Calculating Your Weekly Hours – Not So Simple

One would think that adding 2 & 2 would be an easy thing to do, but it really isn’t that simple, not by a longshot.  At least not with the companies I have worked for.  Possible scams..maybe..

Back in the days of Woolworth, they had an interesting way of paying employees.  It was called the 7-8 minute rule.  If you punched out on the 7 minute mark on any 15 minute interval, you get nothing for that time.  If you punched at the 8 to 15 minute mark of any quarter hour, then you got paid for the entire 15 minutes.  Lousy deal or great deal depending on how close one was to that 8 minute mark.  Many times I missed it by just a few seconds and no you could not cheat if a manager was standing around especially at closing time.  Sometimes, I did slow my pace down just to make that 8 minute mark just to get revenge.  To make matters worse, if an employee had multiple 7 minute periods, they could not be combined to give a full 15 minute session.  So naturally Woolworth got a LOT of free time with its employees.  Certainly this screamed “SCAM”, but one just needed to know how to play the clock to fully benefit from their rules.

All was pretty well until one summer week about my fourth year with them when my timecard was added wrong.  Not just a little wrong, but 11½ hours of overtime off.  Certainly the management was a little embarrassed by this “mistake”, but it seemed more like a purposeful oversight just so they didn’t have to pay me so much overtime.  Woolworth and overtime never mixed well together and they always tried to keep their regular full-timers under the 40 hour mark.   It was at this point I decided to keep careful track of EVERY MINUTE I worked just so I knew I was paid properly.  This would continue right through my last minutes at Staples.

When the company went to an electronic credit card sized punch card, it was much harder to keep track of punches, but  I had marked in my little memo pad every punch in, lunch punch and punch out.  Certainly this was a lot of work, but it let the managers know they couldn’t get away with anything!!

As far as I can remember with HQ, for every minute I worked I got paid for despite the fact that the company most days would send me home before my shift ended.  I really never worried about what they paid me as anything below 40 hours was made up by my unemployment.  One of the blessings of unemployment!

Then there is Staples.  Besides of the break punch scam previously mentioned, Staples made keeping track of hours very difficult when I was first employed with the company, but when they changed to a web-based time clock application it became very easy.  Too easy.  All I had to do was hit Control-Print and my lovely punch indicator printed on the store’s laser printer in living color.  Of course, I don’t think the management liked what I did, but I NEVER trusted them at all.  This was especially true when I was once told during a night that I came in to a store meeting and the manager said “I will punch you in later”, however being the person I was I wanted to make sure that I got all the time in which I was entitled to.  Their reasoning was they didn’t want to overflow the time clock and create time-outs to the system since everyone would be punching in at once.

I learned not to trust management to input my time once after I discovered that one of my punches were altered by the on-duty manager, because they thought I was late when I was actually helping a customer on the sales floor.  I didn’t realize this “change” until later in the week when I asked another manager to check my punches and discovered that one of them was altered.  The real question here is :  Did they have the right to change my punch without asking me about it?  My answer is DEFINITELY NO!  They took it upon themselves to alter my punch without any authorization by me at all.  Certainly this creates distrust with Staples and that distrust remained until my last day with the company.  The interesting point to be made in all of this is that other employees also began keeping track of their times after I told them of their shenanigans with me.  If there was one thing I was proud of it was getting some employees to be more aware of their hours.

The only good news for the company now is that they have probably saved a lot of paper because I no longer am there, but whoever said I was a conservative person.

NOTICE TO ALL:  I am taking a short break over the holidays from writing this blog.  It doesn’t mean that the scams end during that time, but I will be reporting back again in early January.  My next thing on the topic highway:  the mandatory year in review posting.  However, if you need your fix of me while I am gone, you can connect with me through the following ways (I will still be active on these throughout the holiday season):

• Twitter – https://twitter.com/#!/louisbrown
• Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/louisbrownusa
• MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/louis_brown
• e-mail  – louisbrown24@hotmail.com
• Formspring – http://www.formspring.me/louisbrownusa
• Google+ –  https://plus.google.com/u/0/117653374122289495721

Back In January!!

Punching Out – Run, Louis, Run (Or Take Your Sweet Old Time It Don’t Matter Anymore!)

One would think that punching out would be as easy as punching in.  Depending on the company, it was.

Back in the Woolworth days, punching out was as simple as the person (usually at the mall entrance) calling “Punch Out” on the store’s intercom.  Since customers and employees were given both a 10-minute and 5-minute warning when the store closed, everybody was usually out by 10 minutes after the store closed.  What was hilarious is that one older female employee slowly made her way to the time clock as the time got closer, then ran like a train when the call was made.

At HQ, it was just a matter of someone (usually the supervisor or manager on-duty) coming up to you and telling you to go home, even when sometimes it may be hours before your shift ended.  They really didn’t care what you had worked that day before sending you home.  In fact, I had only been on duty for 1 hour when they told me to go home.  And yes they only paid me for 1 hour even though they legally should have paid me for a minimum of 4 hours.

At Staples, as usual, was much different.  It was a matter of begging sometimes to ask to go home or dying or doing some other desperate action.  In fact, one day I stayed a mind-numbing 2 11/2 hours longer than I should have after being there already nearly 10 hours.  Certainly, this was during back-to-school season, but still is uncalled for especially for a front-end associate.  I always wondered why everybody had to stay especially since the floor people weren’t doing the job they should have been doing all day long.  But then again, Staples has never been fair anyway, which is what this whole blog is about.

Of course between punching in and punching out, you want breaks and a lunch probably.  I discuss those next couple of posts.

Next Up:  Do You Want a Break?  DON’T TOUCH THAT CLOCK!!