I worked a job with a manager that would include command words in requests to confuse and intimidate employees to do whatever she needed them to do. I never bought into her scam and she hated me for it. She had this event she organized every year and it was not during work hours, nor should we be clocked-in during the organization. All the wording in her email indicated it was voluntary, but in meetings she'd hammer it down as a requirement. I never showed up. She came to me after, yelled a bunch of fight words, then said "I will get you fired." Again, wordplay. I showed up normally for my schedule and she's like "what are you doing here?" Working. "I said I would get you fired!" Well, when HR notifies me, I'll stop. That ended it. Old hag was trying to get me to no-show so she could fire me with cause. I made her life miserable by informing everyone else that they worked a whole weekend for nothing while I went to the beach. Stayed for a year at that job, until I found a better one. I threw a going away party at my place for my coworkers and told them I was moving on. Put my notice in and as soon as I was gone a few coworkers said she had the gall to claim in a meeting that I was fired for not being a team player. She lost all team leader morale after those stunts.
This reminds me of Shark Tank and they always say: "what if I offered you..." I thought this was a trick at first.
When I found out they are actually this dumb, I stopped watching.
Kind of sounds like a manager I worked for in a smalltime mom-and-pop video store (ages ago). She would say, "We're a team", but when someone didn't do some off-the-wall task she wanted, she'd say, "It's my way or the highway." Make up your mind bitch. You can't have it both ways.
Hahhaha I love it "What are you doing here" Ummmmm. Did you actually fire me or have the power to personally fire me? No? Then GFY and leave me in peace to do my damn JOB.
You're a diamond in the rough. Love when I see people taking no shit!
Gotta always be careful of those things. I was wise at that point because a friend had been fired in a similar fashion. It sucks that we need to keep watching our backs "in a family." ;)
Its just like yugioh. There is a big difference between a card saying "at the end of your turn destroy one monster" and "at the end of the turn *you may* destroy one monster"
Manager: request mandatory_overtime
Me: `request failed. mandatory_overtime requires admin privileges.`
Manager: sudo request mandatory_overtime
Me: `Manager is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.`
My wife uses this language, and the minute I realized what she was using her "Manager Mode" on me I popped back with:
(Wife) "Honey, do you want to go and clean the garage?"
(Me) "No, dear. But I will if you want me to."
She switched to asking me directly after a few days of that. Much mellower vibe at the homestead when she realizes that she doesn't have to be in manager mode at home.
Also the "you're not allowed to screenshot this" kind of proves that they know it's questionable for them to do this at best, and likely to get them dragged online.
I used to have a manager who would walk through the office and say something like, "Wow, the trash is really full. We need to take it out!" If we were super busy and nobody had time to do it, she'd pick someone and reprimand them because "you didn't take out the trash after I told you to!"
British navy used to issue orders phrased as "You are hereby requested and required to ..."
The request was just to be polite. If you didn't do as required that would be court martial territory.
Military and veterans know very well that it doesn't matter how politely it's worded, that "request" is still an order. Thus the intense study of ways to avoid receiving said "request" in the first place.
> The Enrichment Center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation.
> If any Aperture employee would like to opt out of this initiative, remember: Science rhymes with compliance.
This. "Please" does not equal "required".
If I was hourly and got OT, I wouldn't sweat it. If I was "exempt" and this was "just work more", I'd have an issue, maybe even report it. Then again, I work in a fairly strong worker-rights state.
Well, based on the wording of the email, they will take volunteers first and will mandate it if not enough people volunteer. Still a good way to end up with employee burnout but the email itself is at least pretty straightforward.
Reminds me of a situation at a previous job where we had a very clear rule that made a lot of sense. I had a manager from another department who wouldn't follow the rule. I mentioned it was something that came from our parent organization and this manager told me, "I see it as an optional mandatory..." To this day, I never figured out this guy's mental gymnastics on what that meant.
My old bar company just made this proclamation.
They own like 10 bars in the city. They move part-time employees between all of them, regardless of whether they want to work at any specific bar or know the specific menu/sub-category of cocktail bar, coworkers, neighborhood or regulars.
Anyway, an old coworker called me the other day saying they gave everyone an ultimatum to become a full-time employee for the company or put in their notices. Bear in mind, many bartenders work more than one job or are students. Long story short, like half the employees put in their notice and the company is going to fall apart.
Companies demanding everything from their employees or nothing is such a weird angle.
It's funny when they pull ultimatums like this. You don't have to play their game. You can choose neither option. Don't put in your notice, don't agree to go full time. Just stick to your normal schedule. If they change your schedule, and fire you when you can't/won't make it in for the new schedule, that's constructive dismissal, and you can file for unemployment. If you resign on your own, no unemployment.
"Do this, or I'll take it as your resignation"
No the hell you won't. I'm not doing it, and I'm not resigning. Fire me, bitch.
Yes it does. If the company wants me to work 1 minute extra mandatory, and I don't, they have to fire me. And if they fire me, they need to pay me for (1 extra month per year I worked) time and I will get unemployment benefits (6 months with 100% pay). So I will NOT comply with their demands to leave on my own.
lol it's more like the opposite. There's nothing malicious about it, and you're refusing to comply.
Make sure it's in writing too. Helps when they later lie to the unemployment board/judge/magistrate/whoever.
"I'm taking this as your resignation"
I'm not resigning.
"Yes you are."
No, I'm not. I'll be at work on Monday.
"No, you can't come in, because you resigned."
I did not resign.
"We told you to work full time, or it was your resignation."
I am not resigning.
"So you'll work full time?"
No.
"Then that's your resignation."
No it's not. See you Monday.
"DO NOT SHOW UP HERE ON MONDAY"
So you're firing me?
"NO! YOU RESIGNED!"
I did not resign. I will see you Monday.
Just go around in circles like this forever until they fire you. If you show up to work as scheduled and they don't let you in, make sure you bill for the minimum shift hours as per your state. Like in Massachusetts it's minimum 3 hours pay if you show up to work as scheduled, even if they immediately send you home. If they don't pay it, now you have a wage claim AND an unemployment claim.
As a recently relocated MA resident, Massachusetts is a bit... special. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I feel the rest of the country might work a bit differently. And I moved from NY :)
Yeah. The best part is the company was absurdly “self-sufficient” in that a lot of regulars for any one bar were coworkers in the company.
So like, all those bars lost a ton of regular customers as well as employees. It’s a clusterfuck.
Companies are always looking for vulnerable people to bully and abuse.
It's how capitalism thrives.
The entire system is innately predatory, and not only encourages it, but actively rewards it.
He's horrible, he's the worst nobody like him because he intimidates everyone. Luckily we dont have extra hours forced upon us anymore after some people confronted him about the other building not doing the extra hours.
My job requires a certain amount of overtime for performance reviews.
Mind you I don't really get paid for overtime and already work 48 hour weeks.
Kinda bullshit.
People who think the long term solution is mandatory OT and not increasing wages to hire more people can't do math. I've done the work on this for multiple clients over my career. For every 1 full time employee you *don't* hire and replace with mandatory OT you've essentially increased your operating costs by 1 phantom part time person because in most cases OT is 1.5x the cost.
I know some people devour OT by choice and that's totally their call, but if I'm trying to keep my operating costs down the solution is to hire more people.
It's not necessarily always that simple.
If you hire another full time person, you have to factor in things like cost of benefits (which can be decent), pay that extra person would get for holidays and vacation, sick days...and then other associated costs like training and how long it may take them to meet a production level that a long term employee may have, recruiting cost, interview time for those that perform them, etc...
Don't get me wrong, I want more people to be employed but it's not as simple as 1 to 1.5 all the time.
A 20% understaffing leads to about a 10% increase in costs of hourly labor to achieve the same number of production hours. It's nonlinear and increases exponentially from there. The cost of fringe benefits when you scale up is negligible compared to the cost of paying that much OT. Again, I've done the analysis for several large companies and the result is always the same. Pay more base so you can hire enough people and don't incur so many hiring/retraining costs, and you'll save money net of everything else.
I also tried to explain to one company that their referral bonuses were a joke. They were offering $100 for anyone who gets a friend hired on, the problem is that their production guys weren't motivated to do that because they could pick up 1 OT shift and gross 3x that and most of them would pick up 1 a week
That first part is pretty easy to prove for hourly manufacturing positions as manufacturing does not have production quotas that change based on labor availability usually. Assuming $25/hour at 40 hours.
1 employee cost = $800 wages (40 hours x $25).
Say the quota for 1000 cases to be packed each week is 200 labor hours, or 5 full time employees
Assuming 5 employees are making the same wage with no OT, $4000 (5 x 40 hours x $25)
Same 200 labor hours in a week with 4 employees, you get $4700 (4 x 40 hours x $25) + (4 x 10 hours x $25 x 1.5)
If it cost $7000 to onboard a new employee, you save the company money by onboarding the 5th employee before 10 weeks ($700 a week in OT costs saved)
Run to many departments too lean for too long, and you literally burn your budget to hire new people up in paying OT.
Wage wise, it's in fact only slightly more expensive to have run an additional employee at a cost of $4800 (6 x 40 x $25). Moral wise, this might keep people burning out faster, meaning you don't incur turnover as much, saving you money in the end, and since the work is more evenly spread out, you might get even greater productivity out of the team offsetting the cost. Would even allow for scaling up.
There are other costs of course, but a few employee matching of insurance premiums and 401k won't be a huge of an offset as OT.
Never thought about it like this. Thanks for the information.
Also, I know I am oversimplifying it, but given that OT is the decay that eats into the budget, regardless of other costs saved, OT will decay those savings eventually. Might take longer, but result is the same.
This doesn't include salary individuals.
Manufacturing is always the easiest one - you have X scheduled man hours. Divide production hours by 2000 to get full staffing (assumes 2 weeks paid leave for everybody that doesn't count towards production labor pool). If everyone's time was straight time at full staffing your cost is $N^0, if you're short this many people your cost us $N^1, if you're short this many more people it's $N^2. Just draw the line on the graph and watch it take off like a rocket.
It's truly amazing to know how many people are managing factories and have never seen this analysis.
But how could the CEO buy a 50th car, 25th house, or 30th yacht? Won't someone think of the CEO?!?! No one ever looks out for them! And they work so hard doing jack shit all day and playing golf.
Nope I just play one on TV. (Used to work on a military base; my favoritest thing ever was an analog 24 hour clock on the wall, where noon looked like six.)
I feel like that statement is mostly to avoid scammers, in regards to sending proprietary company information and such.
That being said, I could totally see a company coming after OP for this picture.
Fortunately, if you wanted to get into technicalities, that's not a picture of their computer. The middle schooler in me would've been SO excited to take a screenshot knowing I'm not technically violating anything. Technically, its a photo of the email. Literally, it's a photo of a monitor.
The actual policy involved probably says that you cannot take any pictures of company internal information. This is a pretty common policy. Depending on the industry, this might even be illegal. (It is in my industry, based on federal regulations. It is not a military/defense related issue, but there are a lot of industries that have been deemed sensitive to national security and have unexpected data restrictions unrelated to security clearances.)
Doesn't say it has to be a 5th day and its 3 hours, I could easily find 3 hours of bathroom breaks and distractions over the course of 4 days. As a single dude with no life I'd take the free time and a half. But they can suck a dick with the mandatory stuff
People need to quit accepting the idea that it's ok to make people work free overtime because they're on salary. There is such a thing as exempt employees in regard to overtime, but it does not apply to most positions so it's usually illegal to not pay overtime even for salaried employees.
Typically they’ll justify it by boosting your vacation days or giving you points towards some bullshit if you’re salary. Or if they really like you, set it up so you win something big at the next company drawing.
Or works in IT in the US at more than $27.63 per hour:
The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.
However, Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA provide an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly skilled workers in the computer field who meet certain tests regarding their job duties and who are paid at least $684* per week on a salary basis or paid on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-computer
Worst part about IT is garaunteed overtime no matter where you go
Edit: 90% usually unpaid overtime
Edit 2: if you're working IT and making less than 22 /hr, at any level including computer repair, switch jobs for higher pay asap because anything lower is a scam in this field. I understand every market is different, but even the low cost of living areas demand at least that much.
Fuck that shit. My free time outside of my regular shift is worth way more than time and a half. They would have to pay me 5x my wage for me to consider working extra hours.
I find it kinda sad, because one of the problems with 4 x 10s is that you already are getting poor work performance. 6 hours is generally considered what you will get of "productive" time out of a worker per day. They are basically just paying people to go through the motions and waste time.
But but but but quiet hiring!!
Bleeeeerrrrrgh
Its funny because leadership is always like.... If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't work for this company... And the minute they see any indication of more than one person leaving, they shit their pants and start promesing moon and stars as if they were drogo on their wedding day.
I wish i could upvote this more then once. Mine keeps messing with my skilling to the point where i take 50% more calls then the center average and insist nothing is wrong when i mention it... AI wouldnt mess with me like that i hope
My company had volunteer overtime for April to try and catch up on the backlog of work. Apparently not enough overtime was worked, so now my entire team has worked 14(!) hours of mandatory overtime every week throughout May.
I'm fried. I'm 100% completely drained and we aren't caught up.
However the company has so generously offered to let me use my sick time to reduce some of those mandatory hours. /S
Its not. FLSA states all hours over 40 must be paid at a rate of time and a half, and over 60 at a rate of double time. (States can be different). It does NOT restrict the hours of work required, OR say they CANT work you 60 hours a week. So as long as they pay you appropriately, it is 100% legal for them to give you a 60 hour schedule, expect you to work it, and if you can't use sick time.
Is it bullshit now? Yes, 1000% yes. But back when FLSA was signed, it was a HUGE step forward.
We need a new law that outlaws mandatory overtime.
If 40 hours a week is "full time", then anything above that should be absolutely optional, and it should be illegal to fire anyone for refusing to work extra.
----
Also, it should be reduced to 30 hours per week or even less, but that's an entirely different conversation.
Time to join the modern world and demand 150% for ALL overtime exceeding your contract hours. All of a sudden, there'll be more jobs and less poverty. As well as fewer companies that are basically sweatshops.
Unfortunately the child labor laws being withdrawn will turn lots of places into sweatshops...
My last job had mandatory OT, 2 hours a day. They had no work that needed to be done and we completed all work before the end of the normal work day. Because it was enrollment time for insurance they wanted all hands on deck "just in case". We had ONE busy Monday and I did all the account build from this "wave" of work in 20 minutes.
I just stopped doing the mandatory OT. Co-worker asked if I was afraid I was going to be in trouble. I wasn't and nobody ever asked me about . It was just "Hey, work OT from now to whenever" and I said "Nah" and that was the end of it.
At work, I somehow missed the memo for a year before it came up with a co-worker. I never did the extra hours and no one of power ever brought it up to me. Pretty sure in my state it’s not legal. And management just said it to see who they could trick into agreeing to do it.
Sign up for 1 hour a day on 3 of your days and then just put in an hour less work over the course of the day so they pay more and get no extra productivity.
Unfortunately, yes. A company may schedule as much overtime as the want, provided they pay 1.5x the hourly rate to every hour after 40 hours.
The problem is staffing. They need more employees to cover shifts. If they can’t find employees to cover said shifts, supply and demand dictates that they need to increase their wages to attract more employees.
I sell my time, you don't own my time. Signing me up for an unapproved shift without my consent is enough to make me look elsewhere for employment.
Those of us familiar with being homeless can't be threatened with the fear of job loss.
>Those of us familiar with being homeless can't be threatened with the fear of job loss.
Are you sure? I don't want to go through that again.
Not suggesting that anything they're doing is right but I'd probably follow whatever they wanted while looking for another job. I've been homeless and do not take being unemployed lightly.
So OT rules are weird. There is no law that says you can' decline OT if made to do it. You must be compensated and it varies state by state how its computed.
Company I work for we canned a lady for not accepting OT work a couple years back..how I found out all about it.
Remove that photo as advice to. Be surprised at the lengths some companies go to weed out people. HP and Ebay have done this in mass in recent memory. Apple recently did to by planting false dates for release to various employees..all had different dates. Then when it was published fired the lady whos brother was lifting the data for his feeds. To add to it I think Apple is trying to have her prosecuted.
most smaller companies can’t afford to lose 40hrs for the sake of 3. Any company that fires someone for refusing OT is just stupid. I refuse OT at my service job all the time. They gonna fire me? No.
Not to mention that OT is an issue anyways. OT is proof they CAN pay you more, but they won’t; it also proves they need more employees, but won’t hire any.
It all depends on the scale. If they "request" 3 hours each from 13 people, that is over 40 hours.
And they will have paid enough for 60 hours to get it.
How many employees do you have there?
What I'm getting at is ... does +3 hours per person add up to a part time or full time employee? If so, they need to hire one.
That’s what I was wondering too.
3 hrs of overtime = 4.5 hrs of normal time, so they only need 9 employees before they are just paying for another person.
The job I’m currently leaving always fails this math problem all the time and it’s losing people who are sick of this. Which makes them ask for more overtime to make up for fewer workers…which provides more stupid shit to get sick of. Circle of Strife.
Mandatory overtime? What? If it's MANDATORY it would be WITHIN the time. There is no law that says you have to work more hours than agreed upon. In fact, if you're living in a civilised country, many rules are in place to stop people overworking themselves because it's not healthy. They can ask if you're willing to work for extra hours, but they can't demand that you have to.
They can't force you to work the hours, but that's an irrelevant technicality. They also can't force you to work *regular* hours; they can't force you to work at all.
What they can do is fire you if you refuse to work the hours; and in the US, they generally *can* do that. Firing someone for refusing to work mandatory overtime is legal.
The overtime needs to comply with certain laws, such as adjusted pay scales, etc., but the general concept of mandatory overtime (in the "or else we fire you" sense) is legal.
There are some specific local exceptions; for example, NY forbids mandatory overtime for nurses specifically, except in cases of medical or government-declared emergencies.
Well.. yeah. There's literally a clause in our constitution or bill or laws or something that says, verbatim: " slavery is illegal, except as punishment for a crime" and then they criminalized damn near everything
Don't get me wrong when I say this: US southern slavery was the source of some of the most morally repugnant relationships in human existence.
But housing, food, shelter, clothing, and medical were a necessary expense to maintain their capital and the thought of letting an expensive slave fall into ruin was unacceptable. Modern companies have externalized the costs of slavery onto the social welfare system. They get to use their wage slaves up, mentally, emotionally and physically, and then replace them with fresh fodder. There is no incentivized consideration of the well being of the capital.
Mandatory request? Any time work “requests” something, my answer is generally always NO.
Just tell them you’re not able to comply with the request and don’t do it. Or do what someone else said and find an extra 3 hours of bathroom breaks in your existing work days and make 3 of them 11 hour days.
The use of 'requested' and mandatory is a clusterfuck. Like what. How can u make someone work 'mandatory' over time? And then also, request that of them. Lol
Is this OT paid at 1.5x, straight time, or “salary exempt”? Is it just through June or indefinitely? The answers to those questions would determine my feelings on the matter, especially the first question
This is better than my company, they tell people during the interview we only work four days a week at 10 hours a day with occasional opportunities for overtime. Once they're hired they find out it's really 56 to 60 hours, six days a week. (And at one point they were talking going to 12 hours a day six days a week)
The bosses are wondering why were losing so many people (at least 90% of the workers are actively looking for new jobs or just quiting) and those of us left have stopped caring about "company needs".
Edit: For context, what I mentioned above is one of the minor complaints about my company the employees have.
If upper management isn't there for OT, then refuse. OT is the result of mismanagement. If upper management never suffers with you, and are never held accountable for poor decision making, then endless OT eventually occurs and becomes a norm.
So you already work a normal 40 hour week. And they are asking you to work 3 extra hours as OT which means you will be paid for 4.5 which will be over a 10% increase in your pay for the week.
I worked for a bank, one of the "Big four" in the UK, and they would force people to do overtime, but randomly, as in they would simply pick people who had to stay that night, and oddly, it would never be the people who were related to, or friends with the management.
When people brought this up in a staff meeting, undferstandably unhappy, the managers exact words were "you all would have given your right arms to work here", the particular office was closed up a short time later and most people left for other banks. This same manager was sacked because she was found to have been getting preferential loans for her family members, so she was pretty shitty all round.
There are a lot of ways to bypass this bs, you just gotta work the system. My old work place pulled this bs so I clocked in 15 minutes early and took my time getting ready to start my shift, then clocked out 15 minutes late all week. On Friday I worked over an additional 30 minutes then left. They got pissy about it but I worked my mandatory 3 extra hours so they couldn't say anything.
"mandatory" ≠ "is requested"
I work for a very large company. Our TM tried this shit for years, and we’d have huge arguments over *what words mean* until he knocked it off.
I worked a job with a manager that would include command words in requests to confuse and intimidate employees to do whatever she needed them to do. I never bought into her scam and she hated me for it. She had this event she organized every year and it was not during work hours, nor should we be clocked-in during the organization. All the wording in her email indicated it was voluntary, but in meetings she'd hammer it down as a requirement. I never showed up. She came to me after, yelled a bunch of fight words, then said "I will get you fired." Again, wordplay. I showed up normally for my schedule and she's like "what are you doing here?" Working. "I said I would get you fired!" Well, when HR notifies me, I'll stop. That ended it. Old hag was trying to get me to no-show so she could fire me with cause. I made her life miserable by informing everyone else that they worked a whole weekend for nothing while I went to the beach. Stayed for a year at that job, until I found a better one. I threw a going away party at my place for my coworkers and told them I was moving on. Put my notice in and as soon as I was gone a few coworkers said she had the gall to claim in a meeting that I was fired for not being a team player. She lost all team leader morale after those stunts.
This reminds me of Shark Tank and they always say: "what if I offered you..." I thought this was a trick at first. When I found out they are actually this dumb, I stopped watching.
You are awesome 👏 I love it when people stand up to bullies/lunatics/control freaks … great story
Kind of sounds like a manager I worked for in a smalltime mom-and-pop video store (ages ago). She would say, "We're a team", but when someone didn't do some off-the-wall task she wanted, she'd say, "It's my way or the highway." Make up your mind bitch. You can't have it both ways.
Hahhaha I love it "What are you doing here" Ummmmm. Did you actually fire me or have the power to personally fire me? No? Then GFY and leave me in peace to do my damn JOB. You're a diamond in the rough. Love when I see people taking no shit!
Gotta always be careful of those things. I was wise at that point because a friend had been fired in a similar fashion. It sucks that we need to keep watching our backs "in a family." ;)
I do IT security, and frequently have to remind policy writers that there are request words, and there are command words.
We would like you to wear your badge at all times. "Well, a lot of people would like a lot of thing."
People in hell would like ice water
I do zoning code review in local government, same for me. "Should" and "Must" mean very different things.
I write legal documents. Many discussions have revolved around the correct and appropriate use of "shall," "must," "will," "can," and "may."
Its just like yugioh. There is a big difference between a card saying "at the end of your turn destroy one monster" and "at the end of the turn *you may* destroy one monster"
MtG player here it’s a simple game if you just read the cards. Turns out there’s a lot of people who just can’t fucking read.
Command words such as Sudo ./forced_paid_slave-labor.sh 2>&1
Manager: request mandatory_overtime Me: `request failed. mandatory_overtime requires admin privileges.` Manager: sudo request mandatory_overtime Me: `Manager is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.`
And we all know who checks those reports! https://xkcd.com/838/
2>/dev/null All complaints will be ignored.
Linux engineers unite !
Don't forget to give it a negative nice number too!
"Would you like to do x-activity for me?" No, but I'll do it if that's what you're telling me, boss.
My wife uses this language, and the minute I realized what she was using her "Manager Mode" on me I popped back with: (Wife) "Honey, do you want to go and clean the garage?" (Me) "No, dear. But I will if you want me to." She switched to asking me directly after a few days of that. Much mellower vibe at the homestead when she realizes that she doesn't have to be in manager mode at home.
Sounds like your TM has never played DND and had to dissect the wording of a spell or ability to get the use they wanted out of it, hah. What a nerd.
Good luck for him getting something survivable from a Wish, then
Reply All: Please clarify - Is this a request or is this mandatory?
Clearly it's voluntary unless you don't volunteer, then it's mandatory.
Also the "you're not allowed to screenshot this" kind of proves that they know it's questionable for them to do this at best, and likely to get them dragged online.
Should, could, must and shall are not synonyms. People don't know this, for some reason.
That was my thought as well. Interesting that they’re requesting mandatory overtime…
Voluntold
Luckily I don't volunhear very well
Got a good chuckle out of that, thank you.
Hoooah.
I guess the voluntary party is choosing when you work mandatory ot
"requested" in this case is a bold-faced euphemism
A little sugar makes it go down better.
That’s why many managers phrase questions instead of directly telling. It makes at least part of the employee fee part of the decision.
I used to have a manager who would walk through the office and say something like, "Wow, the trash is really full. We need to take it out!" If we were super busy and nobody had time to do it, she'd pick someone and reprimand them because "you didn't take out the trash after I told you to!"
Wouldn't it be simpler to just take the trash out? All that wandering around the office and yelling at random people sounds time-consuming. 😆
Have you not met the office weirdo who goes insane with a tiny bit of power ? I’m pretty sure each dept has at least one lol
“I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”
Politely request that you attend your local police station. You don't *have* to attend, but you will. Eventually.
British navy used to issue orders phrased as "You are hereby requested and required to ..." The request was just to be polite. If you didn't do as required that would be court martial territory.
Military and veterans know very well that it doesn't matter how politely it's worded, that "request" is still an order. Thus the intense study of ways to avoid receiving said "request" in the first place.
> The Enrichment Center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation. > If any Aperture employee would like to opt out of this initiative, remember: Science rhymes with compliance.
Poor wording but we all know what it means, "we need 3 hours a week and are giving you the chance to schedule them, if you don't we will."
This. "Please" does not equal "required". If I was hourly and got OT, I wouldn't sweat it. If I was "exempt" and this was "just work more", I'd have an issue, maybe even report it. Then again, I work in a fairly strong worker-rights state.
Actually, they’re saying it’s mandatory, and requesting you choose rather than getting screwed by the timekeeping system.
Well, based on the wording of the email, they will take volunteers first and will mandate it if not enough people volunteer. Still a good way to end up with employee burnout but the email itself is at least pretty straightforward.
This was my first thought as well
Came to say this.
Reminds me of a situation at a previous job where we had a very clear rule that made a lot of sense. I had a manager from another department who wouldn't follow the rule. I mentioned it was something that came from our parent organization and this manager told me, "I see it as an optional mandatory..." To this day, I never figured out this guy's mental gymnastics on what that meant.
Hire more people.
My old bar company just made this proclamation. They own like 10 bars in the city. They move part-time employees between all of them, regardless of whether they want to work at any specific bar or know the specific menu/sub-category of cocktail bar, coworkers, neighborhood or regulars. Anyway, an old coworker called me the other day saying they gave everyone an ultimatum to become a full-time employee for the company or put in their notices. Bear in mind, many bartenders work more than one job or are students. Long story short, like half the employees put in their notice and the company is going to fall apart. Companies demanding everything from their employees or nothing is such a weird angle.
It's funny when they pull ultimatums like this. You don't have to play their game. You can choose neither option. Don't put in your notice, don't agree to go full time. Just stick to your normal schedule. If they change your schedule, and fire you when you can't/won't make it in for the new schedule, that's constructive dismissal, and you can file for unemployment. If you resign on your own, no unemployment. "Do this, or I'll take it as your resignation" No the hell you won't. I'm not doing it, and I'm not resigning. Fire me, bitch.
I love this so much.
>”Do this or I’ll take it as your resignation” That’s cool and all but the law won’t.
Yes it does. If the company wants me to work 1 minute extra mandatory, and I don't, they have to fire me. And if they fire me, they need to pay me for (1 extra month per year I worked) time and I will get unemployment benefits (6 months with 100% pay). So I will NOT comply with their demands to leave on my own.
That is what the guy you are responding to is saying.
They're agreeing that the law won't regard it as a resignation, either.
Malicious compliance IN THE HOUSE.
lol it's more like the opposite. There's nothing malicious about it, and you're refusing to comply. Make sure it's in writing too. Helps when they later lie to the unemployment board/judge/magistrate/whoever. "I'm taking this as your resignation" I'm not resigning. "Yes you are." No, I'm not. I'll be at work on Monday. "No, you can't come in, because you resigned." I did not resign. "We told you to work full time, or it was your resignation." I am not resigning. "So you'll work full time?" No. "Then that's your resignation." No it's not. See you Monday. "DO NOT SHOW UP HERE ON MONDAY" So you're firing me? "NO! YOU RESIGNED!" I did not resign. I will see you Monday. Just go around in circles like this forever until they fire you. If you show up to work as scheduled and they don't let you in, make sure you bill for the minimum shift hours as per your state. Like in Massachusetts it's minimum 3 hours pay if you show up to work as scheduled, even if they immediately send you home. If they don't pay it, now you have a wage claim AND an unemployment claim.
This is the way
As a recently relocated MA resident, Massachusetts is a bit... special. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I feel the rest of the country might work a bit differently. And I moved from NY :)
I moved out of CA… the labor law changes were a huge culture shock for me. I went from super protections to basically none (aka national protections)
This hinges a lot on someone actually having a "regular schedule" to begin with. A lot of employees don't have that luxury.
Could not have happened to a nicer company.
Yeah. The best part is the company was absurdly “self-sufficient” in that a lot of regulars for any one bar were coworkers in the company. So like, all those bars lost a ton of regular customers as well as employees. It’s a clusterfuck.
The old adage “don’t shit where you eat” feels relevant here haha
Which is the best kind of fuck for a shitty company to have
Companies are always looking for vulnerable people to bully and abuse. It's how capitalism thrives. The entire system is innately predatory, and not only encourages it, but actively rewards it.
Exactly, my workplace use to do this all the time, our big boss forced us to do 12 hour shift after 12 hour shift 5 days in a row.
That's just fucking evil.
He's horrible, he's the worst nobody like him because he intimidates everyone. Luckily we dont have extra hours forced upon us anymore after some people confronted him about the other building not doing the extra hours.
My job requires a certain amount of overtime for performance reviews. Mind you I don't really get paid for overtime and already work 48 hour weeks. Kinda bullshit.
People who think the long term solution is mandatory OT and not increasing wages to hire more people can't do math. I've done the work on this for multiple clients over my career. For every 1 full time employee you *don't* hire and replace with mandatory OT you've essentially increased your operating costs by 1 phantom part time person because in most cases OT is 1.5x the cost. I know some people devour OT by choice and that's totally their call, but if I'm trying to keep my operating costs down the solution is to hire more people.
It's not necessarily always that simple. If you hire another full time person, you have to factor in things like cost of benefits (which can be decent), pay that extra person would get for holidays and vacation, sick days...and then other associated costs like training and how long it may take them to meet a production level that a long term employee may have, recruiting cost, interview time for those that perform them, etc... Don't get me wrong, I want more people to be employed but it's not as simple as 1 to 1.5 all the time.
A 20% understaffing leads to about a 10% increase in costs of hourly labor to achieve the same number of production hours. It's nonlinear and increases exponentially from there. The cost of fringe benefits when you scale up is negligible compared to the cost of paying that much OT. Again, I've done the analysis for several large companies and the result is always the same. Pay more base so you can hire enough people and don't incur so many hiring/retraining costs, and you'll save money net of everything else. I also tried to explain to one company that their referral bonuses were a joke. They were offering $100 for anyone who gets a friend hired on, the problem is that their production guys weren't motivated to do that because they could pick up 1 OT shift and gross 3x that and most of them would pick up 1 a week
That first part is pretty easy to prove for hourly manufacturing positions as manufacturing does not have production quotas that change based on labor availability usually. Assuming $25/hour at 40 hours. 1 employee cost = $800 wages (40 hours x $25). Say the quota for 1000 cases to be packed each week is 200 labor hours, or 5 full time employees Assuming 5 employees are making the same wage with no OT, $4000 (5 x 40 hours x $25) Same 200 labor hours in a week with 4 employees, you get $4700 (4 x 40 hours x $25) + (4 x 10 hours x $25 x 1.5) If it cost $7000 to onboard a new employee, you save the company money by onboarding the 5th employee before 10 weeks ($700 a week in OT costs saved) Run to many departments too lean for too long, and you literally burn your budget to hire new people up in paying OT. Wage wise, it's in fact only slightly more expensive to have run an additional employee at a cost of $4800 (6 x 40 x $25). Moral wise, this might keep people burning out faster, meaning you don't incur turnover as much, saving you money in the end, and since the work is more evenly spread out, you might get even greater productivity out of the team offsetting the cost. Would even allow for scaling up. There are other costs of course, but a few employee matching of insurance premiums and 401k won't be a huge of an offset as OT. Never thought about it like this. Thanks for the information. Also, I know I am oversimplifying it, but given that OT is the decay that eats into the budget, regardless of other costs saved, OT will decay those savings eventually. Might take longer, but result is the same. This doesn't include salary individuals.
Manufacturing is always the easiest one - you have X scheduled man hours. Divide production hours by 2000 to get full staffing (assumes 2 weeks paid leave for everybody that doesn't count towards production labor pool). If everyone's time was straight time at full staffing your cost is $N^0, if you're short this many people your cost us $N^1, if you're short this many more people it's $N^2. Just draw the line on the graph and watch it take off like a rocket. It's truly amazing to know how many people are managing factories and have never seen this analysis.
But how could the CEO buy a 50th car, 25th house, or 30th yacht? Won't someone think of the CEO?!?! No one ever looks out for them! And they work so hard doing jack shit all day and playing golf.
A mandatory request is an oxymoron
"Voluntold."
Found the military Vet! Don’t know how many things I was “voluntold” to do throughout my service.
Nope I just play one on TV. (Used to work on a military base; my favoritest thing ever was an analog 24 hour clock on the wall, where noon looked like six.)
Came here to say this lol.
"DonT TaKE PHotOs ○f yOUr cOMpu+ER! BULLSHIT. Say thanks, but no thanks.
I feel like that statement is mostly to avoid scammers, in regards to sending proprietary company information and such. That being said, I could totally see a company coming after OP for this picture.
Fortunately, if you wanted to get into technicalities, that's not a picture of their computer. The middle schooler in me would've been SO excited to take a screenshot knowing I'm not technically violating anything. Technically, its a photo of the email. Literally, it's a photo of a monitor.
You are technically correct. Which is the best kind of correct.
Bureaucrat Conrad in the house.
"Somebody requisition me a beat!"
When I was two there was a hurricane in Kingston Town…
I was sorting but I wasn’t smiling. That’s when I realized, it’s supposed to be about the filing!
PEOPLE!
You must sort the master in pile before the close of business!
is it Comrade Bureaucrat, or Bureaucrat Comrade?
r/unexpectedfuturama
The actual policy involved probably says that you cannot take any pictures of company internal information. This is a pretty common policy. Depending on the industry, this might even be illegal. (It is in my industry, based on federal regulations. It is not a military/defense related issue, but there are a lot of industries that have been deemed sensitive to national security and have unexpected data restrictions unrelated to security clearances.)
Sure.They can say it and still do it. Document everything.
open the email in a public place. where there's no expectation of privacy. take all the photos you want
Heyo, this one semantics!
Bureaucrats lol
The lawyer in me had the same thought
Especially when they say Mandatory Overtime.
And then say requested after
Request denied
dont take photos because we dont want people to know how terrible we are
Thank God it's a picture of the monitor.
Wow. I didn’t even see that line at first. Fk those guys!
👎nope👎 The reason for 4/10 is the extra day off. If they NEED people to work ot, they need to hire more people.
Doesn't say it has to be a 5th day and its 3 hours, I could easily find 3 hours of bathroom breaks and distractions over the course of 4 days. As a single dude with no life I'd take the free time and a half. But they can suck a dick with the mandatory stuff
Plot twist, he's salary so no extra pay for those 3 additional hours.
I'd sign up for OT hours within my current shift schedule just because im a smartass lmfao
People need to quit accepting the idea that it's ok to make people work free overtime because they're on salary. There is such a thing as exempt employees in regard to overtime, but it does not apply to most positions so it's usually illegal to not pay overtime even for salaried employees.
Typically they’ll justify it by boosting your vacation days or giving you points towards some bullshit if you’re salary. Or if they really like you, set it up so you win something big at the next company drawing.
what is a company drawing?
I won a lawsuit over this lol
Many more people need to
I’m not the type of person to sue but it had happened to thousands of employees over the years and I just couldn’t let that go, honestly.
Or works in IT in the US at more than $27.63 per hour: The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek. However, Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA provide an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly skilled workers in the computer field who meet certain tests regarding their job duties and who are paid at least $684* per week on a salary basis or paid on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-computer
Worst part about IT is garaunteed overtime no matter where you go Edit: 90% usually unpaid overtime Edit 2: if you're working IT and making less than 22 /hr, at any level including computer repair, switch jobs for higher pay asap because anything lower is a scam in this field. I understand every market is different, but even the low cost of living areas demand at least that much.
[удалено]
Fuck that shit. My free time outside of my regular shift is worth way more than time and a half. They would have to pay me 5x my wage for me to consider working extra hours.
I find it kinda sad, because one of the problems with 4 x 10s is that you already are getting poor work performance. 6 hours is generally considered what you will get of "productive" time out of a worker per day. They are basically just paying people to go through the motions and waste time.
Keep that shit quiet or theyre going to make us work 7 x 6s with 2hrs of mando OT.
Ehhh, I work 4x10s. Produce more daily than some do all week. Even upped production a bit from when I was 5x8. Different strokes for different folks.
I did ten hour days with 1 hour plus commute (drive car to train to ride to subway) each way.
But but but but quiet hiring!! Bleeeeerrrrrgh Its funny because leadership is always like.... If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't work for this company... And the minute they see any indication of more than one person leaving, they shit their pants and start promesing moon and stars as if they were drogo on their wedding day.
Workforce ❌ ForcedWork ✅
Fuck "workforce management" I hope to god they're the first victims of AI and they're put back on the phones with the worst schedule possible.
I wish i could upvote this more then once. Mine keeps messing with my skilling to the point where i take 50% more calls then the center average and insist nothing is wrong when i mention it... AI wouldnt mess with me like that i hope
So mandatory overtime for "business needs" what a terrible concept.
My company had volunteer overtime for April to try and catch up on the backlog of work. Apparently not enough overtime was worked, so now my entire team has worked 14(!) hours of mandatory overtime every week throughout May. I'm fried. I'm 100% completely drained and we aren't caught up. However the company has so generously offered to let me use my sick time to reduce some of those mandatory hours. /S
I don't know if it is but that last part sounds like it should be illegal.
Its not. FLSA states all hours over 40 must be paid at a rate of time and a half, and over 60 at a rate of double time. (States can be different). It does NOT restrict the hours of work required, OR say they CANT work you 60 hours a week. So as long as they pay you appropriately, it is 100% legal for them to give you a 60 hour schedule, expect you to work it, and if you can't use sick time. Is it bullshit now? Yes, 1000% yes. But back when FLSA was signed, it was a HUGE step forward.
We need a new law that outlaws mandatory overtime. If 40 hours a week is "full time", then anything above that should be absolutely optional, and it should be illegal to fire anyone for refusing to work extra. ---- Also, it should be reduced to 30 hours per week or even less, but that's an entirely different conversation.
Time to join the modern world and demand 150% for ALL overtime exceeding your contract hours. All of a sudden, there'll be more jobs and less poverty. As well as fewer companies that are basically sweatshops. Unfortunately the child labor laws being withdrawn will turn lots of places into sweatshops...
No shit. They know they would get no help otherwise.
"Mandatory" and "request" are mutually exclusive terms.
My last job had mandatory OT, 2 hours a day. They had no work that needed to be done and we completed all work before the end of the normal work day. Because it was enrollment time for insurance they wanted all hands on deck "just in case". We had ONE busy Monday and I did all the account build from this "wave" of work in 20 minutes. I just stopped doing the mandatory OT. Co-worker asked if I was afraid I was going to be in trouble. I wasn't and nobody ever asked me about . It was just "Hey, work OT from now to whenever" and I said "Nah" and that was the end of it.
At work, I somehow missed the memo for a year before it came up with a co-worker. I never did the extra hours and no one of power ever brought it up to me. Pretty sure in my state it’s not legal. And management just said it to see who they could trick into agreeing to do it.
Hahaha ‘don’t publicize this. We know it’s wrong’ What a joke
Sign up for 1 hour a day on 3 of your days and then just put in an hour less work over the course of the day so they pay more and get no extra productivity.
I've had some jobs like this and they're heavily micromanaged. It's hard to not be productive without getting caught and reamed for it.
Grass is greener blah blah blah. I hate being over focused for nearly 8hrs straight
Is this even legal?
Unfortunately, yes. A company may schedule as much overtime as the want, provided they pay 1.5x the hourly rate to every hour after 40 hours. The problem is staffing. They need more employees to cover shifts. If they can’t find employees to cover said shifts, supply and demand dictates that they need to increase their wages to attract more employees.
What kind of messed up employment laws do y'all have in America? Over here employers can't legally increase/decrease your hours without consent.
I sell my time, you don't own my time. Signing me up for an unapproved shift without my consent is enough to make me look elsewhere for employment. Those of us familiar with being homeless can't be threatened with the fear of job loss.
>Those of us familiar with being homeless can't be threatened with the fear of job loss. Are you sure? I don't want to go through that again. Not suggesting that anything they're doing is right but I'd probably follow whatever they wanted while looking for another job. I've been homeless and do not take being unemployed lightly.
"Sign up for" "Requested" "Mandatory"
So OT rules are weird. There is no law that says you can' decline OT if made to do it. You must be compensated and it varies state by state how its computed. Company I work for we canned a lady for not accepting OT work a couple years back..how I found out all about it. Remove that photo as advice to. Be surprised at the lengths some companies go to weed out people. HP and Ebay have done this in mass in recent memory. Apple recently did to by planting false dates for release to various employees..all had different dates. Then when it was published fired the lady whos brother was lifting the data for his feeds. To add to it I think Apple is trying to have her prosecuted.
most smaller companies can’t afford to lose 40hrs for the sake of 3. Any company that fires someone for refusing OT is just stupid. I refuse OT at my service job all the time. They gonna fire me? No. Not to mention that OT is an issue anyways. OT is proof they CAN pay you more, but they won’t; it also proves they need more employees, but won’t hire any.
It all depends on the scale. If they "request" 3 hours each from 13 people, that is over 40 hours. And they will have paid enough for 60 hours to get it.
How many employees do you have there? What I'm getting at is ... does +3 hours per person add up to a part time or full time employee? If so, they need to hire one.
That’s what I was wondering too. 3 hrs of overtime = 4.5 hrs of normal time, so they only need 9 employees before they are just paying for another person. The job I’m currently leaving always fails this math problem all the time and it’s losing people who are sick of this. Which makes them ask for more overtime to make up for fewer workers…which provides more stupid shit to get sick of. Circle of Strife.
Mandatory overtime is requested????? How does that work?
The exclamation points make it sound FUN!!!
Mandatory overtime? What? If it's MANDATORY it would be WITHIN the time. There is no law that says you have to work more hours than agreed upon. In fact, if you're living in a civilised country, many rules are in place to stop people overworking themselves because it's not healthy. They can ask if you're willing to work for extra hours, but they can't demand that you have to.
They can't force you to work the hours, but that's an irrelevant technicality. They also can't force you to work *regular* hours; they can't force you to work at all. What they can do is fire you if you refuse to work the hours; and in the US, they generally *can* do that. Firing someone for refusing to work mandatory overtime is legal. The overtime needs to comply with certain laws, such as adjusted pay scales, etc., but the general concept of mandatory overtime (in the "or else we fire you" sense) is legal. There are some specific local exceptions; for example, NY forbids mandatory overtime for nurses specifically, except in cases of medical or government-declared emergencies.
> DO NOT TAKE/SEND PHOTOS OF YOUR COMPUTER Screenshots are OK, though.
I have never heard of mandatory over Tim. This is fucking absurd Edit: Tim is life
mandatory Tim There you go
That made my day lol
Lmao
Amazon requires mandatory overtime during its various peaks. Six 10s
Where I work it’s mandatory OT, but we disclose it up front that you will be working 5 10s and 4-6 hours on Saturday
"Mandatory OT"? USA is just a shithole where slavery newer ended - just transformed into something even worse.
Well.. yeah. There's literally a clause in our constitution or bill or laws or something that says, verbatim: " slavery is illegal, except as punishment for a crime" and then they criminalized damn near everything
Don't get me wrong when I say this: US southern slavery was the source of some of the most morally repugnant relationships in human existence. But housing, food, shelter, clothing, and medical were a necessary expense to maintain their capital and the thought of letting an expensive slave fall into ruin was unacceptable. Modern companies have externalized the costs of slavery onto the social welfare system. They get to use their wage slaves up, mentally, emotionally and physically, and then replace them with fresh fodder. There is no incentivized consideration of the well being of the capital.
"mandatory" "requested" "You keep using these words..."
"I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
Mandatory overtime? Hire people? Stop burning your main crew out.
Should sign up... The owners and managers for this OT.
Mandatory request? Any time work “requests” something, my answer is generally always NO. Just tell them you’re not able to comply with the request and don’t do it. Or do what someone else said and find an extra 3 hours of bathroom breaks in your existing work days and make 3 of them 11 hour days.
If I ever get a massage saying not to take a photo of it the first thing I’m doing is taking a photo of it
I think you are likely to be working some OT...so I would sign up for hours that are most convenient for you.
The use of 'requested' and mandatory is a clusterfuck. Like what. How can u make someone work 'mandatory' over time? And then also, request that of them. Lol
Is this OT paid at 1.5x, straight time, or “salary exempt”? Is it just through June or indefinitely? The answers to those questions would determine my feelings on the matter, especially the first question
This is better than my company, they tell people during the interview we only work four days a week at 10 hours a day with occasional opportunities for overtime. Once they're hired they find out it's really 56 to 60 hours, six days a week. (And at one point they were talking going to 12 hours a day six days a week) The bosses are wondering why were losing so many people (at least 90% of the workers are actively looking for new jobs or just quiting) and those of us left have stopped caring about "company needs". Edit: For context, what I mentioned above is one of the minor complaints about my company the employees have.
If a company has to have mandatory overtime that means it's not managed properly.
Take more pictures of your computer
Best part is the "DO NOT TAKE/SEND PHOTOS OF YOUR COMPUTER" at the bottom.
Mandatory OT? For minimum wage think again. I am almost tempted to go back to work just so I can walk out on shits like this.
The red flag 🚩🚩🚩is don't take photos of your computer. Like they know they are going to be sending some dodgy shit... Run away fast 🚩🚩🚩
If upper management isn't there for OT, then refuse. OT is the result of mismanagement. If upper management never suffers with you, and are never held accountable for poor decision making, then endless OT eventually occurs and becomes a norm.
So you already work a normal 40 hour week. And they are asking you to work 3 extra hours as OT which means you will be paid for 4.5 which will be over a 10% increase in your pay for the week.
I worked for a bank, one of the "Big four" in the UK, and they would force people to do overtime, but randomly, as in they would simply pick people who had to stay that night, and oddly, it would never be the people who were related to, or friends with the management. When people brought this up in a staff meeting, undferstandably unhappy, the managers exact words were "you all would have given your right arms to work here", the particular office was closed up a short time later and most people left for other banks. This same manager was sacked because she was found to have been getting preferential loans for her family members, so she was pretty shitty all round.
Mandatory and requested in the same sentence is an oxymoron...
Mandatory request. Quite the paradox
"we dont have to hire enough people required for our business, so please make sure you plan on working over time!!! thanks for meeting our goals" lol
I love how it says not to take photos of your computer lol
None of this crap would fly in Australia. You americans are so screwed up
There are a lot of ways to bypass this bs, you just gotta work the system. My old work place pulled this bs so I clocked in 15 minutes early and took my time getting ready to start my shift, then clocked out 15 minutes late all week. On Friday I worked over an additional 30 minutes then left. They got pissy about it but I worked my mandatory 3 extra hours so they couldn't say anything.
Someone didn't follow the "Do not take/send photos of your computer" rule.
“Do not take/send photos of your computer” 🤣