<p>This is nothing new. I remember co-workers in the 80s thinking it was perfectly fine if they came in early, worked through lunch, stayed late and didn’t get compensated for any of it - yet if they had to leave an hour early, they were expected to take it out of their vacation time. I remember people saying ‘everyone’ to work 60 hours a week and that’s the only way the company or economy would grow - never questioning why the company just couldn’t hire enough people so everyone could work 40 hours. </p>
<p>I always thought it was crap. Yes, lawyers and stockbrokers and people in startups have to work long hours … but not everyone does. In 30 years, I only had one job where I often worked over 40 hours, but I worked mostly at home, and also had the flexibility to take time off during the day if needed.</p>
<p>My career has never suffered because of it. I’m not rich, but I do okay. I refuse to give up the rest of my life out of some messed up Puritanical notion of having to work ourselves to death.</p>
<p>Right, if they can get 2 people to do the work of 3 or 4 they save money. Even if they have to pay a slightly higher salary they are not paying one and a half or double the rate. They are also saving a lot on the benefits packages and overhead on space needed for staff. </p>
<p>Another trick I see some larger companies doing is mandating workers work from home part of the week. So now, you have to pay for workspace in your home, and your increased electric or heating/ac bills but the company saves. I feel like people are just getting squeezed and squeezed.</p>
<p>Oh brother. Yeah- but you don’t want the cost of goods/services to increase! How do you expect companies to keep prices reasonable with rising labor and health care costs? Not to mention the absurd regulatory environment in which businesses have to operate. Be realistic.</p>
<p>I’d much rather pay slightly more for things (I think it’s overhyped how much prices would increase- the cost, IMO, would likely be negligible) if it meant that we could go back to livable wages and more time with family/friends/leisure. </p>
<p>So yeah, that’s me being realistic. I’d rather pay more for a healthier and happier country.</p>
<p>Because we have to stick it to “The Man”. And because most people are incapable of understanding that businesses need to make a profit and have obligations to shareholders as well as to employees. Believe it or not, most (not all) companies do the best they can for their employees.</p>
<p>I am finding all the responses interesting. In my D’s case her company does seem to care about their employees. They get vacation, Benefits and some other perks and the management is easy to work with.They pay her overtime for the last two hours and anytime she works over that but the job is clearly stated as 10 hour workday. It is not an option to work 8 and most days she is busy enough to not take lunch. She is in Ca so legally she should just take her lunch. Some jobs in her company are 8 hour days. I still don’t understand why they don’t just have her on straight salary.
I prefer her company policies over the first two places my S worked out of college who called him an independent contractor and would send him home or not have him come in when they didn’t have enough work. </p>
<p>I work with people who make sure they are the first ones in and the last to leave the floor every single day. I don’t think they are necessarily more productive than anybody else. In fact, I know one who can take 3 hours proofreading a 10 slide Power Point deck including counting the number of spaces after the bullets on each slide to make sure they are all the same. He wastes time more than anybody I’ve ever known. They think it makes them look good to be on that kind of schedule. </p>
<p>Personally, I am very vocal about working smarter not harder and finding ways to be more efficient so more can be done in less time. I will go the extra mile when there is a deadline and I usually work 45 hours a week to fit in with the culture, but I honestly don’t <em>need</em> to in order to get the work done. Sometimes it happens just because I collaborate with people in Australia fairly frequently and we have to schedule those conference calls carefully due to the time zone issues. </p>
<p>One of the things we and S love about his job is that he’s STRONGLY discouraged from overtime and gets comp time for his travel time. The job doesn’t exhaust him, so he has a lucrative “hobby” that he also pursues and enjoys. </p>
<p>Mom60- If she is in CA and is not taking her lunch her employer is in big trouble and your daughter is entitled to extra pay. I am involved in defending a class action right now involving meal breaks and rest breaks in CA. The law is very clear and the class actions are rampant. She may think she is being a good employee, but she could be subjecting her employer to penalties of ten times her pay for that lunch break she doesn’t take. If the employer isn’t making her clock in and out for the lunch, they are setting themselves up for a hit they can not even imagine. It’s ridiculous- but that’s California- and there is no grey area there.</p>
<p>If salried is getting paid for hours over 40, then it is a huge advantage. None of us, salaried, are ever paid for additional hours, not even if we always work over 40 hours. “Salaried” is expected to work over if needed. I have done some 20 hrs days (because if was required), I mean I would sleep for about 3 hours and get up and do it again. I was never ever paid. I was thankful to have a job. I am very thankful for having a job, I will work whatever hours required to complete what needs to be done. My husband ALWAYS works on our vacations, right from the beach, at least our internet at resort is paid by his employers.<br>
As far as I know salaried are paid practically only in consulting business since the customers are charged by hours. </p>
<p>Miami- Shockingly (not), you have no idea what you are talking about.</p>
<p>Mom60- seriously, it is almost certain that in her employee handbook- or maybe even something she had to sign- that she has to abide by wage and hour requirements and HAS to take her lunch and rest breaks. Employees are being fired in California by the droves because of the penalties and fines that employers are subject to if even one employee ignores the breaks. There will be a huge poster in her break room about this, too. It sounds like some of the positions are salaried/non-exempt. In California many jobs that would be exempt (salaried) in other states have to be classified as non-exempt and are subject to the penalties. If the jobs truly are management/professional (and these classifications are challenged every day), the meal breaks requirements don’t apply. From the formula, though, it sounds non-exempt.</p>
<p>I only work part time at my job, but the full timers are practically forbidden to work overtime. We are paid by the hour and the admin does not want to pay time and a half. If ever we go longer than 8 hours in a day, the full time nurses are sent home. </p>
<p>Pharmacist friend of sons states he works about 45 hrs a week avg. says he can pick up extra shift and be paid normal extra wage. The kids making big bucks with his pharmD.</p>
<p>At my job I used to work through lunch because that was my most productive part of the day and I didn’t want to stop working, and I figured that at least made me on par with everybody who took an hour for lunch and worked til 6 because we were both working 45 hours. I stopped because it didn’t really work that way, I was still dog meat. We are not technically allowed to work through lunch but almost everybody does it, and the company says they don’t encourage it but the lunch room is a miserable dungeon with half as many tables as it needs for anyone to actually be able to eat. They make it as unpleasant down there as humanly possible, and now they’re remodeling so we have no lunch room, and they’re strictly enforcing no eating at workstations, so we have to eat in our cars. I just go home for lunch now, which means I have to take the full hour. So now I don’t work through lunch anymore, but I am not willing to work through dinner instead… I go home and eat like a normal person is supposed to do. </p>
<p>I will say both my parents are self-employed and work from home and I would take this over that any day. They both work 20 hours a day, 365 days a year, and there are no benefits-- their private family insurance policy costs almost my entire salary and doesn’t really cover anything. They think being able to sit at home in their pajamas all day is worth it but I think I’d sooner shoot myself than work that kind of job. My dad has tried to rope my fiance into the family business and I have forbidden it. I want affordable health insurance and paid vacation, I will deal with pressure over working unreasonable hours and eating in my car to get it if that’s what I need to do.</p>
<p>I probably do about 40 hours of work a week, but that includes much more time spent in the office, as I waste some time here, have lunch, all that. </p>
<p>The latest trick is “unlimited vacation”. It’s along the lines of free lunch. Now it’s “unlimited”, but it’s also at your boss’s discretion, so you can take a few days at the end of a project cycle, but you don’t really “earn” it anymore. This avoids ever having to pay out any cash when an employee resigns. </p>
<p>So now, every vacation is a “favor” which I detest. I plan to look for another job soon and list this as my #1 reason for quitting.</p>
<p>That’s fascinating. I would have thought the unlimited vacation would be nice, but now that you put it that way I can see how it could be problematic.</p>
<p>Momofwildchild- you have given me some food for thought. I will have some questions for her. In my opinion she doesn’t know exactly what she is entitled to. She is paid for 10 hours and that includes a lunchtime. So she is paid for lunch and if she takes advantage of the free meals her employer gives she can get a “free lunch”.
The complicated thing I see for her is that due to the nature of her job almost everyone she works with is on a different and multiple compensation schedule.
What I am taking away from this thread is that a 50 hour work week is not unusual. </p>