I have been in the IT industry for a few years now. Started off at a small MSP that manages IT for local small businesses. After about a year of working at this company, I found a new job at a large corporation where I have a lot more responsibility and higher pay. I'm also treated much better at this new company and I frequently get to work from home (4 days a week), with unlimited, no-questions-asked PTO.
Now, when I left my first company, the MSP, they asked me to stay on and work weekends for awhile because I was reliable with my weekend work and I always dealt with issues (network outages, server problems, etc.) without any problems. I made it so everybody else could enjoy their weekends without having to worry about the office, because I know that's what I would expect if I were the one enjoying my days off. I accepted. We agreed on an hourly rate of $40/hr, and I began working 7 days a week, 5 days at my full time, and weekends at my part time.
Now, before you ask yourself why I would do this, I have a family to support. I have bills to pay. Most importantly, I want to have money tucked away in case an unthinkable tragedy happens (my dog or even worse my child needs surgery, things like that. This is America after all).
Fast forward 6 months, I've been working 7 days a week and taking care of all my work during the weekends, dealing with boomers who don't know how to open their email, ensuring backups are running smoothly, managing servers/hypervisors, writing scripts for archiving data, anything that comes across my plate. I'm doing it quickly and I'm doing it well, customers are happy, and everybody else is enjoying their weekends. I've gotten so good at this weekend work that all I need to do is really put in a couple hours of intensive work every weekend, and everything is taken care of. I spend the rest of my time reading, gaming, or spending time with my kids in my office.
Today I received a call from my weekend job supervisor. He told me that without me knowing they installed tracking software on my computer, and the tracking software is only showing that I work a couple hours per weekend. I reminded him that everything I've been assigned to do has been taken care of and there has been no issue up until now. He explains that it wasn't HIM that installed the tracking software and he knows the value I bring to the company, but he had to call me. I told him if I receive another phone call about my hours I will be leaving the company immediately. I have been enjoying peaceful weekends for the past year and a half and I refuse to go find work to do to satisfy the requirements of some software that a neurotic individual installed on my computer. I just simply won't have it.
So here I am, sitting in my home office, reading Berserk, and typing this out because I finished all of the work that was expected of me. If they call me next weekend about this, I am a man of my word and it will be the last time I speak to them as an employee
Has anybody else's company done this to you? What did you do about it?