Forgive a possible cultural blind spot but I'm British and my wife is American. She just got a job working in an office in the US but instead of what I'd assume was a standard contracted salary, i.e. “you work X hours per week and you get $X per year”, her payment is hourly based on “expected” hours.
To me that seems odd but it might be normal in America. After doing all manner of hourly/salaried jobs in the UK, it was my assumption that only the likes of McDonalds employees (and that kind of work) gets paid hourly without a guaranteed income whereas most office type work you'd get a guaranteed number of hours with a yearly salary….? Or is that not how it works here?
I'm concerned because the whole attraction of a salaried job should be that if things get slow you'll still get paid the same amount, but with an hourly job it seems like they want to have their cake and eat it, whether they have a shit ton of work and need you to work 60 hours a week or go through a slow period and can only pay you for like 10 hours a week….?
I could be totally wrong on this, so I'd love to hear what people think – is this type of deal 'normal' for a standard white-collar job?