7 ms·

Here's how I deal with family obligations, home repairs, etc. - I do them as needed and take no PTO. I'll email my team and say "Garage door getting replaced. B

Here's how I deal with family obligations, home repairs, etc. - I do them as needed and take no PTO. I'll email my team and say "Garage door getting replaced. Be checking email sporadically". Now if the company I'm working for says nothing, that's good. If the company I'm working for says "You need to log those X hours as PTO", I give notice. It's expected that we (employees) put in a little extra effort when at the end of a project or the end of the fiscal month or whatever. And I don't ask to be paid for that extra 4 to 12 hours of work. So if I take 4 hours here and there, you'd damn well better NOT bitch at me. Edit: fix some grammar

glesica 13y ago
I like that attitude, but not everyone can afford to follow through and actually quit, that's part of the big problem, most people have relatively little leverage and can't afford to "take" leverage.
- SoftwareMaven 13y ago
  You don't have to quit the next day. It's indicative of a poor working environment, and means it's time to start looking for a new job.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Also, it's indicative of poor management skills, what means that your job may stop existing at any time.
joezydeco 13y ago
I do the same thing, but I ask upfront in the interview instead of spontaneously quitting the job after the fact.
- justrudd 13y ago
  Absolutely. I'm much more selective in where I work now so I've not had to do this for the past decade. But the first decade I was working, I was drawn to money figures without paying a lot of attention to the work environment. With that said, I would still walk out on an abusive employer...
cynicalkane 13y ago
If the company I'm working for says "You need to log those X hours as PTO", I give notice Terminating employment without compromise because they won't let you break the rules sounds cool when you pretend you did it on the Internet, but please don't use this as an employee-employer relations strategy in real life. If you quit because they won't let you count installing cable TV or something as work time, that is almost certainly not the reason why you quit, unless your priorities are very strange.
- justrudd 13y ago
  Sorry if you don't believe me. I have done this, and I will do this again. If a company expects me to put in extra effort at busy times of the year, it is only fair that they are OK with me doing a 30 hour work week some weeks to take care of issues that came up while I was working that 80 hours. Edit: To be clear, the companies where I quit when they had no empathy were body-shops.
  - cynicalkane 13y ago
    It sounds like you quit because they were expecting some 80 hour work weeks without recompense.
    - justrudd 13y ago
      It was the end of a deadline that "we couldn't miss". My sump pump had actually died, and I needed to replace it. Bought the replacement, but sat on it for several weeks because "we couldn't miss the deadline". Those last 3 weeks, I was working 7 days a week for about 15 hours a day. When I got home, I ate, crashed on my couch, slept, and went back to work. Once the release "we couldn't miss" was done, I stayed home one day and put in my sump pump. The next day I was told to record the 8 hours as PTO. So given that I had just worked 300 hours in 3 weeks, but they wouldn't bend on 8? Yeah...I quit. And I'm glad I replaced the sump pump. It rained for 3 weeks straight after I gave notice. Oh yeah. The deadline "we couldn't miss"? It got pushed 3 weeks. The writing was on the wall for what they expected. But I was young and "stupid" living under the auspice of my father's work life (2 jobs his whole life - 20 years in the Army and 20 years for the State of Alabama). So I worked the hours because I wanted to be the team player. I wanted to help. In the end, I was shown that the relationship was one way. So now I'm old and more careful and less willing to put up with one-sided relationships.
scelerat 13y ago
I worked for a company for many years with a great attitude about flexible hours and work from home. Got a ton of work done, felt very good about my work and coworkers, and put out a great product. It was acquired by a larger company who, soon after the acquisition, announced a 9-5 butts-in-seat policy. Nine months later, after buying a house, I was canned for violating that butts-in-seat policy, largely because I was attending to the many little things a new house requires: inspections, installations, etc. Under the old regime, coming in later and working later, or working from home, being accessible by video chat, IM, and email would have raised no eyebrows. Under the new one it was cause for termination. I should have seen the writing on the wall and simply started to look for a new job as soon as that more restrictive company took over. I was pressured to stay by the ties I had to stock options, my good professional relationships with co-workers, and my desire to get into a house quickly. The end result was that I went into a lot of bad debt in the months following my layoff, and almost lost my house as I ran out of cash. I could have avoided it if I had planned better. Needless to say I was under a lot of stress for a while. The long and short of it is, I agree with parent. If you have the freedom to do so, disassociate with companies who have unreasonable time-off or flex work policies, sooner rather than later. Your mental, physical, and financial health are at stake.
- genwin 13y ago
  Maybe the acquiring company was making new rules with a no tolerance policy primarily to get rid of employees with stock options.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  This deserves more upvotes than the one that I can give it. Also, genwin is right. The zero-tolerance time-Nazi stuff was to push out people with stock options. If the policies weren't also applied (with the same penalties and enforcement) within the acquirer, you probably could have sued and, at the least, gotten a decent settlement due to their desire to avoid embarrassment.
- ececconi 13y ago
  Butts in seat policy is the worst. It attracts the kind of talent tnat is complacent with making it seem like they are doing work as opposed to people who like to make progress.
adrr 13y ago
I assume most of us have salary jobs, no employer can make you take partial days out of your PTO. If you work for 15 minutes or whatever the minimum increment for hourly employees, it counts as a full day.
mcv 13y ago
I don't know what PTO means, but I'm assuming it's unpaid. If so, I disagree. When I work less, I expect to get paid less. But when I work more, I also expect to get paid more. There's no such thing as unpaid extra hours, and I reserve the right to refuse working extra when I've got private obligations. If they do demand unpaid work, and for some weird reason I agree to that, then the door is definitely open for paid non-work. Whatever the deal is, it works both ways.
- cema 13y ago
  PTO = Paid Time Off.

glesica 13y ago

I like that attitude, but not everyone can afford to follow through and actually quit, that's part of the big problem, most people have relatively little leverage and can't afford to "take" leverage.

SoftwareMaven 13y ago
You don't have to quit the next day. It's indicative of a poor working environment, and means it's time to start looking for a new job.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Also, it's indicative of poor management skills, what means that your job may stop existing at any time.

joezydeco 13y ago

I do the same thing, but I ask upfront in the interview instead of spontaneously quitting the job after the fact.

justrudd 13y ago
Absolutely. I'm much more selective in where I work now so I've not had to do this for the past decade. But the first decade I was working, I was drawn to money figures without paying a lot of attention to the work environment. With that said, I would still walk out on an abusive employer...

cynicalkane 13y ago

If the company I'm working for says "You need to log those X hours as PTO", I give notice Terminating employment without compromise because they won't let you break the rules sounds cool when you pretend you did it on the Internet, but please don't use this as an employee-employer relations strategy in real life. If you quit because they won't let you count installing cable TV or something as work time, that is almost certainly not the reason why you quit, unless your priorities are very strange.

justrudd 13y ago
Sorry if you don't believe me. I have done this, and I will do this again. If a company expects me to put in extra effort at busy times of the year, it is only fair that they are OK with me doing a 30 hour work week some weeks to take care of issues that came up while I was working that 80 hours. Edit: To be clear, the companies where I quit when they had no empathy were body-shops.
- cynicalkane 13y ago
  It sounds like you quit because they were expecting some 80 hour work weeks without recompense.
  - justrudd 13y ago
    It was the end of a deadline that "we couldn't miss". My sump pump had actually died, and I needed to replace it. Bought the replacement, but sat on it for several weeks because "we couldn't miss the deadline". Those last 3 weeks, I was working 7 days a week for about 15 hours a day. When I got home, I ate, crashed on my couch, slept, and went back to work. Once the release "we couldn't miss" was done, I stayed home one day and put in my sump pump. The next day I was told to record the 8 hours as PTO. So given that I had just worked 300 hours in 3 weeks, but they wouldn't bend on 8? Yeah...I quit. And I'm glad I replaced the sump pump. It rained for 3 weeks straight after I gave notice. Oh yeah. The deadline "we couldn't miss"? It got pushed 3 weeks. The writing was on the wall for what they expected. But I was young and "stupid" living under the auspice of my father's work life (2 jobs his whole life - 20 years in the Army and 20 years for the State of Alabama). So I worked the hours because I wanted to be the team player. I wanted to help. In the end, I was shown that the relationship was one way. So now I'm old and more careful and less willing to put up with one-sided relationships.

scelerat 13y ago

I worked for a company for many years with a great attitude about flexible hours and work from home. Got a ton of work done, felt very good about my work and coworkers, and put out a great product. It was acquired by a larger company who, soon after the acquisition, announced a 9-5 butts-in-seat policy. Nine months later, after buying a house, I was canned for violating that butts-in-seat policy, largely because I was attending to the many little things a new house requires: inspections, installations, etc. Under the old regime, coming in later and working later, or working from home, being accessible by video chat, IM, and email would have raised no eyebrows. Under the new one it was cause for termination. I should have seen the writing on the wall and simply started to look for a new job as soon as that more restrictive company took over. I was pressured to stay by the ties I had to stock options, my good professional relationships with co-workers, and my desire to get into a house quickly. The end result was that I went into a lot of bad debt in the months following my layoff, and almost lost my house as I ran out of cash. I could have avoided it if I had planned better. Needless to say I was under a lot of stress for a while. The long and short of it is, I agree with parent. If you have the freedom to do so, disassociate with companies who have unreasonable time-off or flex work policies, sooner rather than later. Your mental, physical, and financial health are at stake.

genwin 13y ago
Maybe the acquiring company was making new rules with a no tolerance policy primarily to get rid of employees with stock options.
michaelochurch 13y ago
This deserves more upvotes than the one that I can give it. Also, genwin is right. The zero-tolerance time-Nazi stuff was to push out people with stock options. If the policies weren't also applied (with the same penalties and enforcement) within the acquirer, you probably could have sued and, at the least, gotten a decent settlement due to their desire to avoid embarrassment.
ececconi 13y ago
Butts in seat policy is the worst. It attracts the kind of talent tnat is complacent with making it seem like they are doing work as opposed to people who like to make progress.

adrr 13y ago

I assume most of us have salary jobs, no employer can make you take partial days out of your PTO. If you work for 15 minutes or whatever the minimum increment for hourly employees, it counts as a full day.

mcv 13y ago

I don't know what PTO means, but I'm assuming it's unpaid. If so, I disagree. When I work less, I expect to get paid less. But when I work more, I also expect to get paid more. There's no such thing as unpaid extra hours, and I reserve the right to refuse working extra when I've got private obligations. If they do demand unpaid work, and for some weird reason I agree to that, then the door is definitely open for paid non-work. Whatever the deal is, it works both ways.

cema 13y ago
PTO = Paid Time Off.