Dock strike/Toilet paper shortage??

[paulsharvey]

So, I am a field guy, with some supervisory capacity, and although I 100% report to others, and have bosses, I pretty much work alone, but with others, if that makes sense. I'm very used to deciding when/if I want to take lunch, although we do need to work 8.5 hrs and deduct a 30 min lunch. It's funny, the next progression up is into the office, and what someone else told me, sums it up perfectly; "I've been a free ranged chicken for far too long to be cooped up". I have had to temporarily fill the next step up, once for 11 months, another time for 7 months; and I Hated having to tell people when/where I was going everytime I left the office, when I was taking lunch, way I had to go into the field for a job site visit, ect.

The facility I worked in, happens to sometimes have work release inmates there, so it has the appropriate fencing. Literally the first 10 straight hour day in the office, I told the boss, "I never noticed till today, that barb wire points both directions"...

 

[ultrarunner]

It was hard for me to go from decades being salary to hourly doing the same job.

I missed the freedom to get things done and the hospital was better for it.

That said, I earn significantly more as hourly because every late night or early call in is overtime.

Mergers have a habit of reshuffling the deck and often driven by those outside the organization without understanding.

Both myself and the now current administrator were on the chopping block but those from corporate doing the chopping have long ago left the organization… funny how that works.

It’s a wise manager able to focus on productivity by turning those with ability loose to get the job done.

Dock workers in the SF Bay Area do quite well but as one of my friends said their wages are a very small part of the pie…

 

[WinterDeere]

It was hard for me to go from decades being salary to hourly doing the same job.

I'm an engineer, and so always salaried, and generally always exempt from overtime pay. It works out nicely for the companies, because although my salary is high, my hourly rate gets pulled way down by the long hours I tend to work.

But one very inexperienced and unqualified HR manager at one of my prior employers somehow decided that engineers were not exempt. Every other company in the state treats us as exempt, but she thought she knew better, and I wasn't going to argue. I managed to pull in more than double my salary the year she made that decision, and got thru half of a second year doing the same, before she rethought how "right" she was. Suddenly, there was some reason why I was exempt, again.

BTW, with time and a half over 40 hours, you double your salary at 67 hours. That's pretty easy to do for any ambitious guy, when you're young and single.

 

[ultrarunner]

I'm an engineer, and so always salaried, and generally always exempt from overtime pay. It works out nicely for the companies, because although my salary is high, my hourly rate gets pulled way down by the long hours I tend to work.

But one very inexperienced and unqualified HR manager at one of my prior employers somehow decided that engineers were not exempt. Every other company in the state treats us as exempt, but she thought she knew better, and I wasn't going to argue. I managed to pull in more than double my salary the year she made that decision, and got thru half of a second year doing the same, before she rethought how "right" she was. Suddenly, there was some reason why I was exempt, again.

BTW, with time and a half over 40 hours, you double your salary at 67 hours. That's pretty easy to do for any ambitious guy, when you're young and single.

Going from Director of Engineering at my stand alone to Chief Engineer when my facility was acquired was not easy because in every practical way I was still doing the exact same job…

The only real difference was signing contracts was now regulated to distant corp headquarters.

Old habits hard to break and i still rarely push something through… when that happens like when I mobilized temporary parking lot A/C when we lost our operating room Air Conditioning in summer…

I went from zero to hero in the eyes of corporate once they understood the decision came down to being open for business or not.

I made the call 3:30 Tuesday afternoon and by 6 am the next morning temp air mobilized and online…

Of course the 30 ton unit plus the generator plus the daily fuel came at a cost of about $800 per day.

 

[Torvy]

Maybe 10-15 years ago, someone in gubmint decided that accounting professionals were no longer exempt. My wife managed a few of those and she had a guy who was just slow. He ended up getting let go because he couldn't get the work done in 40 hours like others. When he was exempt, he just worked the hours he needed to get things done.

On the lunch topic, I vote a solid "it depends". Some jobs lunch was however long it took. We may have a lunch at a restaurant that went 90-120 minutes. Invariably got work done while eating. Many other times, ordered lunch into the office so we could work through it. Managed in call centers a lot. Have to stagger lunches and work around high volume.

Many states have specific laws about lunches and breaks, especially for hourly employees. Breaks are paid, lunch isn't. Hour lunches, in my experience, are for places that don't have a cafeteria and/or are not close to fast food. When I taught, I rarely ate a real lunch. We had 15-20 minutes to eat and rotate through 2-3 toilets for 100 or so male teachers. It might be either eat, or pee, but not both. Students often took up the time that was supposed to be lunch.

 

[paulsharvey]

I spent maybe 6 or 7 years as salary. During that time, I think I beat the company on hours, maybe 2 weeks in the entire period. 7a-7p, Mon-Fri, and 7-3.30p sat, for 40 hours of pay was very common.

 

[WinterDeere]

Of course the 30 ton unit plus the generator plus the daily fuel came at a cost of about $800 per day.

I was at Lockheed when they shut down the local Newtown facility. They had just built some new $3M - $6M buildings in the last year or three, all abandoned. It felt odd, until you consider the salary burn on that place was over $1M per day. The buildings were basically throw-aways in that context, totally insignificant.

I'd guess that, for a large hospital with a hundred doc's making ~$400k/year + many hundreds of other staff, $800/day doesn't even register at the fourth decimal point. It's zero.

 

[ultrarunner]

I look at it from the patients prospective…

Many fasting, lab work, time off from work, etc… all the normal things that go into a planned surgery and the impact of cancelling indefinitely pending repairs when we have options.

Not a single surgery was impacted and a typical surgery day is anywhere from 12 to 45 in a day…

Ortho and plastic fewer cases in a day with eyes making the high volume days…

I can do anything once…

When you get called in to explain its simple and straight forward being able to answer either we are open for business or closed.

 

[WinterDeere]

Oh yeah, definitely the right decision. Wasn't trying to imply, otherwise! In fact, if you told them fuel for the genny would be $10k per day, it'd still be the right choice, to avoid interrupting operations of a large facility.

 

[tradosaurus]

I'm an engineer, and so always salaried, and generally always exempt from overtime pay. It works out nicely for the companies, because although my salary is high, my hourly rate gets pulled way down by the long hours I tend to work.

But one very inexperienced and unqualified HR manager at one of my prior employers somehow decided that engineers were not exempt. Every other company in the state treats us as exempt, but she thought she knew better, and I wasn't going to argue. I managed to pull in more than double my salary the year she made that decision, and got thru half of a second year doing the same, before she rethought how "right" she was. Suddenly, there was some reason why I was exempt, again.

BTW, with time and a half over 40 hours, you double your salary at 67 hours. That's pretty easy to do for any ambitious guy, when you're young and single.

With the federal govt., as an engineer I get overtime pay but at straight time. I rarely have to work overtime. My time off is worth all the gold in the world.