Reading the title, I think I know the answer. I’m looking for opinions and discussion on unpaid after work activities/company structure (and honestly need to vent a bit).
For background, I work in a helping profession in which I am essentially on call to clients 24/7 via cell phone and am only paid for in person client hours. (IE. 36$ per hour with a client) paperwork, scheduling, meetings, etc. are not paid. In fact, I have to pay 100$ a week to attend these mandatory meetings. This is standard in my industry as supervision hours, though the specific cost is very high for my area. We are required to have 3,000 supervised hours before we can drop the “associate” title and become fully licensed LPCs. Therefore there is no room for promotion in this industry or at my company.
I like my job, I like talking to clients and helping them through difficult life transitions. However, this work can be stressful and time consuming so when I am done for the day I want to go home, be with my family, and do things I enjoy. Especially since I am not paid for any work outside of the client hour.
The issue is my company has noted in performance reviews that I am typically missing from unpaid social activities after work hours. I did not attend the movie party at our co-owners house for a movie I had already seen, I did not attend a pool party hosted at the other co-owners house, etc. A lot of the time these events coincide with my work day, meaning I would need to cancel clients (and not earn money) to attend these events.
Now to the present – my company is hosting a retreat 2 hours out of town this weekend that I initially agreed to attend. Since then, we have had a car totaled and are down to 1 car. My husband will be out of town for work, and after sharing this I was told someone would help me carpool. The issue is, I am not in a position to attend anything that is unpaid. Due to the structure of client hours and no pay outside of that, I do A LOT of free work and take home barely enough to pay rent each month. (Again, it’s sucks, but this is fairly standard for LPC-Associates until we are fully licensed).
I feel that I am trying to justify not going since they have made me to feel guilty about this choice, so I am going to leave it there.
Really, what are people’s thoughts on the general idea that we are underpaid and expected to show up for unpaid events after hours? Thoughts?