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Doing home health was kinda instructive for me in this regard.
The only time you go to the office is to turn stuff in, do inservices/continuing education, or similar. But originally I would answer calls at weird hours because a patient would need coverage, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling.
And then the management spent way too much money buying into some Disney corporate policy thing (literally, they paid money to Disney for the program) that changed a ton of rules in bullshit ways that made no sense for home health.
So, the next time they called, I didn’t answer. Or the time after that, or the time after that. And, when you’re one of three men working for a company that’s partially reliant physical strength to be able to do the work needed for some patients, this alarmed my supervisor. She requested a meeting, and I went in. Mandatory meetings were paid though!
At the meeting, it was expressed that answering calls was part of my job. So I asked id I was being paid to sit at home and wait for calls. No, I wasn’t “on call”. So, you want me on call? No, just to answer when we call you. That’s being on call, and we’re supposed to get paid for that. No, this is different, we just want you to be available when someone calls out for a difficult patient. Soooo, you want me on call.
This went in circles for a while before I switched gears and directly said that answering calls when not on duty was not in place when I was hired, and that the employee handbook specified that being on call was considered a shift, and would be paid as such, and that maybe I should have been on call any of the dozens of times I did wake my ass up from sleep after workout two or three jobs in the first place, and that I never got paid a dime for doing so, so that was the end of it for me.
The response was that they couldn’t stay operating if they paid everyone for being on call instead of us “supporting the company”. My response was that maybe they could have if they hadn’t shelled out for the Disney crap, or if the previous administrator hadn’t been screwing around and embezzling, and that maybe it was time the company supported us.
Not surprisingly, I was one of several employees “let go to streamline services” a few weeks later, right before the company folded entirely.
So, you don’t even have to have an office job to get treated like shit! Isn’t that a relief? Isn’t it?
The response was that they couldn’t stay operating if they paid everyone for being on call instead of us “supporting the company”.
That’s the heart of the matter. They wanted you to support the company, without the company supporting you.
The people who should me steering the ship often would never accept a position at the helm, and then we are left with people serving up platitudes about why they deserve free labour.
Only thing you left out is when they say, “it doesnt come with additional pay but it will look good on your resume!”.
After four years of work from home, since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ll soon have to start going back in once a week. I know, that’s a lot better than many people that have been forced into 5 days a week or similar bullshit, but it’s definitely one more day a week than I want to go in. DC area, too, so you know traffic is going to be a nightmare, as always.
I’d even be willing to go in quarterly or whatever for special meetings. But weekly? We’ve proven we can do this.
They’re pushing this whole “hybrid” working and “rethink how you work!” and “it’s all about teams!” But they didn’t require any sort of coordination on coming into the office for teams, or anything along those lines - it’s a free for all. So instead of sitting at home on a call, we’re going to be sitting in cubicles on phone calls. It doesn’t make any sense.
And even if they had decided teams should coordinate in-office days, my area in particular works with so many different teams that we’d still be remote for most of them. Or in the office every day, which would not go over very well.
But I’m sure the Popeye’s (fast food chicken place) across the street will welcome us back. The one that has survived over four years without us. No one I know has ever gone there.
We’re going to lose a bunch of people as a result. And hiring is a disaster that isn’t likely to be resolved any time soon. It’s gonna be a fun few years…
Counting down the days until I can retire. Unfortunately, there are too many, I’ll have to deal with this. Or find a completely remote job.
I know, that’s a lot better than many people that have been forced into 5 days a week or similar bullshit
I hope for your sake this isn’t just their first test followed by an escalating series of demands :-/
Ha, actually they played themselves on that front. I don’t want to get into all of the details, but basically there’s literally not enough space for all of us to be in on the same day. There used to be, but they shrank the footprint to save money.
Honestly I think the plan from our upper management was to allow a lot of full-time remote working, but that got killed by even higher up people. So, now we have this. I actually think our upper management isn’t really the bad guy on this one and are just trying to make the best of a bad situation, dealing with idiotic requirements coming from on high.
I also think there are some artificial factors keeping it at one day a week, for now. It might go up to two at some point in the future, but a lot can happen between now and then. And two days might start running into that space limitation again, and they won’t easily be able to expand the footprint - nor will they want to spend the money.
“No, not like that!”
Our boss was freaking out over people sometimes doing some private calls during work hours and at a certain point absolutely forbade it. So yeah, people would just end the call at 17:00 sharp and switch off the work phone. It took one week before that rule was rescinded.
This reminds me of a work-to-rule or a “White Strike.” It turns out that every company, even those that supposedly operate off of “unskilled” labor, utterly rely on employees making a ton of judgment calls and often working outside their job description. When employees start working to the letter of their job description, the whole operation quickly grinds to a halt.
Here we call it “standard operation” and it’s also a kind of “white strike”
Same in Brazil. It’s a most effective form of strike - you still get paid, the consultant still hemorrhages money. Another common one among public transit is when bus drivers still go around their route but don’t collect payment.
“Other duties as assigned” is a bitch.
This is when “could you please send that request on writing via e-mail” becomes really useful.
That’s what gets struck in a white strike.
If it’s literally in your job description, as it has been in my last several positions, does it qualify?
Sure. It means they can ask you to do other things that aren’t explicitly written in the original job description. But every time they tell you to do something beyond it, you just start doing THAT exactly to the letter of the request.
You make them assign the task to you, don’t just do it because it’s necessary. Each task that is not part of your actual assigned job needs to be assigned to you. Every time. If they want you to do it every time it’s needed, ask for them to update your job description to reflect it.
It’s called a white strike because you are burying them in paperwork, but not walking off the job.
My listed job duties are infinitely vague and I’m responsible for everything.
Bonus, you can ask for clarification on everything.
A white strike, like all strikes works because of collective action, not because of some tricky technically lol.
If everyone does it then it works.
Okay, you’ve assigned me a duty. Give me exact, and I mean exact, instructions about how to complete it.
Now repeat for the thousands of tiny tasks everyone just does on their own.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
God, I hate how often my CEO says this
Sounds like he’s a fan of unions. Take him up on it.
And that’s ridiculous on general because you know who also does regular work hours? Everyone else!
That means if you need a call with your doctor, bank, whatever, it’s likely gonna be during the workday
I always refused to put work apps on my personal phone because they would make you agree to some bullshit where they could remote access your phone or potentially wipe it. So I would refuse and say they needed to provide a company phone for me if it was that important. Most companies are either ok with this or provide a phone, except for one company. This was a software company, and literally everything else about this company was a unicorn of a job. But for some reason they wanted me to have slack on my phone and also wouldn’t give me a company phone. So I dug up an old phone, reset it to factory settings, and added slack to that so I could say I did it. Then I put the phone away and they never asked about it again. So I really don’t know what the point of that was 🤷
My current pet peeve is Email servers (MS Office) configured to only allow connections from outlook. I’d be happy to add an account to Aquamail but they won’t let me. So no work emails on my phone or personal laptop.
Ditto, but this is actually a bonus for me.
“Didn’t you see my email and message last evening?”
“Not until I got in today, because it came after I had logged off and I can’t see that stuff on my personal phone because, you know, IT policy.”
It’s less cognitively taxing for me if you just comply with whatever I’ve decided
I love this.
I don’t like the font.
Would be less cognitively taxing for them if you did.
Zeitgeist material
We did it, classic
Amazing
for some reason they wanted me to have slack
I get similar requirements from school and kindergarten nowadays. They want me to install weird apps for communications. Last school had an online portal on the web and mail. That was a no brainer but these apps?
Hello Waydroid.
Not gonna taint my own phone with this stuff. That includes WhatsApp.
Same as. Certain family members expect everyone to be on Facebook and also drink all of Zucks Kool-Aid.
I just don’t go to those family events, unless I’m personally invited. If an event only exists of Facebook, it does not exist to me.
I have 2FA apps on my phone for work. I also have the horrendous HR app for applying for Annual Leave. If they insist that I need more work-related apps on my personal phone, I will be getting a second phone and using that exclusively for work. It will be turned off when I walk out the door at the end of the day and kept in my office drawer.
While I agree with you and understand that perfectly, slack doesn’t have that remote management thing, so far I’ve only seen that Microsoft apps.
Its a feature of mobile device management software. Intune for microsoft is one but theres also intelligent hub/airwatch, citrix, manageengine, etc.
I really don’t mind these days as long as they have a MDM so I can have it on a separate profile, but without that I’m totally with you.
What’s MDM?
Mobile device management. Basically software to manage mobile devices owned by a company.
Or work profiles on BYODs
Thank you
Thank you
How does the separate profile keep the company from factory resetting the whole device?
Because they can only see, install, or wipe things inside the work profile. It’s all sandboxed.
Quick edit: This is for Android. I have no idea about iPhones.
I don’t believe iPhone allows this, or at least the customers at my work don’t enable it for iOS.
I hadn’t had to set it up myself though so I wasnt sure. I would rather avoid the MDM altogether if possible.
I shot a message to a colleague who is still in IT (I’m into other shit these days) and he says you’re correct. IOS doesn’t allow for this. The IT department running Mobile Device Management would have to set up Mobile App Management (MAM) on their side. So it’s possible that they only get access to those apps without giving them access to the whole device but a lot of lazy departments won’t do it.
I get it, and I don’t blame anyone for that choice. I made mine based on utility, convenience, and knowledge of the tool for me. I don’t care how convenient it makes things for work. They’ll give me a phone if it’s that convenient for them. But I’m not qualified to make that decision for anyone else.
The policy is you can only work from home when it benefits the company, not you.
I’m learning that the hard way. Started working for this company 2 hours from home,because I could WFH 3 days a week. Now they want me to come in 4 days a week. So I’m looking for a new job now. Which is a shame, because I do like the job.
What does your contract say? With this back to work bullshit I made sure my contract explicitly said I was remote.
Doesn’t mean they won’t change their mind but maybe I’ll get severance instead of fired for cause of they have a back to the office push.
The term of art in employment law is “constructive dismissal”
Good tip, I’ll double check that
keep me updated!
Keep us updated!
We need the update more than a windows user need a rollback.
That’s an exaggeration…
And my axe!
most hires don’t get contracts
Huh? All jobs come with an employment contract.
That’s cute you believe that
My dude, we’re talking about remote work office jobs. Not some random under the table shit.
My dude, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s me in fact.
Even if I had a contract it wouldn’t matter as I live in a right to work state, they can fire me at any point without warning or cause.
Having any real employment contract is NOT the norm here.
Non office jobs are more likely to be unionized and this have a contract than office jobs.
That’s the type of thing non W2 self employed contractors or union members might have to lean back on, not rank and file full time office employees.
You must not be in america. We’re lucky if we get breaks.
So if the employer suddenly decides to e.g. start paying you less, how do you prove how much your pay should be?
Previous pay stubs I suppose. Depending on the employer you may have something in writing. This typically wouldn’t be contract if you’re an employee without a union.
Someone does some digging and figures it out, and maybe five or so years later you get a check in the mail for an amount the lawyers agreed was correct.
There is nearly always a contract and the business will submit tax paperwork with your compensation to the IRS.
Under the table workers are illegal and on their own
Land of the free and all that. Free from paid healthcare, a decent public education, a strong voice in government, an impartial justice system, employee rights… With all this freedom, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
Freedom to treat your employees however you want!
I’m an American and I’ve always had a contract. Even in retail. Of course the contracts are all bullshit and just a waiver of my rights.
Remote rocket ship and hiring dot cafe
.
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And…? How did the story turn out?
Ol Reliable…
As a middle manager in a corporate hellscape, one of my few joys in life is setting logic traps for HR and making them choose between admitting company policy is bullshit or directly instructing me to violate labor laws.
Doing the Lord’s work there, Sonny!
I would love an example, but can accept you can’t produce one without compromising yourself.
The current argument I’m involved in is about an online platform that people can use to give recognition to each other. HR is telling me to give my team negative performance reviews for not using it regularly.
They love to remind me that there’s an app that everyone can install on their phone. The thing is, my team aren’t allowed to use their phones at work. So, the goal is to get them to tell me in writing that using this online platform is mandatory and that my hourly staff has to do it off the clock or face repercussions which is illegal.
Oh I like this one a lot.
God among men
I wouldn’t go that far. There are people on here that would call me a monster for just being middle management.
Yet you continue the struggle against the chaos of bureaucracy protecting your team. That’s a hero st the very least.
Thanks for that.
Lots of people talk crap about middle management but the Job is to protect the working class from the madness of system as best you can. That makes a good leader. I had the pleasure of working with really great managers.
Oh that scratches the itch.
if it’s the latter, just get it in writing.
That’s the goal.
Theres something enormously satisfying about asking the question “And are you willing to give me that in writing?”
Then watching them squirm as something in their brain goes full Ackbar “ITS A TRAP!”
In all of my IT jobs I would have been fired if I had signed into work accounts on my personal phone. It’s a pretty big security risk.
In my current job the old manager okayed working on our own devices.
I would use my personal workstation to ssh into and do work on my work mac, did that for a few years. saved me disassembling my desk between uses every day or buying a costly KVM.
They seem to be getting a lot more uptight about security these days (although the “you can work on personal devices” rule hasnt been explicitly rescinded) so i have stopped interaction between my personal devices and work devices.
Having a M2 mac recently makes it easier, i can lie in bed and work pretty much all day on a single charge so my desk remains intact
I remote into my work laptop too, but I don’t have any work data on my personal devices. And, my desktop is more secure than my work laptop.
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Fuck their data, what about my own? That pest of an app is not getting onto my device. And neither is anything else that gives an employer any control over my device.
My policy as well. Non-negotiable hard no. But I’m fortunate enough to have at least some choice with regard to employment.
A totally reasonable stance.
For clarity, the android feature essentially makes a work dedicated partition on the phone. Their management app can manage that partition, and for the purposes of data movement it’s essentially a distinct phone.
If they’ve set it up correctly they can do a remote wipe without touching your personal data.In a lot of cases the drive to have users use their personal devices rather than employer owned ones comes from the users, not the workplace. Only needing to keep track of one device is easier in many cases.
Unless it’s 24h gold service with 24k gold pay, the work phone gets turned off at the end of office hours.
There are places that pay well for on call though.
Sounds kinky.
True, but in small companies it’s not uncommon.
Not exclusive to IT; I had to weigh the benefits of continuing to work as a caregiver for a small company, versus working in retail for a massive chain (which translates to fantastic insurance benefits.)
Sadly not a competition.
I was at a subsidiary of a very large company and had work slack, email, and all my code on my phone, without even the thing that lets them remote wipe your phone.
It has to do with culture and willingness to put in the effort by the security organization
Get hit with one ransom ware attack and that shit’ll pivot 180.
Yeah, or even just budget cuts. I am sure it’s cheaper to just lock it down.
Eh, it doesn’t need to be, you just need to do the work of putting together granular access controls that can account for your risk profiles.
The risk isn’t much different between a company owned telephone and a personal telephone.
They’re both susceptible to most of the same attacks, or being left on the bus.Most companies seem to have don’t ask, don’t tell policies in place.
Technically we’re not allowed to use Teams on our phones, but most of us do, including management.
I’m also technically not allowed to use Spotify on my laptop, but if they’d enforce that ban, IT would be gone tomorrow.
Should be the standard anyway. Reading email and texts from work, or responding to calls, is work. Unless your contact specifies on-call hours, you should ignore your boss outside of working hours. If they really want you to respond they can pay you overtime.
Places that specify on call time also tell you not to check stuff when you’re not at work or supposed to be on call though, because that’s expensive for them. And if they tell you to check something they just put you into on call pay.
Incoming employment terms ammendment:
You can work from home but only to answer us when we contact you. You must answer our contact and must report to the location if requested. If you can do something cheaper (for us the company) and faster (for us the company) then that is the only time you may perform a work duty at home.
*ammmendment
You must answer our contact
“I cannot answer the company contact after hours because for every call I get after hours that isn’t a company contact, following an order from work to monitor those on the chance of a company contact itself represents ‘working from home’ which the company forbids. I cannot violate the previously stated company policy.”
It’s EU law that if you have to be standby to pick up the phone and go on location at a moment’s notice, those are working hours and need to be paid in full. Most companies are pretty careful to not put it anywhere in the contracts or house rules that you have to be on stand-by, but just verbally keep pushing for it. If they keep pushing, push back with asking for the written rules.
That sounds like something a functioning government would do.
In America, we get the “privilege” of At-Will employment.
It’s the same in the US. 5 CFR 551.431
B 1 of that says it’s not the same.
What does the EU regulation say?
I can’t understand how Americans cope with so much freedom.
We don’t have time to think about it much.
Excuse me, I need to spend the next 2 hours trying to get my insurance company to pay for my medical care.
Keep telling the DBAs that my company outsourced a big chunk of their tech stack to that its against company policy to work all the way on the other side of the planet, but they refuse to show up to the office.
Which is weird cause the savings in not comming in to center is a win for everyone.
Not the real estate the finance industry relies on for REITs, think of all those poor restaurants opened in downtown wherever. No nobody will eat there now rent payments are being missed and REITs are dipping. Uh oh
The corporate office I work at panicked because they were going to get reclassified as a “remote hub” for tax purposes, which would have reduced everyone’s pay. But I’d personally prefer to take the cut instead…
But how am I supposed to control my workers if they work from home?
Lol same energy as How am I supposed to make sure my partner doesn’t cheat on me if I don’t GPS tag him?
Big “thathappened” energy
Like when your mother and I conceived you.
No one believed I was your father.
…because I wasn’t.
It’s hilarious the reaction you’re getting. I love this story and someone out there has surely done similar but this is a fiction. I think you’re being downvoted because people really really want it to be true.
Do you have proof that this is fiction? I don’t think so. There’s no proof that it isn’t either, sure, but this sub is mainly just for laughs and the story doesn’t require being true for it to be funny.
Coming into threads and posting stuff like that is like going into malls at Christmas just to tell kids that santa isn’t real. (Or worse, since you don’t even know if you’re right in this case).
Noticeable that you seemed to have taken that comment personally, which is odd–not the intention. In any case, it sounds like a repeat of AITH on Reddit where people would post a lot of fiction and pass it off as real.
