There's A Reason They Call It "Work" -- As Opposed To "Spa Vacation"
Note that nobody gets paid to take a spa vacation, save for the three people who still have jobs reviewing those things for magazines that have yet to go out of business.
I saw this question at Quora and found the sense of entitlement to employees' time, sans pay, pretty unbelievable:
I have two employees that usually leave work at 6 pm. They are good, but I don't like that their commitment lasts for work hours only. What should I do as a CEO?
This dude, Steven Michael, answers it perfectly with these two bits:
I'm paid to work from 8:30a-5:30p. After that, my time is mine not yours.
Additionally, as I wrote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," unless you are paying your employees to be reachable by phone and email at all hours, you shouldn't be phoning or emailing them after hours.
I work every day because I'm an author and columnist. However, when I email people at my publisher or others who work 9 to 5 jobs, I'm very conscious of limiting my messages to the work day, save for emergencies -- which are rare or non-existent.
Admittedly, I might forget to email if I don't do it when it occurs to me, which is sometimes at an odd hour. What I do: Write the email and send it to myself with a "send to X in a.m." in the header.
Ultra Considerate, but totally unnecessary.
Emails are read at the receivers convenience not the senders.
Since sending an e-mail in our world wide system, does not assume that the sender and the receiver share time zones, who the heck cares?
When I am in Japan I wake up sometimes to a whole box full of emails, and also several missed phone calls, because of the 16 hour time difference. I no more worry about the time I send an e-mail than the time back in the old days that I stuck something in the post office box.
If your job entails being reachable after business hours, than that needs to be stated up front, when your employer hands you that company phone that he is paying for with his expectations for the hours you will be available.
My husband gets called after hours and while he is on vacation all the time. Since he works with and for so many different agencies and people, it is impossible for them to keep track of where and when he is.
Want to get promoted? Know who your boss is, and do what he tells you. Don’t act like a petulant fifth grader, who is being held after the bell.
Isab at December 10, 2018 12:17 AM
I blame Trump.
Snoopy at December 10, 2018 3:29 AM
And what is this CEO's "commitment" to his employees during non work hours? I'll take none for $200, Alex.
Jay at December 10, 2018 4:55 AM
Fine, but don't let me hear you complain when your coworker, who is willing to help with emergencies or work late when necessary, gets the promotion that you wanted.
You wanna work strictly 9-5, get an hourly job with very little responsibility. You're paid a salary to get the job done, not to clock in hours.
Conan the Grammarian at December 10, 2018 7:34 AM
What should he do to get more work out of these particular employees? Probably nothing. Honestly we don't have enough information here to tell exactly what is going on. Usually for salaried people you get more hours by promising raises and promotions. These two people may not care about that. He may not be able to offer anything they want in exchange for those extra hours. So he may need to look elsewhere for someone to fill the role he is looking for.
And of course that option is available to them as well. The law of supply and demand applies on both sides.
Ben at December 10, 2018 7:45 AM
What size is the company? Most CEOs are not running Fortune 500 companies and making millions. Nor are most CEOs "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap viciously cutting payrolls and cooking the books.
I wonder is the guy in the letter is calling himself a "CEO" when he's really more of a partner or owner. Or asking as a hypothetical CEO.
On the other hand, if these employees are working directly for a real CEO, as this inquiry implied, chances are they're relatively high in organization and their responsibilities extend beyond traditional working hours.
CEO - well, any "C" position, really - is a 24/7 job. The Board of Directors does not want to hear "I'm off the clock" from the people they've chosen to safeguard their investment.
Conan the Grammarian at December 10, 2018 7:50 AM
Perhaps not always exactly what he tells you to do. Some advice I was given when I graduated college and started working on having a career: "Keep your boss' boss off your boss' back." Translation: don't be the cause of your boss' office grief.
Exactly, you're a grown up.
You can quit, if you think you'll get a better deal somewhere else. Like Ben pointed out, the law of supply and demand works both ways.
Conan the Grammarian at December 10, 2018 7:57 AM
There's a give and take. Woe be onto the management who fails to understand this. I used to work in a place where one department (not the one I work in) had management that was obsessed with making sure that employees did not spend a single minute doing anything that was not work related. They walked around the room listening for non-work-related conversations. They policed what was on everyone's desks. They checked date and time stamps on work, and checked phone records for non-work-related calls. No, you could not take a few extra minutes at lunch to run out to the drug store and get a prescription filled. No, you could not go pick up a sick child from school. No, you could not work extra hours to gain comp time in order to care for your disabled parent next week.
Needless to say, morale in that department sucked. Working hours were 8:00-5:00. By 5:01, the area was empty. Management was completely mystified by this.
Cousin Dave at December 10, 2018 8:15 AM
Anyone else not surprised that the "answers it perfectly" Steven Michael "studied at the University of California, Berkeley?"
His diatribe is full of angry young socialist delusion:
I’m paid to work from 8:30a-5:30p. After that, my time is mine not yours. The extra is the surplus labor value I contribute (or rather, that you take) and make profit with.
So, what should you do? Shut up and be thankful your workers don’t form a union and beat you to death financially for asking them to give up more of their time to you.
Conan the Grammarian at December 10, 2018 8:21 AM
"I’m paid to work from 8:30a-5:30p. After that, my time is mine not yours. The extra is the surplus labor value [blah, blah, blah]"
And when somebody willing to put a little more effort into the job winds up getting promoted (in other words, invests his surplus labor value wisely), I'm sure young Mr. Michael will complain that it's totally unfair and that there ought to be a law or something.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at December 10, 2018 9:15 AM
I was going to mention that a lot of email software has an option to delay delivery until after a particular time of day. But as has been mentioned, the nature of email is such that the recipient can read it when he or she (or they or it or xldxx) darn well feels like it.
In practice, I tend to use the delay feature to ensure my email arrives when the recipient is likely to be at work, and it's less likely to be buried in the backlog.
Karl Lembke at December 10, 2018 9:33 AM
Want to get promoted? Know who your boss is, and do what he tells you. Don’t act like a petulant fifth grader, who is being held after the bell.
This is true.
Unless your boss is a dick. S/he might promote the person that is always dipping out early because there kid is sick. Because they have a kid and thus need more money. And it's ok, you're one of the loyal employees who picks up that slack without complaint.
If the boss is not willing to acknowledge and reward your loyalty, act accordingly.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 10, 2018 10:02 AM
Being Quora, there is an 80% chance this is a fake and that the responses are largely made-up.
boo-quora at December 10, 2018 10:15 AM
To be honest Conan the angry young socialist delusion isn't anything new. Heck, if records were cheap enough I expect you could go back 1000 years and find the exact same words. And yeah, I don't feel any pity for this fellow when someone else decides to go that extra distance and gets promoted before him.
And like IRA points out loyalty and hard work aren't always rewarded. This is a business transaction. I provide time and effort, they provide money. Period. That's it. They may imply or promise that hard work will lead to better things. And sometimes they lie. Management are people too. They are trying to get the best quality at the lowest price, just like anyone else. And once it is clear that their promises are only promises then people wise up and move on to other things. I've seen companies crumble because of that. Once it was clear that all those future things would alway be in the future and never come to today all of their skilled people left. When things like that happen it is best for you to not hold any hard feelings. Just find your next opportunity and move on. The hurt feelings only hurt you.
Ben at December 10, 2018 10:26 AM
I suspect, Ben, that collectivist ideologies have been around longer than even you think - from around the time the first caveman realized he needed a second or even a third caveman to help guard his cave and hunt mammoths - and if he made it all about "the people" he could claim a bigger share for himself.
You didn't think Karl Marx came up with it all on his own did you?
Conan the Grammarian at December 10, 2018 10:58 AM
When I am in Japan I wake up sometimes to a whole box full of emails, and also several missed phone calls, because of the 16 hour time difference. I no more worry about the time I send an e-mail than the time back in the old days that I stuck something in the post office box.
Isab put it very well there.
And I'm with Amy on the fact that the unexpected business phone call, unless urgent, borders on rude. Texting and email now suffice.
Kevin at December 10, 2018 11:03 AM
"who is willing to help with emergencies or work late when necessary"
Except he's not talking about 'emergencies' or 'when necessary'.
He's talking about the incessant demand of management for cheap labor at all times, 24/7, at their convenience and for their profit.
BTW - Ask yourself if your stock compensation is preferred or common and you'll know exactly where you sit.
Golden parachute: you don't get one, do you?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 10, 2018 12:35 PM
Do we know for sure he's not?
He only laments that "their commitment lasts for work hours only."
We don't know from the article in what kind of work these employees are engaged or what size the company is.
We don't know how good these "work hours only" employees are at their jobs, nor how good he is. Perhaps he is one of those bosses that unreasonably expects to command every hour of his employees' time. Perhaps they're slackers.
"Work hours only" can mean that even if there is still work to be done (i.e., when necessary), they've left without doing it. So, he's left holding the monkey.
We don't know about the times, if any, he looks aside as the employees spend time at work on personal items, shopping on Amazon, making phone calls, arranging dinner reservations, reading blogs; the times they're late seeing to sick children or their own doctor appointments.
If that's the case, does he impose Cousin Dave's morale-killing oversight to wring every productive minute he can out of his "work hours only" employees or does he ask that, if work needs to be done, the workers stay a few more minutes?
The amusing thing about this discussion is that, without that other information, we make assumptions, based on our own experiences and prejudices. And those assumptions show which of us default in sympathy with labor and which with management; which of us assume an irreparable conflict in the management-labor dialectic.
Conan the Grammarian at December 10, 2018 1:29 PM
"those assumptions show which of us default in sympathy with labor and which with management; which of us assume an irreparable conflict in the management-labor dialectic"
It also shows us who has watched a company get tanked by terrible management, who then scampered away enriched by amazing golden parachutes, while the workforce's stock became worthless and their jobs, homes, marriages, and health insurance all disappeared.
Lickspittles aside, most people know that when they're getting told to do more work for less money, it's an opportunity to find a better job.
But those would be the educated, experienced, well-traveled professionals who don't cut a shit deal for themselves.
YMMV.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 10, 2018 3:28 PM
Gog, My expencice has been that most companies that get away with this have captured government, and the Democratic Party.
I often wonder what part of Trumps success in the Midwest was due to the disgust of many traditional democratic pensioners, and investors who were sold down the river to protect both management and the union, when GM effectively went belly up.
MF Global? Bear Sterns? You know Corzine is still walking free.
Isab at December 10, 2018 5:54 PM
"It also shows us who has watched a company get tanked by terrible management, who then scampered away enriched by amazing golden parachutes,..."
I have first-hand experience with that very thing. In the '80s, I worked for a division of a 1960s-style conglomerate. Most of the divisions were old smokestack-industry operations and were losing money. The division I worked for, and a few others, were serving as cash cows keeping the rest of the conglomeration afloat.
Our division was growing moderately against better-established competitors. We had some new products in the pipeline that would have been very competitive. It was bleeding-edge technology and there were some development delays, due to an issue with a supplier. The conglomeration board got impatient and replaced the division management with Wharton School types who came in and immediately announced the release of the new products, which were not ready to ship. Orders for the older models immediately dried up, as customers placed orders for the newer products that couldn't be filled. To top it off, the execs slashed the R&D budget, further delaying the resolution of the issues.
The drastic drop in our division's cash flow put the whole conglomerate under. Our division was sold to a competitor, who only wanted the marketing and distribution channels; they liquidated the rest. The execs who made the bad decisions walked away with millions in bonuses as the result of the sale. Everyone else was rewarded for their hard work with a pink slip. And that latter part was handled in a particularly ham-fisted manner. I'll spare you the ugly details.
The lesson I learned, long before it was fashionable: Credentialed does not equal educated, or smart. Those Wharton School guys were convinced that they could manage anything, and that they had no need to know anything about the products or the business they were managing. They did things that maximized their own short-term gains at the expense of the entire rest of the company.
Cousin Dave at December 11, 2018 6:43 AM
I have two employees that usually leave work at 6 pm. They are good, but I don't like that their commitment lasts for work hours only. What should I do as a CEO?
Buy drones and follow them everywhere. If you find them doing something -- like going to a football game or being at a bar or barbecuing on their new back porch -- that you feel doesn't show sufficient commitment to their jobs, then zap them with the drones. OK, so maybe you miss them and, instead, just take out that new back porch. Don't worry. Just insignificant collateral damage. They'll know you mean business and shape up pronto!
JD at December 11, 2018 6:38 PM
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