Might be kind of long, im 23 working in design this is my first job out of college/in my field. Im salaried and in July was told I need to make up “billable hours” because I was low. We lost a big client in December and there were a few weeks in Jan/Feb where I didn’t have enough to do, I’d reach out to other project managers and no one needed help. I got paid my regular salaried pay, but didn’t work full weeks. This is a small ish company and is sort of buzzfeed / work is family vibes.
Fast forward to July, they want me to make up those lost hours. I’ve been doing ~47 hours per week since mid July (no overtime pay), we’ve been busy since my jr project manager quit. But the next few months we won’t have enough to have me work that much. To be at 40 hrs / week thru the end of august is 1384 hours, im about 25 short which isn’t bad to make up. However, my hr is saying of those, more need to be billable (basically not overhead).
I need about 100 more for my billable time to match the expected billable hours. My issue is that there wasn’t enough work to do and going forward there won’t be enough, we use this program that shows our current projects and how many hours they’ll take per person and mine are low, so I couldn’t even make up those hours. I also have never taken a lunch break I eat at my desk while working and don’t have breaks, but being salaried I don’t think that’s uncommon ?
I have not used that much pto, and today I had a request denied because my hours weren’t high enough. They really rely on me with my jr pm leaving w helping train the new people and honestly they’d be kind of screwed if I left too.
Another minor annoyance is that I asked to swap my chair for another chair we have because the angle is awkward on my back and hr said no because our boss wants all of the chairs in the open desk area to be the same