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Archive for August, 2016

Going Above and Beyond

Posted by mikenopolis on August 10, 2016

In the past 6 months, many changes have happened at my office. I work in a small (150 or so employees) family owned company that has been around for 50+ years. They decided to sell the company to a 270,000 employee Fortune 500 company because the owner is getting old in age and the family members who are senior management were ready to retire. Years ago they realized the younger generation in the family would fight over the business and potentially ruin the business and worst yet, the family. So we knew this was going to happen sooner or later.

Many employees were salaried employees (I think the technical term is Salaried Exempt). Not really because of our jobs or titles, but because the company does not approve overtime and never pressures anyone with deadlines which will result in overtime work. So it was easier to just pay us our wage instead of having us clock in and out knowing we would put in the eight hours each day. There are of course those who abuse this system and never put in the hours they are being paid, but that’s another rant for another day.

Because of this acquisition, many of us salaried people have been converted to hourly employees (Salaried Non Exempt) and are now eligible for overtime pay but it is still likely not going to be approved since we will be working independently 99% of the time.

Now to the point of this story. In the recent weeks, a co-worker has been pretty pissed off with their responsibilities because certain things have deadline due to the company sale. First of all, He/She (I will use he going forward) is not happy with having to clock in/out because working 8 full hours has never been his thing. So he didn’t think this was fair. He is going around saying that if the wanted things to get done, it’s not going to happen unless they approve overtime pay.

This really bothered me because he is well compensated and this hourly vs salaried conversion did not change his pay, the wage is the same if not better. So if he was doing work “from home” as he said he was before. I don’t see any reason why he can’t just do that now instead of complaining about it and saying there isn’t enough time.

No matter what kind of pay I got at any job, I have always gone above and beyond what is expected of me. I usually never saw work as work and that it was just an activity that exercises my mind which is why I always did work at home when I have nothing better to do, or if I need more than 8 hours to do something. I work hard, not for the money but for my own sanity. The last thing I want is to fall behind and have to face it the next day. It made no sense to me how this person will literally stop working at 8.0 hours just because there no overtime pay when their salaried pay from before is the same. I understand there are labor laws to protect employers abusing their employees, but in this case I feel like he should’ve just done whatever is needed to reduce his stress and anger tomorrow.



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