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> none of my employers so far has paid me to commute so I do not consider it working. Yikes, do you apply that same reasoning to slavery, or is it only your ow

by klyrs 4y ago

> none of my employers so far has paid me to commute so I do not consider it working. Yikes, do you apply that same reasoning to slavery, or is it only your own time that you consider worthless until paid for? re: makeitrain -- you don't work for Amazon, then?

tharkun__ 4y ago
I don't think you understood it the way I meant it. Let me explain. Commute time is time that I do not get any work output done. Employers know that and do not pay for that time. For me as an employee I have to basically treat this as "the cost of being employed" and I have a few knobs there. I can choose how far away I live, i.e. do I waste 15 minutes on the subway for this but pay high rent or for an expensive condo or do I waste 1.5 hours driving and paying for the maintenance, gas etc. each way and live in a nice house in the sticks. I may also have the option of taking a train for the 1.5 hour trip and I might be able to get an hour of work done on the train. Now it's up to my employer-employee relationship that I can get whether I am able to count this as work time or not. Some employers have strict policies: You gotta be at the office at 9 and clock in and clock out for lunch and back in and back out at 5. This is the time they count and you better be on time or you get dinged. Such an employer will not pay for your one hour of actual work you did on the commute. Other employers may not be as strict, people generally get to work around 9, no punch clocks but social pressure ensures that even if you did that hour of work on the train and do another hour of work on the train ride home, people only "see you at work" for 6 hours and think you're a slacker. So again effectively your employer does not pay your for your commute time i.e. I can't count it as work. It's my time. I may be fine with listening to an audio book or reading in that time and I might enjoy it. But it was never work time to begin with. I was just forced to make use of that time in some way in order to be employed somewhere to get money. Or you may be at a great place that understands this, some people come in at 7 and leave at 2, others come in at 11 and leave at 6. In any case, with WFH I can now finally do whatever I want with that time instead of being locked into doing something that I can do while commuting.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I understand it the way you meant it. There are zero bona-fide reasons that I cannot work at home. If my employer wants me to battle traffic an hour each way, that's time taken away from myself and my family, it's fuel, wear & tear on my car, it's added stress and risk of permanent debilitating injuries -- all costs that my employer wants me to take on, for free, just because some exec who never comes to the office doesn't feel comfortable with peons doing the same. Getting to the office is work, and expense, that is not paid for. You're making an extremely narrow definition of "work" that your employer is delighted by. You're paying for the privilege of getting a paycheck. I'm saying that you aren't being paid for your time. Couple of scenarios: 1. Your employer wants you to go to a conference where you're to represent the company. Your "work" is programming, and your output is zero for the duration of the conference. Should you be paid for your time, should your plane & hotel costs be covered? 2. Your employer wants to buy some computers. The computers are worthless to your employer if they're sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Do they pay a shipping fee, or let them rot in the warehouse?
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    It seems like you still do not understand, despite the explanations and you are mis-characterizing my definition of work. You also seem to think that I'm siding with employers here. In fact it is the opposite. My "definition" of "Work" in an employer-employee relationship: Time my employer pays me for in which I perform something we agreed upon. Thus my commute was never work time. And because it was never work time, if I no longer commute to the office, they can't expect me to now work during the time frame that I used to commute. They can only expect me to work during the times of the commute that I actually worked. It's part of the (say that was the arrangement) 8 hours of work I did for them. Unless of course I was fortunate enough to have that last arrangement I mentioned, where yes, working on the commute was paid for. Take the 1.5 train commute again. Let's say 30 minutes of that was getting to the train station on time, waiting for the train to arrive and walking to work and thus of that I was able to work for one hour, because I was lucky enough to work for an employer where they do pay me for work regardless of where I am even in the "office times". Most people are not in that category. In fact, a lot of people do not even know how many hours they really put in. I can only recommend, if you don't track your hours, do so. Tracking hours is good for employees and bad for employers. Look at what your pay stub says, how many nominal hours you are working. That is your target. Try to stay close to that. EDIT: Forgot about the conferences and such. Of course the employer has to pay for that. It's work time. By only the nominal hours. If they make me represent them at some conference for 12 hours that's fine, I'll do that for that weekend or whatever, but I plunk down 12 hours in my "timesheet" and I don't work for a day or so the week after or some other time that I choose and I damn well expect hotel, transportation and food to be paid for.

by klyrs 4y ago

tharkun__ 4y ago

I don't think you understood it the way I meant it. Let me explain. Commute time is time that I do not get any work output done. Employers know that and do not pay for that time. For me as an employee I have to basically treat this as "the cost of being employed" and I have a few knobs there. I can choose how far away I live, i.e. do I waste 15 minutes on the subway for this but pay high rent or for an expensive condo or do I waste 1.5 hours driving and paying for the maintenance, gas etc. each way and live in a nice house in the sticks. I may also have the option of taking a train for the 1.5 hour trip and I might be able to get an hour of work done on the train. Now it's up to my employer-employee relationship that I can get whether I am able to count this as work time or not. Some employers have strict policies: You gotta be at the office at 9 and clock in and clock out for lunch and back in and back out at 5. This is the time they count and you better be on time or you get dinged. Such an employer will not pay for your one hour of actual work you did on the commute. Other employers may not be as strict, people generally get to work around 9, no punch clocks but social pressure ensures that even if you did that hour of work on the train and do another hour of work on the train ride home, people only "see you at work" for 6 hours and think you're a slacker. So again effectively your employer does not pay your for your commute time i.e. I can't count it as work. It's my time. I may be fine with listening to an audio book or reading in that time and I might enjoy it. But it was never work time to begin with. I was just forced to make use of that time in some way in order to be employed somewhere to get money. Or you may be at a great place that understands this, some people come in at 7 and leave at 2, others come in at 11 and leave at 6. In any case, with WFH I can now finally do whatever I want with that time instead of being locked into doing something that I can do while commuting.

klyrs 4y ago
I understand it the way you meant it. There are zero bona-fide reasons that I cannot work at home. If my employer wants me to battle traffic an hour each way, that's time taken away from myself and my family, it's fuel, wear & tear on my car, it's added stress and risk of permanent debilitating injuries -- all costs that my employer wants me to take on, for free, just because some exec who never comes to the office doesn't feel comfortable with peons doing the same. Getting to the office is work, and expense, that is not paid for. You're making an extremely narrow definition of "work" that your employer is delighted by. You're paying for the privilege of getting a paycheck. I'm saying that you aren't being paid for your time. Couple of scenarios: 1. Your employer wants you to go to a conference where you're to represent the company. Your "work" is programming, and your output is zero for the duration of the conference. Should you be paid for your time, should your plane & hotel costs be covered? 2. Your employer wants to buy some computers. The computers are worthless to your employer if they're sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Do they pay a shipping fee, or let them rot in the warehouse?
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  It seems like you still do not understand, despite the explanations and you are mis-characterizing my definition of work. You also seem to think that I'm siding with employers here. In fact it is the opposite. My "definition" of "Work" in an employer-employee relationship: Time my employer pays me for in which I perform something we agreed upon. Thus my commute was never work time. And because it was never work time, if I no longer commute to the office, they can't expect me to now work during the time frame that I used to commute. They can only expect me to work during the times of the commute that I actually worked. It's part of the (say that was the arrangement) 8 hours of work I did for them. Unless of course I was fortunate enough to have that last arrangement I mentioned, where yes, working on the commute was paid for. Take the 1.5 train commute again. Let's say 30 minutes of that was getting to the train station on time, waiting for the train to arrive and walking to work and thus of that I was able to work for one hour, because I was lucky enough to work for an employer where they do pay me for work regardless of where I am even in the "office times". Most people are not in that category. In fact, a lot of people do not even know how many hours they really put in. I can only recommend, if you don't track your hours, do so. Tracking hours is good for employees and bad for employers. Look at what your pay stub says, how many nominal hours you are working. That is your target. Try to stay close to that. EDIT: Forgot about the conferences and such. Of course the employer has to pay for that. It's work time. By only the nominal hours. If they make me represent them at some conference for 12 hours that's fine, I'll do that for that weekend or whatever, but I plunk down 12 hours in my "timesheet" and I don't work for a day or so the week after or some other time that I choose and I damn well expect hotel, transportation and food to be paid for.