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Antiwork

Professional Trust, what’s that??

This happened ~10 years ago, but another post I was reading jogged the memory. Little background: I'm a salaried engineer, and I have a strong sense of fairness in the workplace, i.e., I'm a great employee, but I WILL point out when management is being stupid. I never tracked my time at this job, since we never billed hours. I've always been pretty flexible in work-time, working my full time, but knowing I'm salaried and nobody's work depends on me being at my desk at a specific time. So when I was working in an office, I may come in anywhere from 630-9, and leave anywhere from 5-8. Our management somehow got it in their heads that the salaried employees weren't working full time, so they put in a fucking old-school paper-punch-card timeclock. Whatever, it's stupid, but I know I put in my time, so, whatever. After 2 weeks, I…


This happened ~10 years ago, but another post I was reading jogged the memory.

Little background: I'm a salaried engineer, and I have a strong sense of fairness in the workplace, i.e., I'm a great employee, but I WILL point out when management is being stupid. I never tracked my time at this job, since we never billed hours. I've always been pretty flexible in work-time, working my full time, but knowing I'm salaried and nobody's work depends on me being at my desk at a specific time. So when I was working in an office, I may come in anywhere from 630-9, and leave anywhere from 5-8.

Our management somehow got it in their heads that the salaried employees weren't working full time, so they put in a fucking old-school paper-punch-card timeclock. Whatever, it's stupid, but I know I put in my time, so, whatever. After 2 weeks, I got called into the CEOs office to speak with him and my boss. They had noticed that I rarely started at 8 (which had never been a stated requirement). I asked why it was a problem, and after a lot of discussion, it really just boiled down to, 'We want you in here, ready to work, at exactly 8.'

Ok! Yessir! Can do!

So…I started coming in and clocking at EXACTLY 8:00. I never did any work before 8, even if I happened to beat traffic and get in early. I'd read a book until it was time to clock in. But that's not all.

I also talked to the other salaried employees about this, and a number of them had similar conversations. I made the case that if they want us in at exactly 8, the other side of that is that we clock out at exactly 5. No more unpaid overtime from anyone. It was a small company, only ~20 salaried positions. But we ALL were on board.

My CEO asked me about it in the hallway a couple weeks later. He said they'd noticed that everyone was working less hours, and asked me if everything was alright. I gave him a huge smile, and said, 'Yeah! Ever since we've been asked to start coming in at 8, we all started leaving right at 5. It's been a great change for everyone!'

No lie, that fucker sent out a company-wide email not 20 minutes later saying they were getting rid of the time clock and that we all needed to make sure we're working full time.

I quit about a week later. I had already been looking.

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