My old boss' extremely lax attitude had some shortcomings, like how sometimes I was bored at work simply because he didn't know how to delegate tasks. He was also somewhat disorganized. But I liked how he hardly ever seemed to care about my hours, and even admitted to not noticing when I arrived and left.
After a year at this job, I have a new boss now who is organizing us a little better, which is refreshing. But today, in her third week, she started the conversation I'd been dreading about my hours.
I had been staying no longer than 8 hours a day at work. I don't take lunch breaks, just ate while working, unlike my coworkers who do so and spend 8.5 hours (or more) at work. I do not care what my coworkers think of this. I think the peer-pressure and office-gossip angles were subtly leveraged against me a few times in the past but I don't care. I was doing my best to cheat the system. New Boss brought up the phrase “I don't want to say 'stealing time' but…” No, she had it right. Stealing time is what I'm trying to do. It's seldom more than 45 minutes each day. I don't feel guilty.
I essentially ended the conversation with “I don't plan on changing any time soon,” and she said “okay, but I need you to help me understand why.” Maybe if it comes to that, I'll be a little more frank about what's important to me.
I have been planning to leave this job for another and/or to go to grad school. They are also severely understaffed and I would be surprised if they fired me. Nor will I argue against them decreasing my wage (within reason).
Thanks if you read through this lol. I don't feel like I can talk about this in detail to a lot of my friends, and I really do consider myself lucky to have this salaried job compared to a lot of other hypothetical situations. I don't care if anyone thinks this attitude is whiny, but I don't want to whine in someone's face who's unwilling to hear it.