A reader writes:
I work in an office with two full-time employees, a manager, and 80+ contract employees. Jane, the other full-time employee, and I both support the contract employees in vital, yet different ways. Let’s say that she schedules appointments, and I process payments. Each office in our company has a scheduler and a payment processor, and while both are technically hourly, each cohort has different duties and perhaps a different culture. Payment processors have many more responsibilities than schedulers, and both are occasionally asked to pick up an outside task or six.
Here’s where things get tricky. Both Jane and I have had salaried positions, and Jane is from outside the industry in a larger, more corporate environment. We treat our jobs quite differently. There’s no time clock, but the payment processors tends to prioritize customer service to the contract employees/getting things done efficiently over keeping within eight hours. We frequently stay a little late and often put in a couple hours over a weekend (at home) so as not to return to an anxiety-producing avalanche of work. Depending on the time of year, I probably work 42-50-hour weeks, the latter during super busy times/events. My impression of the schedulers is that many (but not all) of them are the same.
We don’t get overtime, but we get flex time, which admittedly I can forget to track/use. Jane, by contrast, leaves exactly on time (or early, according to some), sticks only to her assigned duties, and demands flex time as compensation for even 15 minutes spent outside her work hours. To be fair, she legally has the right to do this, but it feels quite different from our corporate culture.
Jane gets a lot done within her daily hours but is unavailable outside that time, even for sudden crises. This is difficult for the contract employees, whose jobs are not locked into a neat 9-5, Monday through Friday routine. While they respect my personal time and space, the contract workers know that if difficulty arises, I will be there. Meanwhile, there was incident in which a contract employee came to Jane 40 minutes before the end of an early-release day with a task that would take at least an hour and she firmly said no. She was working from home that day and had no plans but felt it unfair to be asked at such late notice. The contact employee complained all the way up the chain of leadership and another of Jane’s cohort had to step in and do the project.
This has led to some dissatisfaction and (unfortunately) comparison between us. Personally, I get where Jane is coming from – especially legally – but I also see that it fits neither company culture nor my personal work ethic. The company was incredibly good to me when I needed to take a long family leave, and the contract employees and management have been generous about sharing some of their bonuses. I know that Jane resents me for working beyond my eight hours and once reported me to HR for it. (They did nothing.) But am I setting a bad precedent? Am I being unfair to Jane? I am not intentionally trying to look better in the eyes of the contact workers or corporate leaders; I am just trying to do a good job and help the company along.
Yeah, you’re probably setting a bad precedent, and also being a bit unfair to Jane!
If you’re working for free as a non-exempt worker, you’re putting pressure on colleagues to do the same. You’re also exposing your company to legal liability, since they can be subject to fines and penalties for allowing you to do that.
For what it’s worth, the whole set-up might be illegal. You said you get comp time instead of overtime, so I want to make sure you know that in the U.S. it’s illegal to pay non-exempt workers overtime in comp time instead of in money. The exception is if the comp time is taken in the same work week that it was earned in. For example, if you work nine hours on Monday and take an hour of comp time on Tuesday to balance it out, and as a result your total hours for the week don’t go over 40, your company wouldn’t owe you overtime. But if you work nine hours on Monday and don’t take the comp time until a few weeks later, your company owes you overtime pay for all hours over 40 you worked in that original week. (Also, some states calculate overtime by the day instead of the week, meaning in those states you can’t even do the take-it-that-week plan.)
It’s your prerogative if you prefer the comp time set-up and don’t plan to require your employer to follow the law … but in doing that, you’re making it harder for people like Jane who do rightly expect the company to meet its legal obligations to pay them.
If it’s a problem that Jane refuses to be available outside of her scheduled hours, that’s something her manager should address with her. If the job requires occasional work outside of normal hours, they need to clearly explain that. (But then they also need to pay for that time. Any chance Jane is so rigid about never working outside of 9-5 because she knows she won’t be paid for it?)
If you’re ending up with more than your fair share of the work because Jane refuses to stretch her hours and so people come to you instead, that’s something you should talk to your manager about as well. Maybe that means they talk to Jane about adjusting her availability (and paying her for it). Maybe it means that you get compensated at a higher rate in recognition of your greater contributions. I don’t know — but if it’s causing problems, that’s squarely in “talk to your boss” territory.
Right now you’re framing this all as “Jane is out of sync with our corporate culture, and that culture works fine for the rest of us” … but when part of your culture is “we break the law,” that’s not really a good way to look at it.
