company management.
Comp time is supposed to be like overtime, you work an hour over, you're supposed to get an hour and a half off.
Comp time is generally illegal for hourly employees. I had a couple of bosses who used to let me comp out lots and lots of overtime hours (it gave me extra time off and let them keep their OT budget in check) but the last time the company was sold my boss got cold feet and stopped comping me because he was afraid of getting caught breaking labor laws even though I, the employee, was more than happy with the arrangement. In Forbin's case, leaving two hours early on a Friday to make up for working two extra hours earlier in the week wouldn't qualify as time and a half comp time because by leaving early he's ending his week at 40 hours worked. Two states (as well as some individual companies--I used to work for one) have daily overtime standards where anything over 8 hours in a single day is overtime, even if you don't work a full 40-hour week. Federal law, though, says that it's any time worked past 40 hours in a week is overtime, regardless of how many hours you might work in a given day.
My manager loves to text after hours sometimes as late as midnight. This morning he texted at 6am when I was still asleep.
^aren't you in California? They have the strictest set of labor laws. You should definitely be getting paid for that time (pretty sure they have the over 8 hours in a day rule also so if u work one 10 hour day per week, you should be getting those extra 2 hours at OT pay.)
As a Fed, I am on a mandated 8.5 hour day. The .5 is for lunch. Since I always eat at my desk, that means I fuck off on the web for that half hour as I scarf down my lunch. Phone rings, it gets ignored. Someone comes by my desk, they get told to come back in X minutes. I rarely do comp time as in my experience you get screwed out of it way more than you get to use it. When I'm on the clock, I'm on the clock. But when my day is over with, it's fucking over with. When 5 PM rolls around I am on MY time, and if work intrudes on MY time, that's called "overtime" and I get paid for it.
The Washington state law is if a person works a 5 hour shift, or more than they should get at least a 30 minute meal period that can take place any time after 2 hours of working. The law goes on to further state the requirements for paying workers for their meal periods. Workers need to be paid if they are to remain on call during their lunch. Usually workers who want to give up their lunch and work straight through are asked to sign something stating that. It has been a long time since I have worked an hourly paid job. I am used to working salary and being a manager. I get being on call, and eating at a desk especially during busy times, but as an every day practice I don't want to accept it. I would rather clock out, go for a walk and have the whole time off. I feel I am at risk for losing my job for speaking up about this issue, which I am not completely attached to this job so it is a risk I am willing to take. Even if I were attached to it, I just cannot imagine eating at my desk every day.
I'm sure we're on the "anything over 8 hours" rule for union people, and possibly for salaried people under a certain grade level. Over a certain grade, if you work a 10 or 12-hour day, you still fill out an 8-hour time card and do some math to fit the 12 hours of charges into 8 hours, and of course you only get paid for the 8 hours. That's probably manager and above. At my level, I get overtime (straight pay, not 1.5x) only if I work 2 hours over the 8 hours. So, 9.95 hours, no OT pay. 2 hours even, yes OT pay. But we've come to the understanding, just in our dept, that we'll take comp time off rather than charge OT that was just a few hours. My coworker George took last Friday off 'cause he'd totaled 8 extra evening hours during the week on a project.
Well I am no longer with the company, but I did contact L&I prior to leaving and I can file a claim, even if I am not there anymore. Has anyone here ever filed a claim? What was it like if you don't mind sharing. (Or you can PM me) I wrote the company a letter stating my concerns, but have not had a response. I am pretty sure they will not change their practices. I feel I should file a claim just so it can be documented. It is a small town and they own a lot here. It sucks.
I'm salaried and exempt. Current employer doesn't pay OT, and has a very unofficial Comp Time policy that might possibly vary by manager. In my experience the Comp Time works out to maybe 50% time off for any OT worked, at best. I had a couple weekends in a row when I put in probably 20-30 hours total, and I got a lousy single 8-hour day off as Comp. Had another time more recently where I put in about 6 hours and got to cut out 1.5 hrs early the next day. Woo-frickin-hoo.... At least it's not frequent. However we have a big implementation coming up soon, there will be a bunch of weekend and wee-hours-of-the-morning work to be done, and I'm fairly certain the Comp time will be fairly minimal. When I worked at Boeing--now THAT was nice. They paid OT to salaried EEs at straight time + a differential (like an extra $5-6/hour). Or you could take 1:1 Comp time with your manager's approval.
Depends on the company and your position/influence in it. It's October 22nd and I'm in the middle of using three comp days for MLK Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day.
I'm taking 8 days off from work between now and the 13th of November. I still need to use them or lose them. Then it resets, and I get 20 days off, when I add in holidays, and bonuses it comes out to about 3 months of pay that I end up getting.
My coworker worked Saturday, then got stuck working all week anyway, including a couple of late days. I asked him why not take Monday off? He pointed out the comp day has to be in the same work week (sat thru fri) to be able to legitimately use the job's charge number. Me, I just avoid working late or weekends.
I'm salaried and expected to work 45 hours, plus cover any open shifts I have without any compensation whatsoever. Earned time accumulates pretty fast but I've barely touched it.
I'm going to be "that person" at work tomorrow. Meaning, the ONLY person at work tomorrow. They've been working on a proposal for literally the entire summer, then got a 6 week extension on the deadline, it's due Monday, and I only just yesterday got the art to do for one entire section. So it'll be just me and my playlist at the office tomorrow (Saturday). I assume I'll be able to take Friday off for comp - we'll see.
For it not to count as "overtime", the comp day would need to be taken before the end of the work week, which should be Sunday if your place is like most.
No, we have a Saturday-thru-Friday schedule. It was Sun-thru-Sat back when I started 36 years ago, but the story goes we had a Jewish CFO at one point and he changed it.
